In the end, Gui Mei forcibly suppressed the panic in his heart and spoke through gritted teeth.
"Are you mad? What if you wake it?" Yue Guan waved his hands repeatedly. His legs really were going a little weak.
"If we could wake it, it should have reacted to that claw strike of mine just now."
"For all we know, it's just a corpse, or a mountain shaped like a creature."
With that, Gui Mei gave Yue Guan a cold look and added:
"We have to find out how big this scale actually is. Otherwise, how are we supposed to report back to His Holiness the Pope?"
Without waiting for Yue Guan, Gui Mei channeled his soul power and shot off the ground as a black shadow, heading toward the top of the canyon.
Seeing this, Yue Guan could only grit his teeth and follow.
Like two insignificant flies, they flew upward along that enormous dark-gold wall.
One hundred meters.
Five hundred meters.
One thousand meters!
The higher they flew, the more frightened they became.
No matter how high they went, all they could see were those dark-gold patterns.
This scale actually extended straight up to the very top of the Star Dou Great Forest's surface!
It even stretched endlessly toward both ends of the horizon.
They stopped in midair and looked down by the moonlight.
Only at that moment did they finally understand a scalp-prickling truth.
The rolling mountain ranges and bottomless ravines of the Star Dou Great Forest were not natural landforms at all.
They had all formed over countless years, as endless soil, rocks, and vegetation accumulated layer upon layer over this scale!
The ground they had trodden for hundreds and thousands of years was nothing more than a little grime on this unknown creature's body!
"Run..."
After seeing it all clearly, Yue Guan's Adam's apple bobbed with difficulty as he forced a single word through his teeth.
"Run, now!"
"If this thing rolls over, the entire Star Dou Great Forest will turn to dust!"
The moment he finished speaking, Yue Guan burned his soul power, becoming a streak of golden light as he fled toward Spirit City for dear life.
Beside him, Gui Mei said nothing and immediately mustered every ounce of strength he had, turning into a cloud of black mist as he followed close behind.
And so, two dignified Level 95 Titled Douluos fled like homeless dogs, without even the courage to glance back.
Meanwhile, in Spirit City.
The Pope's Palace.
The magnificent hall blazed with light.
Wearing the Nine-Curved Purple Gold Crown and a brilliant golden papal robe, Bibi Dong reclined in her broad papal chair, resting with her eyes closed.
Several Red-Robed Archbishops stood on night duty along either side of the hall, not daring even to breathe loudly.
Bang!
Suddenly, someone roughly shoved open the doors of the Pope's Palace from outside.
Two disheveled figures stumbled in.
"Who dares trespass in the Pope's Palace!"
The Red-Robed Archbishops immediately released their Martial Souls and shouted.
But once they recognized the newcomers, they all froze.
"Elder Ju? Ghost Elder?"
Yue Guan and Gui Mei stood there with their hair disheveled, their formerly splendid robes covered in dirt and even torn in several places by branches.
Gui Mei in particular had lost the luster of his illusory black silhouette, and a trace of blood he had failed to wipe away still clung to the corner of his mouth.
Bibi Dong slowly opened her eyes, her brows drawing together slightly.
"Yue Guan, Gui Mei, I sent you to the Star Dou Great Forest to find immortal herbs, and this is how you return?"
Bibi Dong's voice was quiet, yet it thundered through the empty hall.
In an instant, an enormous pressure enveloped them both.
Normally, Yue Guan would already have dropped to his knees and begged for mercy.
Today, however, he seemed not to feel the pressure at all. He fell to his knees on the spot, then scrambled and crawled to the foot of the steps.
"Your Holiness! Something terrible has happened!"
An unmistakable sob threaded Yue Guan's voice, and his entire body shook violently.
Bibi Dong frowned slightly. She knew these two subordinates all too well.
As two of Spirit Hall's strongest fighters, anything that could frighten them so badly was certainly no ordinary matter.
"Why are you panicking? Speak clearly," Bibi Dong rebuked coldly.
"Your Holiness, beneath the Star Dou Great Forest, we discovered a m-monster!"
Yue Guan gestured with both hands, his words tumbling out incoherently.
"It wasn't a soul beast at all!"
"It was a living continent with no end in sight!"
At his words, a trace of displeasure flickered in Bibi Dong's eyes.
"A living continent? Yue Guan, did the Titan Giant Ape kick you in the head?"
"The largest soul beast recorded anywhere on the Douluo Continent is the Deep Sea Demonic Whale King in the ocean."
"And you're telling me a living continent is hiding in the Star Dou Great Forest?"
Gui Mei also knelt beside him, forcing himself to speak through the pain of his internal injuries.
"Your Holiness, Elder Ju isn't lying."
"We discovered a dark-gold wall. At first, we thought it was a top-grade mineral vein."
"But when I struck it with my eighth soul skill at full power, not only did I fail to leave a mark, a terrifying force rebounded and injured my very foundation on the spot."
At those words, Bibi Dong's pupils abruptly contracted.
She glanced at Gui Mei's unsteady aura, and her displeasure instantly turned to shock.
Gui Mei was a Level 95 agility-attack Titled Douluo!
Even she could not take his eighth soul skill without suffering a scratch.
What could stand there without moving and gravely injure Gui Mei through recoil alone?
"What exactly did you find?" Bibi Dong abruptly rose, an immense surge of soul power spilling out uncontrollably.
Yue Guan raised his head, a bleak smile covering his face.
"Your Holiness, we investigated. It wasn't a wall at all."
