Chapter Twenty-Three: The Epic Battle Between Serpent and Hound

After moving into the new house, Jia Zhengjin began teaching Tina Chinese phonetics. Every evening, he would spend a few hours before bed instructing her to master more of the sounds. This was not a project that could be accomplished overnight; it required persistent, long-term study to truly grasp.

The rest of his time was dedicated to hunting, which he did as carefully as possible. With Little Ash and Little Black, the two kobold miners, now working in his stead, Jia Zhengjin no longer needed to exhaust himself with daily labor. So, aside from hunting to level up and teaching Tina Chinese, he had little else to occupy his mind.

After several days of mining, Little Ash and Little Black finally gathered enough materials for Jia Zhengjin to craft the most important workbench. With this, he furnished the bedroom with a large double wooden bed, and provided Tina with a wooden wardrobe and sofa. Inside the wardrobe were several fiber dresses of varying styles for Tina to wear. After all, it would be unreasonable for her to always wear her old clothes.

For now, the fiber dresses would suffice. Later, once he had a loom, he could use monster silk to make fine garments, or perhaps plant cotton to craft cloth and warm clothing.

The kitchen now featured a new stove and iron pot, so they were no longer limited to eating roasted meat. Boiled fish, boiled meat, boiled coconut, fried meat slices, stir-fried coconut flesh—these dishes enriched their daily meals.

There were no books in the study, so Jia Zhengjin used fiber to make paper and fashioned brushes from animal hair and bamboo. He wrote out Chinese phonetics and everyday dialogues annotated with these sounds, so Tina could study on her own while he was out.

In her free time, Tina cultivated a patch of farmland in the yard using an iron hoe Jia Zhengjin had made, planting crops unfamiliar to him.

Life seemed to be settling into a comfortable routine, and Jia Zhengjin enjoyed these days immensely.

After several days of continuous hunting and trapping, Jia Zhengjin was only a hundred experience points away from reaching level five. So, early one morning, he reluctantly bade Tina farewell and entered the dangerous jungle.

Recently, the traps had yielded little, which was disappointing. He decided to venture further, hoping a change of location might improve his luck.

As he searched for a new area to set traps, a sharp kobold cry suddenly pierced the air. Having dealt with kobolds for some time, Jia Zhengjin immediately recognized it as a call to battle. Had he been discovered? He quickly climbed a nearby tree, staying alert and scanning the surroundings from above.

From his vantage point, he unexpectedly spotted a kobold nest about six or seven hundred meters away. No wonder kobolds frequented the river here for water—he hadn’t ventured this far before and was unaware of their proximity.

The kobold nest was a cluster of hive-like mud burrows, most likely dug by these upright, beast-like creatures of limited intelligence. Inside, countless kobolds—old, adult, and young—moved about. Among them was a particularly burly, giant kobold wielding a wooden staff, seemingly the leader.

At present, chaos reigned in the nest. The kobold chief led its kin in a desperate battle against a group of giant pythons that had stormed the entrance, ravenously preying upon the kobolds. The cry he’d heard was a call for all kobolds to resist the serpents.

Though these pythons weren’t the fire-breathing kind Jia Zhengjin had encountered before, they could easily swallow a kobold whole. Their thick hides rendered the kobolds’ wooden clubs useless.

The battle was utterly one-sided. The kobold tribe swarmed the giant pythons like ants, but only ended up as their food.

Seeing the danger escalate, the kobold chief finally joined the fray. Its approach was peculiar—it raised its staff and cast a fireball at a python’s head.

It could use magic? Jia Zhengjin was surprised to discover a magic-wielding leader among the kobolds.

Unfortunately, the chief’s magical attacks were feeble. The fireball merely made the python shake its head and recover, before lashing out with its tail and sending the chief flying, crashing heavily to the ground.

With their leader so easily defeated, the kobold army instantly lost its morale. The once valiant fighters dropped their clubs and fled in all directions.

More giant pythons surged in from every side, rampaging through the kobold nest and feasting in a frenzy. The kobold tribe was powerless to resist; their numbers meant nothing against the pythons’ voracious appetite. Soon, only a cluster of giant, bloated pythons remained before the nest.

The kobold chief, panicked and desperate, ran toward Jia Zhengjin’s direction. Its abdomen, gashed from the earlier fall, now bled profusely.

A python pursued relentlessly, but instead of devouring its prey, it repeatedly knocked the chief down and toyed with it.

The kobold chief struggled desperately, raising its staff to launch fireballs, though they failed to harm the serpent.

As the chief and python drew nearer, Jia Zhengjin cursed under his breath and scrambled higher into the tree to avoid being caught in the fray.

The python was in no hurry to enjoy its meal, stalking the chief and watching its frantic attempts to escape. Whenever the chief tried to run, the python swiftly blocked its path with its head.

Perhaps fate intervened to aid the kobold chief. One lucky fireball struck an unusual cylindrical plant. At the moment of impact, the plant’s surface sprayed a jet of black ga