The ground trembled.
It was no ordinary vibration—a dull, rhythmic impact rising from deep within the earth's crust, like a heart beating beneath the ground.
Just as Yue Guan finished speaking and the glow of the Heaven-Piercing Chrysanthemum in his hand was climbing toward its third tier, he suddenly turned his head.
Gui Mei felt it too, his pupils abruptly contracting.
The tremors beneath their feet grew denser, the intervals shorter.
Something was approaching.
The entire forest began to shake. It was not the wind—something was charging through the woods in the most primitive way possible, neither detouring nor slowing down, crushing everything in its path.
Within ten seconds, a gap burst open in the southeastern tree line.
It had not been broken through. It had vanished.
Three ancient trees thick enough for several people to link arms around snapped at their roots. Their crowns were flung skyward, spinning twice before crashing into a distant hillside and kicking up a shower of rocks and dirt.
A figure stepped out through the gap.
Each stride spanned seven or eight meters. The instant its foot landed, it drove a bowl-sized pit into the ground. Cracks radiated from the bottom, and shattered stones bounced half a foot into the air.
Titan Giant Ape.
Er Ming.
He stood over eight meters tall, his entire body covered in deep black fur that gleamed with a dark bronze sheen beneath the dusk light. His arms hung below his knees, each fist larger than Iron Wall's head. Muscles rose beneath his fur in ridges, like iron plates welded onto bone.
A Hundred-Thousand-Year Soul Beast. The absolute pinnacle of strength-type beasts.
He landed directly between the two sides.
The formation of twenty red-robed Soul Sages automatically retreated three steps the instant he landed. No one gave the order;