Chapter 371: The Trial and the woman (3)

Third Person’s POV

On the outside, the snake remained perfectly still, and its body showed no visible sign of injury as its predator’s poise was frozen in an eerie, lifeless mask.

Seeing that its emerald scales were unblemished, and its body was seemingly untouched by harm, the hulking man’s amber eyes lit with a mix of pride and disdain that seemed to rumble up from his bones.

"So, it was just a small fry after all," he said, his deep voice carrying both mockery and self-satisfaction.

"I don’t know why such weaklings even dare step foot in this place. Hopefully, that boy isn’t so pathetic as to die from the little bit of poison my little Snaky just pumped into him."

At his words, the black-haired demoness draped in scant strips of beastskin let out a silvery, flirtatious laugh.

She tilted her head, and her long lashes lowered in mock coyness as her lips curved into something far more dangerous than a smile.

"Leave that pretty boy to me," she purred. "I will play with him... thoroughly, tonight."

Her tongue darted out to graze her red lips, the wet sheen catching the light as her eyes lingered on Ethan with a hunger that was anything but subtle.

As her companions chuckled and traded crude remarks, the tall, bamboo-thin demon said nothing, and his expression remained unreadable, while his gaze never left Ethan.

Slowly, a crease formed between his brows when Ethan’s body seemed to slacken, falling from the branch to the forest floor in a limp heap.

As he fell, the viper’s jaws were still clamped on his face, and frozen mid-bite as though locked in some strange tableau.

Something in that stillness prickled the thin man’s instincts, but before suspicion could take full root, the hulking brute crouched beside Ethan while still grinning like a predator toying with prey.

"Looks like little Snaky’s taken a liking to that pretty boy’s blood," he rumbled, his voice dripping with crude amusement.

The bamboo-like man’s eyes suddenly widened and alarm flashed there for the first time, but before he could speak and before the warning could escape his lips... something happened.

The limp, seemingly incapacitated Ethan suddenly came to life.

His arm shot up like a striking serpent with his fingers wreathed in a pale blue glow that trailed with wisps of biting cold through the air.

His grip found the hulking brute’s neck with unerring precision, and each of his fingertips pressed down with an icy finality.

A thin, freezing current of cold mana surged from Ethan’s hand and threaded through the brute’s skin, muscle, bone, and nerves as it locked everything in place with brutal efficiency.

The brute’s amber eyes went wide, and the first flickers of fear broke through his arrogance.

His hands shot up to pry Ethan’s grip away, but the strength bled from his arms almost instantly.

Soon, his struggles were futile as he stood frozen, like a grotesque statue, as frost began to creep along his hair and lashes.

Just as Ethan was a bit pleased with his little plan, his instincts screamed of danger.

His instincts flared like a struck match, and he tilted his head a fraction of an inch, just enough for a glinting, near-invisible needle to whip past his cheek.

The moment it passed, he twisted into a smooth somersault and landed lightly several paces away as another flurry of needles hissed through the air and stabbed into the spot he had just vacated, while following him to the position he now stood in.

"Stop," Ethan’s voice was quiet but laced with frost. "Or I will snap his neck."

To show that he meant business, he hoisted the hulking brute effortlessly by the throat and let him dangle in the air as his cold gaze fixed on the bamboo-thin demon and the sultry, barely-clad woman.

The tall, thin stick one remained silent at first, as his narrow amber eyes weighed the situation.

Finally, after a few seconds, his voice came, but it was totally calm and edged like a blade.

"If you do that, you will be expelled from the trial, and you can forget about setting foot in the hallowed grounds of the Sanctum, and I don’t mean just this year but forever."

Hearing that, Ethan’s lips curved and not in amusement, but in something sharper.

His laughter began low and slow as one hand held the brute’s neck, while the other gripped the now frozen green viper’s tail.

Without looking away from the pair, he drew his hips back and, with a sudden whip of his arm, swung the serpent through the air.

The force behind his whipping was savage, and in the next moment, the frozen head tore clean from its body with a brittle crack and sailed far into the undergrowth before landing with a dull thud.

A thin trickle of blood ran down the brute’s nose almost immediately, and a grunt escaped his frozen lips.

The woman and the stick thin man were shocked as they had never witnessed such a technique of executing a snake, and how could they hav,e as Ethan had learned this in his previous life.

Outwardly, the woman’s pupils shrank, as her earlier lust and diddain was replaced by sharp caution thought the bamboo-thin demon, however, didn’t so much as blink.

Without any visible display of triumph or victory, Ethan pocketed the viper’s corpse without ceremony, though inwardly his eyes narrowed.

That reaction that the brute had... There had to be some sort of contract binding the man to the snake, as its death had clearly come with a price.

"Alright," Ethan said, his voice now carrying the weight of a deal.

"Let’s talk. Tell me the detailed rules of this trial. If you do, I might just leave this oaf breathing... and we can avoid turning this into something far uglier."

There was a reason behind Ethan’s words, though he didn’t voice it outright.

When he had regained consciousness, the first thing he noticed was the absence of his companions.