"Instead, it looked like a scale."
"A scale that reached up to the sky, plunged deep underground, and stretched endlessly to the left and right!"
"The entire Star Dou Great Forest..."
"No, perhaps even Spirit City beneath our feet was built upon its body!"
At those words, the entire Pope's Palace fell so silent that a falling pin could have been heard.
The Red-Robed Archbishops all gaped, as though they had heard some fantastic tale.
Even Bibi Dong stood frozen on the steps, the Pope's Scepter in her hand nearly slipping from her grasp.
A single scale supported the entire Star Dou Great Forest?
How was that possible!
She was the Rakshasa God's successor. She had come into contact with the power of the Divine Realm.
Even the gods on high could never possess such an absurdly enormous body!
The very existence of such a thing trampled all common sense!
"Are you two trying to fool me like a three-year-old?"
Bibi Dong drew a deep breath, and thick purple-black mist suddenly erupted from her body.
The evil aura of the Rakshasa Domain instantly filled the hall.
She absolutely refused to believe that such an absurd creature could exist in this world.
"Your Holiness! I, Yue Guan, swear upon my Martial Soul that not a word I just said was false!"
Frantic, Yue Guan kowtowed repeatedly, his forehead striking the marble floor with loud thuds.
"If you don't believe me, you can go and see for yourself!"
"That scale is exposed to the air right now! If that thing so much as rolls over, our Spirit City is finished!"
Watching Yue Guan on the verge of collapse, the anger in Bibi Dong's eyes gradually subsided.
She knew Yue Guan would not dare lie at a time like this.
And Gui Mei's injuries were undeniably real.
Could a terrifying soul beast beyond all reason truly be sleeping beneath the Douluo Continent?
"Good. Very good."
Bibi Dong laughed coldly, a trace of madness flashing in her eyes.
She was a woman of immense ambition.
Sooner or later, both the Heaven Dou Empire and the Star Luo Empire would be trampled beneath her feet.
Now, an unknown thing had suddenly appeared, attempting to threaten her dominion. She would never allow that.
Besides, with such an enormous soul beast, if she obtained its soul ring or soul bone...
Then even the gods in heaven would probably be no match for her.
"Hear my command!"
At that thought, Bibi Dong could no longer remain composed.
"Ring the assembly bell!"
"Notify the Worship Hall and ask the Second Worship, Golden Crocodile Douluo, to come forth!"
"Assemble five more Titled Douluos from the Elder Hall and have them accompany me to the Star Dou Great Forest tonight!"
"I will see for myself what thing dares play at gods and ghosts and run wild in my territory!"
Two hours later.
The first hint of fish-belly white had just appeared on the horizon.
Seven or eight terrifying auras suddenly appeared above the Star Dou Great Forest.
Leading them was Pope Bibi Dong.
Behind her, besides the injured Gui Mei and the still-shaken Yue Guan,
were Snake Lance Douluo, Porcupinefish Douluo, and Spirit Hall's Second Worship, the Level 98 Peak Douluo, Golden Crocodile Douluo!
This could be called Spirit Hall's strongest lineup apart from Qian Daoliu.
As seven Titled Douluos released their auras simultaneously, every soul beast in the forest cowered on the ground, not daring even to raise its head.
"It's just ahead."
After they had flown for a while, Yue Guan pointed toward the devastated valley ahead, his voice still trembling despite himself.
Everyone looked in the direction he indicated.
Soon, they all stopped in midair.
Golden Crocodile Douluo, who had been wearing a disdainful expression and thinking Yue Guan was making a mountain out of a molehill, suddenly opened his eyes wide.
He sucked in a cold breath, his graying beard disheveled in the wind.
"This... this is the scale you were talking about?"
Golden Crocodile Douluo swallowed, his voice carrying shock he could not conceal.
In the faint morning light, that dark-gold wall stretched silently between heaven and earth.
It neither moved nor gave off any pressure.
Yet its sheer physical bulk, so immense that it filled everyone's field of vision, was enough to evoke a suffocating sensation from the depths of their souls.
There was a perfectly natural curve, and an armored shell covered in the patterns of the Great Dao.
Bibi Dong stood at the forefront, her expression long since frozen.
Never mind anything else-even the Rakshasa Divine Power she took such pride in was trembling before this dark-gold scale whose boundaries she could not see.
She finally understood why Yue Guan had been frightened into such a wretched state.
Standing there, looking at the thing before them, never mind Titled Douluos-
even if true gods came, they would probably feel as insignificant as specks of dust.
The morning breeze swept through the Star Dou Great Forest.
Yet at that moment, the seven Titled Douluos from Spirit Hall hovering in midair felt none of its coolness. Instead, cold sweat poured from their bodies.
Bibi Dong stood at the forefront, her gaze filled with shock.
Just then, Golden Crocodile Douluo beside her could not help stepping forward.
As a Level 98 Peak Douluo, he had always been proud and arrogant. Within Spirit Hall, he held almost no one in any regard apart from the Great Enshrined, Qian Daoliu.
Looking at the endless dark-gold surface before him, he snorted coldly.
"Pope, Yue Guan and the others claim this thing is alive. That is utter nonsense."
"I have lived for over a hundred years. What mighty winds and towering waves have I not weathered?"
"Even against a legendary hundred-thousand-year soul beast, I could put up a fight!"
"How could any creature in this world grow to such an outrageous size?"
At Golden Crocodile Douluo's words, everyone turned to look at him.
Before you continue