Ziu stared in the microphone and the monitor in front of him, which had satellite imagery. There was nothing he could make out in it. "What does this mean?" he pointed at the screen, turned his serpent-yellow slit eyes towards the General and asked.

The General was shocked. For a moment his body movements froze and he became speechless. His breath became shaky.

​​

Ziu asked again, this time louder than before, "What does this mean? Answer me!"

The General's snapped back into sense. He shook his head and cursed himself again for falling in a war against the wizards. He had grossly underestimated their potential. He thought that all he had to do was send the fighter jets and drop some bombs, and that's it. It would get over even before it would begin. But with the current situation, the war had just begun and he could see where it would go. "This means that the aircrafts have either crashed without trace or they have disappeared completely as though they have entered the Bermuda Triangle."

Ziu refused to believe him at first. He glared at the blank screens again. The aircrafts' positions were tracked like dots on those but now, not a single dot was present. He rushed out of the room suddenly realizing that his plans were thwarted. Now Adrianna would have become completely aware of his intentions. But how could she stop such a large scale of attack? How could ten fighter jets that flew at high speeds disappear so soon? He walked in the garden out wondering if she got any help other than the wizards out there. Did she already know of his plans? "No, it can't be," he muttered to himself. Though inside his heart he knew that his activities had raised suspicions. He put his fist inside his mouth. At first all the werewolves had left their territories without leaving a trace and then she managed to foil his air strike.

"Oh! But these are humans who are attacking her," he said aloud with a gleam in his eyes. "Adrianna must be thinking it is Niiya who is conducting all these air strikes." He smirked. He went back inside the control room. "Prepare another ten jets to attack," he gave orders to the General and turned back to leave. As the General, speechlessly looked at the monster in front of him Ziu stopped at the door. "No, send twenty jets this time," he said and marched away. Twenty jets would give him enough time. In an hour, he would order the General to give command to the recruits on the ground to open fire.

Only ten more jets were there left with the General. There was no space to keep that many. He decided not to get more.

---

"Where are the rest of the serpents?" shouted the King.

"They are still combing the forest, my King," replied the commander. "But it has been almost an hour and not one werewolf could be spotted."

"This is impossible! They must be hiding in some cave, some pit, or some tree. Find them," he growled.

Their conversation was interrupted by a huge turbulence in water that wobbled the chamber. "What is it?" he asked his commander. In his experience this kind of turbulence meant a dangerous level of rain or thunderstorm.

"Commander!" suddenly a shout came from outside the chamber.

"What is it?"

"There is massive commotion towards the far end of the lake, where it meets the sea," replied the informer.

"Explain," demanded the King coming forward and glaring at the serpent.

"Our army is being killed by an unknown creature. It is so gigantic that we are unable to understand its size. It has a serpent like body but walks on legs. It keeps disappearing every now and then in smoke and shadows and strikes us with lethal force. From the past fifteen minutes, we are tackling it. Somehow I managed to escape to come here and inform you. I thought that I would take some serpents to help us with its attack, but now I am seeing that there are hardly any over here!"

The King of Serpent's eyes bulged. More than half his army was combing the forest above. He had heard of such a creature only in stories. "Is that a dragon?" he rasped.

As if this information wasn't enough, the chamber swayed again – this time so violently that it threw them on the bed of the lake.

The commander helped the King back on his feet. The King was shaky now. Everything was beyond reasoning. "Go and check what is happening up there," he asked the commander. Then he looked at the informer and said, "You go back to your waters. I will send more serpents there."

"Yes, my King," they both said and left.

---

Shang Kui had entered the sea and glided all his way up to the lake under water, after the night had fallen. The water was his domain. And currently he had a target - to kill the serpents who had waged war for greed. He had always hated people who would go to any length to harm or kill others for their own benefits, who would sneak on others and stab from shadows in collusion with those in power. They were dogs, sinners. They had no subconscious. They were demons reincarnated on earth. But they belonged to hell after death and he was going to send them there.

Long back, when he lived amongst the humans, some of them attacked his people mercilessly. All he wanted was to live peacefully. He came to know that those humans wanted to capture the wizards to use their power for their advantage. Under the garb of goodness, they carried out nefarious spy activities, and because they couldn't capture wizards for their advantage, they burnt them alive. One day when he couldn't take it anymore, he went to their secret house of meeting and branded them all with a dragon. "You have such black hearts." He had said and disappeared with his clan.

It was for this reason amongst others that he had taken his tribe to live peacefully so high up in the mountains where no one could ever approach them.

He swam in the lake and went closer to the army that was still waiting for the orders to attack. As soon as the night became darker, he attacked them.

The enemy was caught by surprise. They didn't know what was attacking them at first. It all happened too quickly. He was so gigantic with thick, pointy scales that it was impossible to get near him. He would lash his tail, throw balls of fire under the lake, and vanish from one place only to appear on the other, creating so much havoc that after a few minutes the serpents started to swim away from him. With one lash of his tail, he would seriously injure or rip apart at least twenty serpents. When they charged at him, he would send fire their way and disappear. Because of the fire, the water became heated up to the extent that it was boiling. Many serpents were unable to sustain the heat and their skins also boiled.

Karma was a bitch.

---

The commander slithered out of the lake to find his people. What he saw on the surface of the lake was frightful.