Chapter 452 — The Ancient Bronze Bell
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 3 of 4
Shen Mu could not help but marvel, and Long Qilin at once bolted away with him. Behind them, the immeasurably vast mountain giant turned its body and took a step; Shen Mu suddenly felt as though dark clouds were pressing down on his head, and looking up, he saw the giant's huge foot already above them.
Long Qilin's speed surged at once, rising and falling several times until it outstripped sound itself. That this fat fellow could accelerate so greatly startled even Shen Mu; he had no idea what miracle elixir Fatty Long had swallowed, but its speed far surpassed anything from before!
At this critical moment, Long Qilin had no time to scheme about how to wheedle better meals out of its keeper in the future; it thought only of fleeing for its life, and the speed was astonishing to behold.
Boom!
Behind them, the giant's great foot came down, stamping a lake into the earth, while the giant's other hand swung a great bronze bell down at them.
Long Qilin ran like mad; the bell struck behind them, but the bell's power was dreadful indeed, the sound waves entered the ground, traveling three to five times faster than through the air.
Behind them the ground burst apart with a crackling roar, a scene of utter horror, and a thunderous boom chased after Long Qilin and flung it into the air.
Long Qilin hastily conjured fire clouds beneath its feet and raced on upon them. Behind it, the mountain giant's other hand swung up the second great bronze bell, while the bell that had just smashed into the ground was lifted by the giant and clashed against the one falling from the air!
Clang.
The bell's note pealed long. Where the two bells met, the ripples of sound compressed the air into solid substance, and the vibrations traveled through that solid-seeming air even faster.
Shen Mu's blood ran cold. He turned quickly about, brought out the Taiyin Jade Eye in haste, and light blazed from the jade; a beam of light cut straight into the oncoming sound wave.
Hum.
The annihilating sound wave was split in two by the light from the jade, and the two dreadful surges swept past Long Qilin on either side; the terrible vibration numbed Shen Mu's scalp and chilled him to the bone.
Had that sound wave struck them, he, Xiong Qi'er, and Long Qilin alike would have been shaken into countless fragments and ceased to exist.
"The Western Lands do have deep reserves after all, though such reserves are not favorable to one's cultivation."
Shen Mu looked back. The mountain giant had been struck by the light of the Taiyin Jade Eye, and half its left shoulder had caved in. Long Qilin was drawing farther and farther from the giant, and with the giant's strength, it could no longer bring its sound waves to bear on them.
Just then, the mountain giant suddenly crouched. Shen Mu was shaken to the core at the sight, and then the giant abruptly broke into a run, at a speed simply inconceivable!
"My god... no, this mountain giant must be under someone's control. Otherwise it could never have fixed on me and Long Qilin and hunted us so madly!"
Shen Mu came to his senses. The Yu woman who had peeled off the sealing talisman was already dead by his hand, so she could not be the one controlling the giant. That person must be hidden nearby, and must be of exceedingly high cultivation, how else could anyone command a mountain giant of such immensity?
He had barely thought this when a streak of sword light flashed across the sky, and then a human head fell through the air, followed by several severed pieces of a corpse tumbling from the clouds: an old woman with silver hair and a hoary head, a walking stick still in her hand, and the stick too cut in two.
Shen Mu was briefly stunned. He looked again at the mountain giant and saw it suddenly freeze, no longer giving chase.
It must have been this white-haired old woman secretly controlling the giant to attack them; otherwise, why would the giant, the moment it was unsealed, have turned at once to strike Shen Mu down?
"Fatty Long, stop!"