The dry season's blazing sun hung high over the Samei Rainforest, and all things fell silent in the scorching heat.
Black Typhon crawled close to the ground. Finding a waterway was no easy task; along the way, Famu had found nothing but dry riverbeds and dead fish scattered across the ground.
Famu couldn't understand what that giant crocodile had done.
The giant crocodile had no reason to attack another formidable predator.
When Famu saw the creature, for instance, he certainly wouldn't have attacked, instead taking an indifferent attitude. Even if the other was a Furnace-Core Creature, a fight between Furnace-Core Creatures was just as dangerous.
Unless Famu was confident he could take down the giant crocodile, he wouldn't have chosen to make a move.
Unless the attack was rooted in the species' social nature.
Typhons had communities and a complete social structure.
Perhaps that crocodile had a similar structure. Had he attacked Famu not for survival in the natural world, but as an act of war?
Famu really didn't want to use that word.
It was a little frightening.
That was a word humans used.
In the history books Famu had read, the humans of the old era had crammed their own kind and outsiders alike into meat grinders called nations or faiths, spilling their last drops of blood for territory and power.
And now, here in this primeval, untamed rainforest, if war was involved, then the killing began to take on a strange tinge.
Typhons had communities, a complex Mud Language, and a hierarchy.
If a race of equal standing stood behind that giant crocodile, then the arrival of a monster with volcanic bony protrusions all over his back in this river bend that should have belonged to the Typhons was probably no coincidence.
That was called an invasion of their homeland.
Deep in the Green Marsh, the stagnant water lay smooth and undisturbed.
A female Typhon nearing adulthood lay lazily coiled on a raised, damp rock, exposing her scales completely to the scorching sunlight.
This was how a Typhon ought to be.
A single hearty meal of giant beast was enough to send them into a deep sleep in a shady mud pool for two or three months.
Xing Rui gracefully stretched out her slender body. Sunlight fell on her emerald-green scales, refracting into a faint, rippling shimmer. In this deathly silent pool of stagnant water, she looked like an ancient idol carved from jade.
Just then, a rumble came from the water.
Xing Rui's Furnace Core began to vibrate.
Ah—
It was a familiar vibration.
It was Famu.
Hmm? Xing Rui suddenly realized that Famu was only a ten-year-old boy. He couldn't possibly have such a powerful Furnace Core resonance.
She raised her head and looked over. The dark silhouette crawling out at the edge of the Green Marsh filled her with a trace of unfamiliar fear.
It was indeed Famu, the Black Typhon who lived in the barren lands.
They had been apart for only half a dry season, yet he had already grown to rival her in size. His build was thick and sturdy, nothing like the bamboo-pole physique of an ordinary male Typhon. But even more than his overly robust trunk, it was Famu's head that made her scalp tingle.
It was a ferocious bony face, with pale white eyes set beneath it and sharp teeth interlocking like those of a demon in a temple mural.
"Grandmother Zonna above..."
Famu surfaced as well.
Xing Rui wondered what had happened to Famu.
But soon, she found out.
"Grandmother Zonna above, you encountered a Dead Sun Armor?" Xing Rui exclaimed once again.
From Xing Rui, Famu learned the name of an entirely new race.
Dead Sun Armor.
A legendary nightmare passed down in the ancient memories of the Samei Rainforest, they were born rulers of river bends and floodplains, a terrifying species among the few large and vicious enough to prey on Typhons.
Adult female Typhons could usually reach seventeen meters in length and weigh more than five tons, making them the undisputed land-backed giants of this continent, while adult male Dead Sun Armor could also grow beyond eight meters.
They were ancient giant crocodiles clad in heavy, pitch-black armor.
Yet the terror of the Dead Sun Armor had never lain in their size.
The key was the bony protrusions on their backs.
When they reached adulthood, their hide armor developed a dark, obsidian-black color. Their skulls were long and broad, and a hard, bony ridge rose high along their spines. Newborn young had deathly gray heads, with rows of ghastly pale markings dotting their black flesh. As they reached sexual maturity, the hide armor, in which sulfides and minerals had accumulated, would jut up into rows of volcanic bony protrusions.
