He logged on the forum and posted, 'Jiang Shaoliu killed 14 people from the Gangxing Group in less than 2 minutes'.
After that, he jumped down from the tall tree and went to the skeleton of the tusked monster. Then he commented on his own post, 'He ate a monster with two bronze life rings whole. It was at least 30 tons'.
"Does he have a black hole in his stomach?" Ruo Feng shook his head. Then he leaped into the forest, swinging on the thick vines after Jiang Shaoliu.
Within seconds, his post was drowned under a flood of new posts and was barely noticed by anyone.
Ten minutes later, another post from the same username appeared: 'Jiang Shaoliu killed 7 people from the Yungang League and knocked out 13 bounty hunters in 3 minutes.'
Then he added: 'He ate 60 packages of energy bars within 5 minutes without washing them down with anything.'
This post was ignored as well, remaining at the top for less than 3 seconds.
Minutes later came the third post: 'Jiang Shaoliu has killed in total 16 masters from 3 Gangxing Group combat teams; killed 5 and knocked out 9 bounty hunters in 4 and a half minutes without any injury.'
Ruo Feng stopped to read a few comments on his posts.
"Is this legit? It's probably staged, right? Total clickbait."
"We want live footage of Jiang Shaoliu fighting!"
Ruo Feng smiled and started after Jiang Shaoliu again.
He saw him again after less than seven minutes.
Jiang Shaoliu had stopped in a stretch of open ground and there were three masters from the Yungang League standing in front of him.
One of them was silvered all over, an alloy sickle knife in his hand. He kicked off the ground and zoomed forward like a cheetah.
The other two bronzed masters rushed forward one after another, blue airflow exploding in circles under their feet.
The three closed in on Jiang Shaoliu one by one. With a shout, his clenched fist shot forward.
Bang!
The silvered master's alloy sickle crumpled up and pieces of his body flew everywhere.
Bang bang!
The two bronzed masters fell down. One's chest was torn open, bits of ribs and viscera scattered about. The other master's skull caved in and he lay convulsing on the ground.
Only four seconds passed from the moment the masters charged and the moment the fight ended.
Jiang Shaoliu sat down and took out 5 packages of energy bars.
He ate slowly for a few moments. Suddenly, he looked directly at Ruo Feng, perched on a distant tree.
They looked at each other again.
Ruo Feng trembled as his forehead was covered in cold sweat.
Jiang Shaoliu slowly walked a few steps in his direction and yelled, "Don't follow me, or else!"
Then he turned around and sped off, cracking the ground with the force of his steps.
Three mangled corpses lay alone in the clearing.
Ruo Feng took several deep breaths and wiped the cold sweat from his forehead.
Several minutes later, a new post appeared on the front page of the Yungang forum, right beneath the four major factions pinned posts:
'Jiang Shaoliu has killed three people from the Yungang League in… 4 seconds. He ate 5 whole bags of compressed energy bars.'
This time, he embedded a short clip of Jiang Shaoliu fighting.
"Damn, he finished off those guys with just one move!"
"Is that really him? Hell, he's got the eyes of a lion!"
"No, he's very calm. Are you ok?"
After reading the messages, Ruo Feng turned off his smart watch. He decided not to chase after Jiang Shaoliu any longer, since some uneasiness still lurked in his mind.
"The best case scenario is that I will be knocked out if I keep on chasing him. Most probably…" Ruo Feng trembled as he thought of the look in Jiang Shaoliu's eyes, "He might really kill me."
The wind wailed and the leaves rustled. He started feeling a little cold.
"That look…" He shivered.
…
Jiang Shaoliu could hear the sounds of a fight in the wind as he ran. He changed direction, his face anxious.
He was starving, feeling like something was burning inside his stomach and he could be burnt up from the inside unless he fed it.
Just like a black hole that could never be filled up.
"So, now we know why the ape ancestors had to eat ten dragons and ten elephants when they created the golden abyss," he muttered to himself.
Since clearing out the last of his meridians, Jiang Shaoliu had eaten almost a 100 tons of meat.
He didn't know how big those dragons and elephants were, but he felt it wouldn't be an exaggeration to say each was the size of a blue whale.
"Liu Guang and Mr. Chen said they had gorged themselves before their stomach rings were condensed, but that was just three times more than usual. For me, it's more like a hundred or a thousand times more."
Jiang Shaoliu kicked off the ground and launched himself onto a strong branch; then jumped again and stood steadily on the top of the tree.
He could see the indistinct glow of Liang Duan Mountain on the horizon.
It was still 70 kilometers away, according to the satellite map on his smart watch.
According to the information on the internet, the more amazing the phenomena around its appearance, the better the fruit would be, and the longer it would take for it to ripen.
