Lin Wei continued following the path. His entire body hurt with every step, but he was not going to stop. Not after having managed to escape that limbo.
The cave was larger than it seemed. The main corridor stretched ahead, wide enough for three men to walk side by side.
But on the sides, between the rocks, there were dozens of smaller holes, narrow tunnels that disappeared into the darkness.
Animal paths, by the size. Lin Wei did not want to imagine what kind of creature used those passages. He only hoped not to encounter any.
His objective was simple. Find an exit. Then, return to the city.
Maybe there was someone who would help him. He knew how this world worked, no one did anything for free, especially for a beggar. But hope was the only thing that did not hurt yet.
Fifteen minutes passed. He walked slowly, leaning on the walls whenever his left leg threatened to give out. His breathing was short, each inhale a stab in his broken ribs. But he continued. One step at a time.
He reached a curve. The cave wall turned sharply to the left, forming a narrower opening. He entered, forcing his vision into the dimness.
And then he saw it.
Lin Wei jumped back, his heart racing. His eyes widened, trying to process what was in front of him.
"What is that..." He murmured, his voice coming out hoarse, almost inaudible.
"A snake skin?"
That was exactly it. A snakeskin, but not just any skin. It stretched across the entire cave floor, a thin and translucent shell that slithered between the rocks, entering and exiting the smaller holes, until disappearing into the corridor ahead. Lin Wei tried to estimate the size. At least five meters. Maybe more.
He swallowed dryly.
"Shit."
It was not enough to be completely broken. Now he was, possibly, in the home of a giant serpent.
"Could it be a monstrous beast?" he thought out loud.
Monstrous beasts were different from ordinary animals. They possessed intelligence superior to animals, could absorb Qi, and could evolve like cultivators.
A rank 1 beast was already capable of killing a group of armed men without effort. If that snake was a beast...
He shook his head.
"No. The original Lin Wei did not go that deep into the forest. Monstrous beasts live further inside, far from humans." He concluded, trying to convince himself.
But, deep down, he knew it made no difference. Beast or not, a five-meter snake was more than capable of killing him.
He took a deep breath and moved forward. He had no choice.
Another hour passed. Or what felt like an hour, his sense of time was already distorted by pain and exhaustion. He panted, each step was a battle.
His body begged to stop, to lie down on the damp ground and simply rest. But he did not allow it. With a determination he did not even know he had, he continued.
When his legs finally gave out, he began to crawl.
His arms scraped against the rocks. His skinned knees burned with the friction. But he continued. Crawling, centimeter by centimeter, toward whatever lay ahead.
Another thirty minutes. Then came the smell.
Rotten and foul. A sweet and nauseating stench that invaded his nostrils and made his stomach churn.
Lin Wei wrinkled his nose, but kept crawling. The corridor began to grow narrower, the ceiling lower. Soon, he would have to crawl on his stomach if he wanted to proceed.
The light increased ahead. A crack, small, but real. Sunlight, or what remained of it, entered through some opening.
Exit.
He grew excited, crawling with more strength.
The narrow tunnel suddenly opened up. The space became large enough for him to stand. Lin Wei rose slowly, leaning on the wall, and looked around.
But then his heart stopped.
In front of him, coiled in the center of the chamber, was a serpent.
It was enormous. Much larger than he had imagined. Its scales were a deep purple, almost black, that faintly shone in the light entering through a crack in the ceiling. Its head was the size of a bucket, and even coiled, its body occupied almost the entire space of the cave.
Lin Wei did not breathe. Did not blink. The fear he felt was different from everything he had experienced, different from the truck, different from the limbo. It was a primal terror, engraved in his bones, that screamed at him to run, flee, disappear.
'I am dead.'
The thought came clear, cold, and inevitable. He waited for the attack. Waited for the fangs, the constriction, the end.
One second. Two. Thirty. But nothing.
The serpent did not move.
Lin Wei forced his vision into the dimness, observing every detail. The snake's body was still. Too still. And there was something on the ground around it. A dark, thick liquid that reflected the faint light.
It was blood.
He took a cautious step. Then another. The snake remained motionless. When he got close enough to see the animal's eyes, opaque lifeless, he finally understood.
It was dead.
"Ughhh!" The air escaped his lungs in a trembling sigh. He leaned against the wall, his legs weakening with relief.
"It's dead. The snake is dead."
The stench made sense now. The rotting flesh. The dried blood on the ground. It had been there for days, maybe more. Lin Wei did not know how it died, nor did he care. He only knew he would not be devoured alive today.
He looked around, searching for the exit. The crack in the ceiling was the only source of light, but it was too high, at least five meters to the opening. Besides, the walls were smooth, without support. Impossible to climb.
"Damn."
He murmured, the word echoing in the silent chamber.
"There really is no solution?"
He thought about the paths he had taken. The cave entrance was collapsed. The main corridor only led back to the snakeskin and the animal tunnels. And now this chamber, with a dead snake and an unreachable exit.
He was trapped.
Lin Wei sat on the ground, his head lowered. The exhaustion finally caught up to him. His body hurt, his eyes were heavy, and his mind seemed wrapped in fog. He could die there. Wait for someone to appear, which was unlikely, or simply lie down and let the darkness take him back to the limbo.
He laughed. A dry, bitter sound.
"At least there is food."
He looked at the enormous body of the serpent. Meat. A lot of meat. If he could start a fire, he could eat for days. Weeks, maybe.
"The fucked up thing is this rotten smell." He murmured, standing up with effort.
"It's probably been dead for a long time. Eating this is going to be a Russian roulette."
But it was better than nothing.
He approached the snake, his feet sinking into the dried blood. When he was a few steps from the body, his foot bumped into something soft. He did not need to look to know what it was, part of the decomposed flesh, fallen on the ground.
Before he could think about the disgust, a strange sound echoed inside his mind.
'Ding!'
Lin Wei froze.
A translucent screen appeared before his eyes, floating in the air as if it were solid. Silver letters shone against the dark background of the cave.
[Bloodline Devouring System awakened!]
[Main Bloodline Available: Purple Mist Serpent (Rank 1)]
[Devour?]
[Yes/No]
Lin Wei stared at the screen for a long second. Then another. His heart, which moments ago was racing, seemed to slow down.
System.
He had read dozens, hundreds, of novels with systems on Earth. It was the most overused cliché of the genre. The protagonist always gained a system to compensate for his lack of talent, to give him an advantage against the world.
And now he had one.
It did not matter that the body he occupied was trash without a spiritual root. It did not matter that he was trapped in a cave with a rotten snake. He had a system. A chance.
Without thinking twice, without even considering the risks or how it worked, Lin Wei opened his mouth and said it out loud.
"YES!"