Those protrusions were not only hard armor against heavy blows, but also miniature vents where the flesh-and-blood reactors within their bodies stored geothermal energy from the earth's veins.
At critical moments during a hunt or a fight, these protrusions could instantly spew astonishingly hot steam and searing flames. In the water, these violent jets could not only scald enemies but also generate terrifying underwater propulsion, allowing these giant beasts, as cumbersome as heavy tanks, to burst into a cruising speed like a falcon's beneath the water.
"Dead Sun Armor shouldn't be here." Xing Rui's eyes were full of apprehension. "Their nests are in the northern rainforest. We swore an oath, taking the Samei River as the boundary. How did these lunatics end up at the Mara River?"
In the Mud Language passed down from generation to generation by Typhon priests, the Dead Sun Armor originated in a forbidden legend.
Born of an ugly, festering thing that plunged into fire and became a dead sun.
They were born warmongers and worshippers of blood sacrifice. Unsatisfied with simply filling their bellies, they longed to drive the living members of other races to fissures beside hot springs and perform bloody sacrifices through the most brutal methods of bloodletting, demanding more heat energy from the earth's veins in return.
Thus, the Furnace Core of this species was called "Day of Death."
Xing Rui pondered.
"The Typhon in those waters was killed by Ra. Her name was Eileen. She was a thirty-year-old female Typhon with the Child of the Earth Furnace Core, a seasoned and powerful warrior who guarded those waters for nearly ten years. I think it was because Eileen died that this Dead Sun Armor took advantage of the opening."
"Ra?" Famu remembered those giant birds.
Those giant birds are called 'Ra'?
Ra, the sun god of Egyptian mythology; Typhon, the father of monsters in Greek mythology. These were names of gods Famu knew well. One was a coincidence, but two were another matter.
What connection was there between them?
"It's good that you didn't see those creatures. Remember, 'Ra' is the name of that flock of birds. They're extremely dangerous. They were the ones who killed Eileen." Xing Rui was still shaken.
Crocodile-shaped Dead Sun Armor, serpent-shaped Typhons, eagle-shaped Ra—what kind of monster house was this rainforest?
This was practically a war for supremacy between Super Species.
Famu asked another question.
"Besides those things, are there any other races as powerful as we are?"
"Yes, but I'm not too sure either," Xing Rui said.
There really are?
Now it was Famu's turn to be surprised. Aside from the three great races, was there a fourth Super Species?
"Sifu has told me since I was little to beware of the Emerald Skirt. They're even more dangerous than Ra and the Dead Sun Armor. To us Typhons, the Emerald Skirt are deadlier, because the Dead Sun Armor are essentially a species evenly matched with Typhons, and Ra are even weaker than us individually, but the Emerald Skirt chant spells that kill Typhons," Xing Rui said.
"Spells?" Famu was taken aback.
"Sifu told me about them. I don't know what they are either."
"Then what do the Emerald Skirt look like?"
"I've never seen them either. I've never seen the Emerald Skirt in all my life, and neither has my mother," Xing Rui answered truthfully. "But Sifu showed me a mural and told me that the Emerald Skirt are the hem of the goddess of the lake's skirt. You can't see them at all in the water. You'll only mistake them for spreading ripples."
"Come to think of it, you saw a Dead Sun Armor? Where?" Xing Rui grew somewhat serious.
"At the Mara River," Famu said. "In the waters near White Forest Bay."
"Then why are you asking me about this? The Mara River belongs to my mother. To offend the Mara River is to offend the majesty of a Muerjia. As for this Dead Sun Armor, Muerjia will make him regret coming here. You shouldn't interfere in this matter," Xing Rui warned sternly.
She knew very well the price of offending a Muerjia.
"I was just asking," Famu said.
The green Typhon slowly lowered her body, half-submerging her enormous emerald head beneath the murky green water until only a pair of cold, vertical pupils remained visible. She was showing him the door.
"This dry season has been unnaturally long, and the skies are growing less and less peaceful. Take my advice: go back to your blackwater ditch, tuck your head into the deepest crack in the mud, and hibernate. Open your eyes again when the rain pours down and the floodwaters once more sweep over the forest."