According to the records, the best known fruits took three days to form, casting magnificent visions on the sky.
It had been almost two days since the fruit appeared, so there was at most one more day left before it fully ripened.
One day was not enough to create the golden abyss.
"It took the ape ancestors two days to eat the ten dragons and ten elephants. The stomach can only digest so fast."
Jiang Shaoliu jumped off the tall tree and sprinted off. "I will not waste a single minute or a second! I'm gonna stuff that stomach to its limits!"
As he was running, he was practicing the Great Sage's Formula.
True qi flowed along the meridians to his limbs, bones, viscera, muscles and skin, making him feel stronger and numb at the same time.
However, when he practiced the Great Sage's Formula, it strengthened the entire body, and only a small part of the energy went to the stomach.
It seemed as if his stomach was a fussy eater and wouldn't take anything other than real food.
Especially meat.
"Ordinary meat won't cut it. It has to be monster meat; the stronger, the better." Jiang Shaoliu felt a little frustrated.
He ate at least ten pounds of pork and beef in the military base, but he felt that this couldn't even compare to several mouthfuls of meat from a monster with a single bronze life ring.
He felt fuller when he ate silver-ringed monsters than when he ate bronze-ringed ones. He was certain that at most ten silver-ringed monsters would suffice for him to create the golden abyss.
When the process was finally complete, he would no longer have to worry about food and become free from this physical necessity.
"There!" his eyes lit up with excitement.
A huge rock blocked the entrance to a cave at the foot of a tall cliff up ahead. The gap between the rocks was barely half a meter wide, almost impossible to notice if it weren't for the particular angle of the sunlight illuminating it. Something inside was reflecting the light.
Jiang Shaoliu approached the gap.
The gleaming white thing scuttled deeper into its burrow.
"I can see you in there." Jiang Shaoliu walked close to it and giggled, "Why are you hiding, dummy? You might as well come out and let me eat you."
The white thing trembled, causing flakes of stone to fall off the roof and walls of its cavern.
The crack became larger as the huge stone at the entrance shook.
"Fine, if you don't want to come out on your own, I'll beat you out!" Jiang Shaoliu laughed and drove his fist into the rock.
Crash!
The boulder covering the entrance erupted into a shower of dust and shrapnel.
"Wow."
The cave behind it was the height of three men and its back could not be seen. There was a huge snail inside, it's white shell gleaming in the soft light that flowed into the cave. Its thick spiral pattern reminded Jiang Shaoliu of a gigantic, coiled python.
"Wow, that's one big snail."
Jiang Shaoliu stepped into the cave and gently tapped the shell with his foot.
A dull, metallic tone rang throughout the cave.
"How did you grow so big and strong? Can you eat even more than me?" Jiang Shaoliu bent down and shoved his hands under the shell, lifting it up. "Come on out, I'm hungry!"
The snail remained firmly curled up inside its shell, only its soft lower body powerfully sticking to the ground.
The two wrestled back and forth, shaking the cave and causing small stones to fall around them and cracks to appear on the walls.
"You are one strong snail." Jiang Shaoliu strained his leg muscles and abs, pulling with his entire body. Each of his breaths sent dust and stones flying everywhere as true qi sloshed violently inside him.
"Get out of there!!!"
Suddenly, the snail shrieked at an earsplittingly high-frequency that made Jiang Shaoliu feel dizzy for a moment and stagger back.
The snail used this opportunity to slither out of the cave, leaving behind a trail of bright mucus that let out thin tendrils of white smoke as it corroded the earth.
"A sound wave attack?" Jiang Shaoliu roared in anger when his senses refocused. He ran out of the cave and slammed his fist into the snail's shell.
The shell lit up immediately before his strike landed, glowing white and then silver.
Clang!
His fist sank deep into the shell, leaving behind a knuckle-shaped depression, but could not break through it.
The snail screeched again, then turned around and poked its head out from the shell. It had five sets of eye stalks, the shortest about a meter long and the longest over three meters long.
There were in total ten eyes as big as fists, glittering in the sunlight under their translucent membranes.
Jiang Shaoliu jumped away and landed a dozen meters away. He stared at the massive snail in disbelief. "A silver-ringed snail?"
It was the first silver-ringed monster that appeared in the vicinity of Yungang City, and it was just a huge snail?
"Are those nostrils?" Jiang Shaoliu pointed at two holes in its head. "Eww, you ugly bastard."
The snail screeched in anger and charged at him.
After about ten seconds, it was almost half way there.
"Pfft…" Jiang Shaoliu burst out laughing.
"That's why you hide yourself. You have no hope of escaping when you are found."
Jiang Shaoliu walked toward it and raised his fist. "Alright, I don't have all day. I'm starving!"