Lily hunched slightly as she looked toward the corridor they had come from. Her pair of pointed dog ears stood erect atop her head, constantly swiveling warily in every direction. She had been warning them for several seconds already. Although the enemy had yet to appear, she still let out the low growl of a beast issuing a threat. "Grr—"
"Stay alert!" Hao Ren had already drawn his spear, searching desperately for any blind spot from which the enemy might attack. Then his gaze suddenly fell upon the ancient stone statues serving as "decorations."
A suspicion abruptly surfaced: The entire city had already crumbled under the erosion of wind, sand, and time, so why were nearly all these statues still intact? Not a single statue outside the temple, where they had endured the harshest wind and sun, had fallen!
Almost the instant that suspicion became an alarm, he suddenly heard a rush of wind directly overhead. Already prepared, he immediately dodged to the side while swinging his spear horizontally toward the source of the sound!
A tingling tremor traveled through his hands. The sound of stone cracking under intense heat and tremendous impact came from behind him a moment later. After landing, Hao Ren twisted around and saw a gigantic statue with a lion's head and a human body stepping down from a wall niche!
"These statues are alive!" the little demon girl sitting on Izax's shoulder shrieked. She then swung a green ball of fel fire the size of a wagon wheel at the statue. "The statues in the outer passage are all alive too!"
The clattering sound of stone flakes falling came from all directions. One after another, the bizarre guardian statues made up of human and animal forms along the corridor "came back to life." Dust that