With a wave of his hand, Li Shen undid the chains to reveal the club.
Eyes shining with curiosity, he knelt down to get a closer look. Immediately, he saw the runes carved on it and his eyes couldn’t help but widen.
“These are spatial runes. This isn’t just a simple club, this is a treasure!”
This was probably the reason why the space around I Shen seemed to solidify when the stone giant attacked him.
“However, who would carve spatial runes in a stone club? That was like embedding diamonds in dregs.”
But as Li Shen said that, he realize the stone club wasn’t so simple either. If he wasn’t mistaken, this stone club was similar to the material this stone giant was made from.
It was strange.
Li Shen couldn’t sense any life force from it like a living being, and the stone it was made from was stone but at the same time different.
Li Shen turned his gaze from the club to the stone giant next to him.
“How strange, what exactly are you?”
As Li Shen spoke he saw the stone giant turn its featureless face towards him.
“Huh?”
Li Shen was taken aback.
For some reason, that movement from the stone giant gave him a sense that it was listening to him.
Frowning at this feeling, Li Shen watched the stone giant for a brief moment, but sensing nothing, he turned back to the club.
He reached towards it wanting to get a feel of it, but all of a sudden a piercing screech penetrated Li Shen’s ears causing his head to buzz.
“What the fuck?!”
Li Shen was so frightened by the sudden deafening sound that he jumped a bit as he turn to the stone giant.
He saw that it was raising its head to the sky and was releasing that sound despite its lack of a mouth.
The sound was extremely loud and annoying.
“Hey, what the hell is wrong with you? Shout the hell up!”
The earth chains around the stone giant tighten in an effort to stop it, but even as the chains left cracks on its body the sound it made only got louder and louder.
“Fuck, what is this thing doing?”
Li Shen had his hands up to his ears as he cursed this thing. But as the sound got louder and even caused ripples of sound waves to be sent out, Li Shen finally realized something.
“Bastard!”
Li Shen quickly formed a wind Sword Qi in his hand and after a flash, the stone giant was beheaded causing the sound to abruptly stop.
Immediately after its head was cut off its body turned to rubble and crash to the ground.
Watching this happen, Li Shen felt a bit disappointed in his heart. This thing was extremely strange so he wanted to study it a bit more.
However, its screams might give him that, and then some.
Not a moment later, just as Li Shen thought, the ground suddenly began to shake fiercely.
“This isn’t good.”
Li Shen leaped onto one of the many broken buildings to look into the distance, and his face immediate went pale at what he saw.
“This is really not good! God damn it, what the hell is that?!!”
With wide eyes, Li Shen watched as a massive stone giant approached from over the horizon.
Its enormity couldn’t even be described as a giant, it’s upper body was hiding within clouds as a testament to how high this fucking thing was.
But that wasn’t all, Li Shen suddenly looked in another direction and saw that another massive stone giant was approaching this direction. No, there was another one coming from a third location!
Three of these massive stone giants were now on a path towards this destroyed city. This caused Li Shen’s scalp to go numb and his heart to let out loud thuds in his ears.
“Just what the hell is this place?! Why is there something so massive in here, not to mention three of them?!!”
The building Li Shen was standing on couldn’t handle the shaking of the stone giants' steps and crumbled.
Li Shen quickly leaped from the building and landed on the ground.
Li She was freaking out and he searched his robes for the jade slip his father had given him. But as he laterally ripped his already ragged golden robes apart he found nothing.
His face fell at that, but he suddenly remembered that he had it in his hand when that stone giant attacked him.
Li Shen hadn’t retracted his Divine Will and he used it to search around the area. Soon, he found the jade slip, but hopelessness immediately washed over him.
He quickly dashed towards where he saw the jade slip and only its broken pieces greeted him.
Li Shen tried to put the pieces back together to see if it would work but even as he assemble them with his Divine Will, the jade slip was unresponsive. It was completely broken.
As the consequence of this sunk in, Li Shen began to have cold chills go down his spine in waves. Regret for entering this place immediately washed over him, but he was cursing his father as well for giving him this jade slip.
