The lizard monster screeched and continued its lunge forward towards Jianmen. Jianmen clapped his hands, and in an instant the traps set up by Jianmen became activated. Some of the traps became piles of slippery mud, while the other became stone spikes sticking out from the ground and in the direction of the lizard monster.

When the lizard monster’s front claws stepped into the mud in attempts to change the direction of its body, they lost all of their traction and its entire body just simply slid forward against the stone spikes.

“Crunch!” two of the three spikes clashed with the lizard monster’s body. The tip of one spike penetrated shells on the lizard monster’s left shoulder, and the tip of another stone spike got jammed into the lizard monster’s abdomen. Dark blue and dark green blood started flowing out from the wounds, and dripping on the ground. But though the stone spikes wounded the lizard monster, the wounds they made and the damage they did was not deep enough to incapacitate it.

The lizard monster let out a pained roar, its body squirmed and broke the spikes, breaking free from them while still having parts of the spikes left inside its body. Jianmen slammed his left palm on the ground, conjuring more stone spikes from the ground in attempts to follow up with the attack.

“Crack!” the stone spikes conjured in a hurry were not as sturdy and sharp as the ones that were generated by the traps, and all they were able to do was just leave a few scratch marks on its shell and peel off a few scales.

“Hey, ugly over there!” Josephine Wong shouted at the lizard monster, and then she threw out her wooden spear in full force.

The lizard monster tried to block the wooden spear using its tail - but the spear changed its trajectory in midair, and struck it in the neck, right on the bleeding wound left by Jianmen’s spear. Without the obstruction of the shells and scales, Josephine Wong’s spear just dived right into the lizard monster’s neck without losing much, if any of its power. And the next moment the spear exploded from inside the lizard monster’s body, sharp and pointy splinters shot out in all directions, tearing through all the soft tissues inside the lizard monster’s neck and throat.

This strike was probably more devastating than all the other attacks that were unleashed against the lizard monster combined. The lizard monster’s neck started swelling up, and under the influence of the immense agony, it started crying, coughing out thick blood and pieces of broken soft tissues, while struggling and rolling on the ground.

“Nice move you got there.” Jianmen smiled and leapt to the side, holding one stone knife in each hand, and in rapid succession, the two stone knives were tossed out with great velocity, aiming at the lizard monster’s left shoulder and abdomen.

Though the lizard monster was squirming and rolling, the two stone knives still landed right on the wounds left by the broken stone spikes generated from Jianmen’s traps. The two stone knives were infused with Jianmen’s Xuanli, and the moment their blades sunk into the two wounds, several streams of powerful electric current coursed through the lizard monster’s body from one knife to another.

The lizard monster’s front legs and chest twitched and trembled under the influence of the electric shock, which caused it to stop coughing up blood and broken tissues from its neck and instead, started choking on it.

This proved to be a fatal combination, the lizard monster tried to grab its own throat out of pure instinct. It tried several times, but with the lingering effects of the electric shock, it was only able to do so after several tries. But just like choking for humans, grabbing one’s throat couldn’t help the situation at all - the blood and broken tissues flowed into its respiratory tract and blocked the airflow, and the more it struggled, the more it shortened its life by wasting the last bit of air it had.

The lizard monster struggled on the ground for more than a minute, and eventually it stopped moving.

“Phew.” Jianmen wiped the sweat off his forehead, then turned to Josephine Wong: “You okay there?”

“Tired, exhausted.” Josephine Wong expended almost all of her newly recovered magical power with just one strike, and she was finally able to stand up.

“Let’s be quick and stealthy, this time it should be really dead, the scavengers will come soon enough.” Jianmen cast a concealing spell on himself and then used the last stone knife in his hand to cut through the lizard monster’s jaw socket.

“Understood.” Josephine Wong also cast a simple concealing spell on herself, then took a few deep breaths and rushed to Jianmen’s side. She took back the dagger handed to her by Jianmen, and started cutting up the chest and belly of the lizard monster. 

“Ugh, so here it is, if you are wondering.” when the lizard monster’s stomach was completely sliced open, a pile of half digested tentacles rolled out from its stomach, giving off a foul acidic smell.

“Try looking for weirdly shaped gems or crystals inside, those may be the stones naturally formed inside their bodies. Really useful in almost all circumstances if you ask me.” Jianmen cut open the jaw, and almost made his way to the lizard monster’s brain: “Or if you can find the octopus monster’s brain, or beak, then that would be even better.”

“I know, I know. I’ve dissected a few monsters in my life.” Josephine Wong tried her hardest to push her nauseated feeling down: “It’s just that this one’s more gnarly and gross.”

And thus, both of them started slicing and dicing the lizard monster as fast and meticulous as they could. It wasn’t long before both of them gathered a couple of very sharp teeth, one piece of hardened shoulder blade, a few broken pieces of strangely shaped gems, a tongue and a whole brain from the lizard monster’s body.

“Okay, we’d better go now.” after carefully placing the whole brain inside of a stone box, Jianmen said to Josephine Wong: “Don’t be greedy.”

“I know. ” Josephine Wong removed a rib bone from the lizard monster’s chest, strapped it on her back and nodded.

Just when they were ready to leave, a strange wave of energy came from the space above them. And just after a few seconds, a portal appeared in midair. 

Josephine Wong looked back in horror, the energy waves radiating from the portal was just way too familiar, less than four days ago, the being that wielded this kind of power brought down almost all of the energy from an enormous ball lightning onto the ground.

The head of a dark scaled dragon came out from the portal with its mouth wide open, and without a hint of hesitation, it bit down on the body of the lizard monster and dragged it along into the portal. The lizard monster’s body was too long for the diameter of the portal, and when the head of the dragon retreated to the back of the portal, a part of its head and a large chunk of its tail got sliced off by the edge of the portal.

“Holy fuck. Let’s go!” Josephine Wong whispered to Jianmen.

The dragon seemed quite pleased with what it had, even when they left the scene, both Jianmen and Josephine Wong could still hear a happy roar along with the munch sound of the dragon enjoying its food.