Chapter 266 - 161: Lair in the Depths! The White Bone Tomb Beneath the Abyss! The Bloodthirsty Vine King Appears

Chapter 266: Chapter 161: Lair in the Depths! The White Bone Tomb Beneath the Abyss! The Bloodthirsty Vine King Appears

"It’s all up to you to get us headed in the right direction, so don’t you dare get the scent wrong."

"This abyss is so huge that if we get lost, we might not find our way out for days."

WOOF—

The Tiger Striped Dog barked, as if assuring its master that it had memorized the scent and would not make a mistake.

Chen Chong had great faith in the Tiger Striped Dog’s sense of smell. He led it onward, venturing once more into the depths of the darkness...

He lost track of how long they walked. Along the way, they found no trace of any other living things.

In the pitch-black abyss, it was impossible to get one’s bearings, to know what lurked ahead or lay waiting behind.

So, Chen Chong resorted to a rather unorthodox method...

He used the sense of danger from his beast’s intuition to navigate.

He headed in whichever direction the feeling of danger was most intense!

By using his ability in a way completely contrary to its original purpose, he managed to feel his way forward through the darkness.

Ever since approaching the abyss, a faint but persistent sense of danger had been nagging at him.

Chen Chong knew it was his beast’s intuition, reminding him that he was no longer far from the two Extraordinary Creatures.

And the closer he got, the stronger the feeling of danger grew.

He carefully perceived the strength of the throbbing in his heart, continuously adjusting his direction.

Finally, the environment around him began to change.

It wasn’t the terrain, but what was appearing on the ground.

In addition to the gravel and loose stones that were everywhere at the bottom of the abyss, skeletons had begun to appear on the ground.

And the deeper in they went, the more astonishing the number of skeletons became!

Some of these skeletons were the size of ordinary animals, and Chen Chong could still identify a few of them from the outlines of their bones.

There were quite a few medium and large herbivores and carnivores among them. Although he couldn’t identify the specific species, he could at least be sure that they were all within the realm of normal creatures.

But other skeletons were ridiculously, monstrously large.

Ribs half a man tall, vertebrae as thick as bowls, and skulls wider than tables...

Most were so fragmented and incomplete that it was impossible to picture what they looked like in life.

Judging by how weathered the skeletons were, they had clearly been here for many years.

Chen Chong couldn’t tell if the owners of these massive skeletons were Extraordinary Creatures or some kind of jungle behemoth he had never seen before.

But one thing was certain: there was no way these animals would have willingly come to this remote, underground abyss.

Their presence here was undoubtedly the work of the Bloodthirsty Vine.

It seemed that, much like the Stone Claw Eagle, this thing would periodically drag prey from the jungle to parasitize and absorb for nutrients.

The farther forward he went, the more intense Chen Chong’s shock became.

The number of skeletons around him far surpassed his imagination.

They were even more densely packed than what he had seen near the Stone Claw Eagle’s nest on the barren mountaintop, as if they had formed a forest of bone at the bottom of the abyss.

A White Bone Tomb, made just for these animals!

There were so many skeletons it was impossible to count them all.

It was no exaggeration to say that if you gathered all the meat from these animals when they were alive, it would be enough to feed a thousand people at a school for ten years, with leftovers to spare.

Chen Chong’s expression grew solemn. ’So the Bloodthirsty Vine has been secretly hunting this many animals, dragging them to the bottom of the abyss to parasitize them and absorb their energy. No wonder it’s so terrifyingly strong.’

’This has to be the result of many years of accumulation.’

He noticed that the smaller the skeletons, the more severely they were weathered and decayed.

Clearly, they were the victims of earlier hunts.

Perhaps when the Bloodthirsty Vine King was still weak, it could only prey on these ordinary animals. As its power grew, it slowly shifted its focus to larger prey.

And now, it was no longer satisfied with parasitizing common animals; it had set its sights on humans, as well as Extraordinary Creatures like the Stone Claw Eagle, the Unihorn Catfish, and the Blood-tooth Python.

Just as Chen Chong was lost in thought, his pupils contracted violently!

The sense of danger in his heart suddenly skyrocketed, his beast’s intuition triggering to its absolute limit.

Chen Chong chose neither to flee nor to fight head-on. Instead, he raised his hand and tapped the Green Crystal Bracelet on his wrist.

In an instant, a transparent barrier enveloped him and the Tiger Striped Dog.

Their figures vanished without a trace, and even their presence was completely hidden...

And in the very instant the man and his dog vanished, a black vine emerged from a pile of bones.

It slithered through the countless skeletons like a serpent, seemingly trying to sense something.

It was located less than two hundred meters behind Chen Chong’s position.

This vine was several times thicker than the ones he had seen at the top of the abyss. Its width alone exceeded a meter.

Chen Chong’s pupils shrank.

He stared intently at the object before him.

From this thick vine, he perceived an utterly terrifying aura.

And a sense of danger that far surpassed the Blood-tooth Python!

’If I’m not mistaken, this is...’

’...the main body of the Bloodthirsty Vine King!’

...