The ground continue to shake harder and harder as the giants came closer to this place.
Now that he couldn’t leave, Li Shen decided to leave this place. He didn’t want to be anywhere near here when those things came.
He sent out his Divine Will to its limit of one thousand meters to understand the structure of this place. Seeing that it had four gates a city would normally have, confirmed to Li Shen this was once a city.
Picking the only direction a stone giant wasn’t approaching from he headed for the West Gate.
However, as a frightened Li Shen was about to run for his life, his steps paused. He then turned around and dash to the rubble of the stone giant.
Li Shen’s face was dark as he look at the remains of the stone giant.
“You fucking bastard! It was you wasn’t it?! You were the one who called these monsters here. Are you part of some tribe or something? If that’s it that means this place is filled with monsters like you.”
Li Shen gritted his teeth and unceremoniously desecrated the stone giants' rubbles to find the club.
After pulling it out, Li Shen stared at it for a moment and realize this wasn’t going to fit inside his storage ring. It was already filled with a bunch of stuff like Spirit Stones, the Divine Fire Spirit Stones, medicinal pills, and a bunch of things he was greedily hoarding.
He didn’t want to get rid of those things as he didn’t know how long he was going to be trapped in here.
Thinking for way longer than he should in this situation, he decided to heft the massive object on his back.
He thought it would be a struggle to escape with this thing that weight no less than half a tonne, but as his hand wrapped around it to lift it, the runes on it suddenly lit up with a yellow glow.
Li Shen then watched in amazement as the club shrunk to a two-meter size.
“This thing can adjust to its user? What a rune technique, this isn’t different from the runes outside but these looked more refined.”
Once again the thought of what this place is appeared in Li Shen’s mind, but the only thing he could go from was when those Elders told him it was created by their clan’s Founding Patriarch.
The shaking intensify and Li Shen snapped out of his thoughts before he place the stone club in his storage ring and dash towards the West Gate.
Li Shen’s figure blurred in and out of existence as he cross several dozen meters at a time.
In no time he left the destroyed city and rushed west.
But as he left the city, he realize he was in a desert.
Even over the horizon, he could only see sand.
“I’m too slow on foot, and I can’t bother in this heat.”
After saying that, Li Shen took out one of the three mid-grade Spirit Artifact boats he had.
Hopping onto the twenty-meter boat, he came to the control pillar and flipped over his palm to take out a high-grade Spirit Stone.
The runes on the boat light up brilliantly as they took energy from the high-grade Spirit Stone. It rose from the ground and shot across the desert, leaving a trail in the sand before eventually rising further into the air.
--
After several minutes, Li Shen looked back in the direction of the city.
The three-stone giants were standing there.
He was thousands of miles away from them but their angry screams reach him very clearly.
Now he was wondering if he had somehow painted a target on his back by killing that stone giant. It seemed to be a younger version of these ones.
He speculated they might be a species that inhabit this place and was very protective of their kin.
When escaping, he was initially scared those stone giants would target him, but he went unnoticed by them for some reason.
With all the Qi fluctuation from the Spirit artifact, even though Li Shen kept it to a minimum, he was sure they would detect it. But after thinking about it, he realized they might not be attune with Spiritual Qi.
The stone giant he fought before didn’t have any Qi fluctuations.
Looking away from the city, Li Shen looked around but only more sand was in sight.
Slowing down the boat and putting it on an automatic flight, he dropped into a cross-legged position.
“Alright, let’s think about this. I’m now trapped in this place with no communication with the outside world. I don’t know what this place is or its ecosystem, but going from those stone giants I have to assume it’s more than dangerous.
“First, I need to find a way out.”
Flipping over his palm, he took out the broken jade slip.
“But if I can’t, maybe dad or someone will notice my absence and come looking for me.”
Li Shen place the jade slip in front of him before putting a hand under his chin as he thought some more.
****
Hey guys! I’m participating in a WPC with my novel “No Escaping The Undead” so be sure to check it out and support it with some spirit stones. FOUR chaps are already out so hurry to see my next book!!