Chapter 656 - 470: The "Giant’s Sleep" Valley and the Mountain Giant
Chapter 656: Chapter 470: The "Giant’s Sleep" Valley and the Mountain Giant
The Ice Wind Demon Serpent’s enormous body slid silently into the valley.
The valley walls on both sides were thousands of meters high, piercing the clouds.
On the valley floor grew plants of a similarly immense size, the likes of which Raylo had never seen before.
Giant, canopy-like mushrooms, each over ten meters tall, emitted a faint blue glow.
Scattered across the ground were startlingly colossal bones.
Raylo saw a complete skeleton, resembling that of a Giant Dragon, half-buried in the earth.
Its exposed skull alone was larger than a small hill.
The entire valley was terrifyingly silent.
There were no birds chirping, no beasts roaring, not even the sound of wind.
Raylo guided the Ice Wind Demon Serpent, circling slowly above the valley as his gaze swept the floor below.
Soon, he saw it.
In the deepest part of the valley sat a figure.
No, it couldn’t be called a figure.
It was more like a mountain.
A small, rolling mountain range formed from countless rocks and earth.
It just sat there quietly, the majority of its body merged with the surrounding mountainside.
Its arms were crossed over its chest, its massive head bowed as if lost in an eternal slumber.
Its body was even covered in all sorts of plants.
Ancient trees so thick it would take several people to encircle them were rooted in its shoulders and back, lush and green.
If not for the Dogman Wizard’s warning, anyone flying past would have mistaken it for an oddly shaped mountain peak.
The Mountain Giant.
Raylo’s heart couldn’t help but beat faster.
Even from thousands of meters away, he could still feel it. Hidden within that massive, rocky body was a terrifying power, as heavy and vast as the earth itself.
The moment the Ice Wind Demon Serpent drew near...
...the "mountain peak," which had slept for untold ages, moved.
"RUMBLE..."
A dull, thunderous roar echoed from the depths of the valley.
The ground began to tremble violently.
The Mountain Giant’s bowed head slowly, slowly began to rise.
Countless rocks and clumps of earth cascaded from its body like a small landslide.
Two points of dim, crimson light, like molten lava, lit up on its indistinct, rock-hewn face.
Those were its eyes.
It had opened its eyes.
A pair of eyes filled with primal wilderness, ancient age, and the fury of being awakened from slumber.
Its gaze instantly locked onto the Ice Wind Demon Serpent hovering in mid-air.
Then, it stood up.
"BOOM!"
The entire Giant’s Sleep valley shook violently!
Its mountain-like body rose slowly, slowly from the ground.
Dust and broken stone poured from its body like a waterfall.
The moment it stood up completely...
...Raylo’s pupils contracted sharply.
The nearby mountain peaks, thousands of meters tall, now only reached this Mountain Giant’s shoulder!
It was as if a mobile mountain range now stood between heaven and earth.
Its very existence was the ultimate form of pressure.
Before this "King of the Mountains," the Ice Wind Demon Serpent’s thousand-meter-long body actually seemed slender.
Moonlight and the other little ones had long since stopped their roughhousing.
They huddled close to Raylo, their bodies tense, low growls rumbling in their throats.
This was a primal, instinctual reverence for a being of a higher tier.
Raylo’s Spiritual Power was tightly linked to the Ice Wind Demon Serpent beneath his feet, ready to respond to any possible attack.
Just as tensions reached a breaking point, Grand Elder Gu moved.
He walked to the head of the flying Demon Serpent and stood at its very front.
By simply standing there, he seemed to draw an invisible line between himself and the Mountain Giant.
A spiritual ripple—peaceful, ancient, yet as vast as the sea—slowly emanated from Gu, spreading out like invisible ripples toward the Mountain Giant below.
The Mountain Giant’s lava-like eyes flickered.
The violent aura around it, which had been on the verge of boiling over, receded slightly.
But it remained standing there, motionless, as if scrutinizing them, or perhaps warning them.
Raylo could neither see nor hear their exchange.
But he could feel two completely different wills clashing silently in the air.
"Leave..."
"My... territory..."
"Everything... is... mine..."
These fragmented, intermittent thoughts—filled with chaos and tyranny—reverberated through the valley like a roar.
Time seemed to stretch on in the silent standoff.
One minute.
Ten minutes.
Half an hour.
Finally, the vast spiritual ripple from Gu slowly receded.
He turned around and sighed softly.
"Elder?"
Raylo asked tentatively.
"It’s a stubborn rock."
Gu shook his head, a trace of helplessness in his voice.
"There’s no reasoning with it."
He walked back to Raylo’s side and explained.
"This big fellow is not an intelligent being like us Hill Giants."
"It is an elemental being. Formed from the Earth Element of this Black Stone Mountain Range, it coalesced over an unimaginably long period, eventually giving birth to a primitive self-awareness."
"In its cognition, there is no ’reason,’ no ’bargaining,’ only the simplest ’Law.’"