Li Yu's expression was unperturbed.
"Oh, then tell me, who are we?"
Saga clenched his fists and slowly raised his head. In that instant, his hair turned black.
"The kind of people unwilling to be manipulated by fate!"
Li Yu closed his eyes, noncommittal. A moment later, he smiled faintly, his gaze sweeping over the frozen swamp, and said calmly,
"You called me here; you shouldn't just want to talk about such nonsense, right?"
Saga snorted, looking into the depths of the swamp. Under the snowy, icy ground, human skeletons were vaguely visible.
"After I left the Sanctuary, I've been cultivating in this vicinity. This place was originally a village. I exchanged game for daily necessities with the villagers. The night before last, it suddenly turned into a swamp, filled with poisonous gas, and all the villagers turned into skeletons…"
Li Yu interrupted Saga.
"My time is limited, get to the point…"
Saga frowned slightly, his black brows furrowed, and he snorted,
"This scene reminds me of an ancient monster…"
"Hydra?"
Li Yu was slightly startled. This name exploded in his memory like a clap of thunder.
As a Gold Saint, he had seen detailed records of it in the ancient texts of the Sanctuary.
Hydra was the father of all monsters, the offspring of the hundred-headed giant dragon Typhon and the half-woman, half-serpent monster Echidna. Its nine heads could spew poisonous mist, turning fertile land into plague-ridden swamps wherever it passed, leaving no humans or animals alive.
Then he shook his head.
"Impossible. Wasn't Hydra's nine heads cut off and it was completely suppressed by Hercules in ancient times?"
"I also wish it were just a legend."
Saga's black hair was disheveled over his shoulders, his voice filled with suppressed anger.
"But yesterday, I saw it with my own eyes. It erupted from the swamp and attacked a Saint who was patrolling here. The intensity of the poisonous gas was so strong that even I couldn't fully resist it. I wanted to kill it, but it escaped into the depths of the swamp…"
Li Yu's lips curved slightly.
"So you thought of me?"
Saga clenched his fists and looked at Li Yu.
"Your Absolute Zero Domain left a deep impression on me. The power of Aquarius should be the bane of this monster…"
Li Yu's heart stirred. Saga's sudden appearance, if handled well, might offer him a glimmer of hope in the predicament he was currently facing.
He walked slowly towards the completely frozen swamp, the soles of his boots crunching on the ice, making a crisp sound.
"I can help you."
Li Yu turned around, a frosty aura flashing in his eyes.
"But what's in it for me?"
Saga snorted.
"In return, I can also promise you a request in the future, as long as it's within my power."
Li Yu smiled faintly.
"Very good, I hope you don't go back on your word. Then let's see what this monster truly is."
"Wait!"
Saga ignited his Cosmo and let out a low roar. The Gemini constellation map behind him swirled in the wind and snow, and the gemini cloth tore through the air, automatically donning itself on him.
Each Cloth only has one owner.
Only when the owner dies or voluntarily relinquishes ownership of the Cloth will it respond to the call of other Cosmos.
Of course, the Gemini constellation is a special case; the Cloth can be summoned by two Saints simultaneously.
The two Gold Saints stood side by side in the frozen swamp, their powerful Cosmos repelling each other, causing ripples in the surrounding space and constant cracking of the ice surface.
"It seems you haven't stopped cultivating all these years either."
Li Yu nodded slightly, acknowledging Saga's strength.
Saga's cold snort carried an imperceptible hint of frustration.
"Same to you!"
Li Yu's words sounded particularly grating to him.
His defeat at the Pope's Palace years ago was branded deep into his soul. Proud as he was, he still couldn't accept that he had lost to Li Yu.
Li Yu smiled faintly, turning and walking towards the depths of the swamp. Saga watched Li Yu's white cloak fluttering in the wind and snow, feeling an inexplicable sense of peace.
As long as Li Yu and he joined forces, even if Poseidon himself stood before them, he would have the power to fight!
Remembering Xue'er, the delicate girl from the village who always filled his bag with baked flatbreads, Saga's jaw unconsciously tightened.
He clenched so hard that his cheeks slightly bulged.
The human skeletons vaguely visible beneath the ice became his most searing weakness at that moment.
"Beast, no matter what you are, today I will make you pay with your life!"
Li Yu's Absolute Zero Domain continued to expand, the ice beneath his feet constantly spreading, freezing the dark green miasma into hexagonal snowflakes.
Saga followed closely, suddenly noticing a thin layer of ice had formed on his gemini cloth.
Gold Cloths have at least ninety percent resistance to all negative statuses. During the last battle at the Pope's Palace, Li Yu couldn't even freeze his Cloth, but now… Li Yu was even stronger!
And his Cosmo, in addition to the cold that froze everything, also possessed a domineering power that destroyed everything.
Saga had never stopped cultivating during his years in prison, but he found that the distance between himself and Li Yu seemed to have grown even further.
Damn it!
How on earth did Li Yu cultivate?
The two stopped at the edge of the dense forest. Ahead was a pool of water as black as ink. In a world where everything else was frozen, only this body of water was as calm as an obsidian mirror embedded in the ice and snow.
Normally, this pool of water might not have been a problem, but in the frozen dense forest, the fact that it wasn't frozen immediately alerted the two to an anomaly.
"If nothing unexpected, the monster you spoke of should be hiding here."
Li Yu stopped and said calmly.
"It must be here! I can smell the beast's stench."
Saga clenched his fists and said decisively.
Li Yu and Saga stood on opposite sides of the water, forming a pincer attack.
He leaned down and dipped a finger into the water. From his fingertip, the surface of the lake instantly froze into a thick layer of ice.
A crystalline ice pillar burst forth from beneath the water, expanding into radiating, spiky ice spears in the gloomy lakebed.
If there truly was a monster in this lake,
it would face the fate of being completely impaled by ice spikes if it continued to hide!
A few seconds later, the lake water boiled violently, like a pot on the stove. Large green bubbles gurgled to the surface, only to freeze into frost under Li Yu's Absolute Zero Domain!
Boom!
The lake surface exploded abruptly, sending a ten-meter-high wave into the air. A huge dark shadow leaped out of the water, roaring furiously at the two Gold Saints.
"Roar!"
As the mist dissipated, the monster revealed its true form. Its body was as thick as a giant python, towering over ten meters, covered in dark green scales.
The scales reflected a purplish-black light under the icy glow, hard as metal.
Viscous dark green fluid seeped from the gaps in its scales, dripping onto the ice surface and instantly corroding honeycomb-like holes.
It had three necks in total, not the nine of legend. Near the base of its necks were six gruesome severed points.