"So this is Hell Road?"
Wu Ling looked at the narrow path ahead, which was only half a foot wide, and murmured, "The name really fits. One wrong step and you fall into Hell, beyond all redemption."
Before he came to Slaughter City, Bibi Dong had roughly told him what Hell Road looked like. But so many years had passed, and this place could not have remained unchanged forever. The information she possessed could only be used as reference.
"The temperature is getting higher." After walking for a while, Wu Ling looked down beneath his feet.
The magma below was getting closer and closer. At first, it had been about a thousand meters down. Now it was probably around nine hundred. If this continued, the final section of Hell Road might be completely swallowed by magma. That final stretch would be the truly difficult part, though Wu Ling had already made preparations for it.
Just as Wu Ling was looking at the magma below, a dense buzzing sound came from not far ahead.
"Bats. More than a thousand of them!" Wu Ling said in a low voice.
He walked forward a little farther. Once he was closer, he finally saw the bats clearly. They were blood-red bats, like miniature versions of the blood-colored pattern left on the floor of the Hell Killing Field earlier. Each blood bat was about one foot long, but their huge wingspans exceeded a meter.
One or two blood bats would not amount to much. But more than a thousand appearing at once looked like a red blood cloud rushing toward Wu Ling. Together with their shrill cries echoing around him, they made the mind grow restless.
"Hmph. Nothing more than this."
Wu Ling lifted his blade and walked toward the bat swarm. In the dense mass of bats, his slashes looked slow, yet not a single bat could approach him. Each bat seemed to be throwing itself onto his blade and was cut down with one strike.
"Screech!" After Wu Ling calmly walked through the bat swarm and killed most of them, an angry bat cry suddenly came from ahead.
Directly in front of the narrow road, hanging upside down beneath it, was an enormous creature. Under the surrounding faint red light, it released a dark-gold glow. Its body was over four meters long, and its two huge claws were hooked onto the narrow path. Each claw was more than a meter in diameter, piercing sharply into the stone.
Amid the shrieks of the remaining blood bats, a pair of enormous wings slowly unfolded from that dark-gold body. Its terrifying wingspan reached ten meters. Its claws suddenly released the stone, and as its wings beat, its massive body took flight. It was an incomparably huge bat.
That bat was dark gold all over. Most terrifying of all, it had three heads. This was the boss of Hell Road's first stage: the Dark-Gold Three-Headed Bat King.
"Dark-Gold Bat Kings have the dark attribute. I have seen them in both the original story and the Soul Beast atlas, but this one seems to have mutated. Judging from its size, its cultivation age should be over sixty thousand years," Wu Ling said.
A sixty-thousand-year Soul Beast already possessed strength above Spirit King level. Especially a mutated species like the Dark-Gold Three-Headed Bat King. Even a Titled Sage would likely find it difficult to handle under conditions where Spirit Skills could not be used.
If Wu Ling still had empty Spirit Ring slots, using it might very well summon Vlad III (Lancer) or Elizabeth Bathory.
Unfortunately, Wu Ling did not have much desire for either of those Heroic Spirits.
Because of its mutation, the Dark-Gold Three-Headed Bat King possessed extremely high intelligence and a cunning nature. It did not attack Wu Ling right away. Instead, it began destroying the road ahead, intending to make Wu Ling bring about his own death.
Because the Bat King controlled the air, Wu Ling did not have enough methods to reach and attack it. For the moment, he could only cross the narrow road as quickly as possible.
But there was no way the Bat King would simply watch Wu Ling pass the first checkpoint. Its three heads began shrieking at the same time, and powerful sonic attacks continued blasting toward Wu Ling.
Wu Ling could dodge the Bat King's attacks easily, but when had he ever suffered this kind of frustration? If they were outside, he would at least make this bat experience a magic cannon to the face.
Having read the original story, Wu Ling naturally knew that to kill the Three-Headed Bat King, he had to cut off all three heads in one breath. Taking out one or two heads was meaningless, because it would regenerate in an instant. So even though he could jump up and attack, Wu Ling did not rush in recklessly.
In the original story, Tang San used a combination of Purple Demon Eye, hidden weapons, and the Clear Sky Hammer to destroy all three of the Bat King's heads at the same time. But Wu Ling did not need that. Swallow Reversal attacked from three directions and could perfectly execute this creature. All Wu Ling needed was an opening.
And just as Wu Ling was about to cross the narrow road, that opening came.
No matter how intelligent the Dark-Gold Three-Headed Bat King was, it was still a Soul Beast. When it saw that all of its attacks had been dodged and that Wu Ling was about to reach the next stage, it grew anxious.
It simply abandoned its advantage of flight and ranged attacks. After a strange flight pattern, it pounced straight toward Wu Ling.
The Dark-Gold Three-Headed Bat King's claws and fangs were no weaker than any divine weapon. They could easily tear through stone. Its pouncing motion had also been tempered countless times and was no less refined than any human ultimate technique. When those two traits combined, the power was extremely terrifying. It was very confident that this claw strike could end the life of the human who dared provoke it.
The giant claw came crashing down. Just as the Dark-Gold Three-Headed Bat King's claws entered the three-meter range around Wu Ling, a sharp light suddenly bloomed in Wu Ling's eyes.
His swordsmanship had been tempered through countless refinements. Even without a preparatory stance, the current Wu Ling could unleash that unavoidable secret sword anytime, anywhere.
A heartbeat later, sharp blade-light appeared at the same time in all three pairs of the Bat King's blood-red eyes. Under the Bat King's own gaze, the blade-lights cut toward its necks.
"Secret Sword: Swallow Reversal!"
"Pfft! Pfft! Pfft!"
As Wu Ling's figure brushed past the Dark-Gold Three-Headed Bat King, three sounds linked together. The Bat King's heads froze in midair. Then blood sprayed, three bat heads flew high into the air, and its body crashed weakly onto the narrow road. Just before it fell into the magma, Wu Ling stepped on it.
"It would be a shame to waste such a good research specimen. I will take it back and let Rose study it."
After storing the Dark-Gold Three-Headed Bat King's corpse in his storage ring, Wu Ling continued forward as if nothing had happened, walking toward the next stage.