Chapter Forty-Eight: The Ancient Battlefield

The rock giant stood over ten meters tall, its imposing presence overwhelming even from a distance. Yet Yang Fan had no choice but to step forward. His words bewildered the giant, leaving it momentarily confused.

A million years ago? One in a billion? Catastrophe?

“Are you truly the Mountain God?” The rock giant was perplexed.

In that brief moment of distraction, Yang Fan had already closed the gap.

“Intimidation!”

He leapt, unleashing his divine power. The rock giant quaked, trembling all over, seized by a sense of insignificance and terror, as though facing a deity.

“Stone Splitter!”

The dragon-scale blade descended, splitting half its forehead in a single stroke.

At the same time, Yang Fan spun and landed on the giant’s shoulder, his power surging once more.

“Intimidation!”

“Stone Splitter!”

He unleashed his strength without restraint. Each slash was ferocious, the blade slicing through the air with a mournful whine. The dragon-scale knife, peerlessly strong, combined with the “Stone Splitter” technique—an ability specialized against stone—made him nearly invincible.

No matter how formidable the giant’s strength or defenses, its massive head was hacked down to the neck. Its skull split in two from ear to neck, revealing stone veins within—no brain matter, no blood. A strange form of life indeed.

“Is it dead?” Yang Fan sensed with the earth, discovering the giant’s spiritual light had vanished. He leapt onto a nearby stone pillar, panting, sweat breaking out on his brow. The consecutive bursts of power had drained him.

But in the next moment, Yang Fan was stunned.

The rock giant, its head split open, said nothing. It turned tail and ran, stopping only before the enormous corpse at the palace front.

Streams of spiritual light surged from within its body, swiftly healing the divided head. Soon, the rock giant was as good as new.

“Are you human or ghost?” it demanded, voice trembling as it stared at Yang Fan. Its massive body shook, eyes wide with fear.

Yang Fan gaped, then narrowed his eyes and snorted coldly. “I told you—I am a god! For you mountain monsters and stone spirits, your life source is usually in the heart, yes? Consider this a warning. If you offend me again, I’ll scatter your soul to the winds.”

The rock giant shuddered, then stared wide-eyed and protested, “How could you be a god? You’re a human, just like the others above—no, you can’t fool me!”

“God or human, it matters not. I can kill you utterly,” Yang Fan replied, his voice icy. “Before me, you have no chance to resist.”

“You’re just a human, truly a human—the legendary creature of flesh and blood, a worm—no, a person. But why, when I face you, do I feel as if I stand before a real deity? Whenever I come near, my heart quakes and I want to kneel and worship. When you strike, I see a towering god before me, leaving nothing but fear inside.” The giant was confused, waving hands as large as cartwheels. “Can we just stop fighting?”

He spoke cautiously.

“I didn’t want to fight—it was you who kept attacking!” Yang Fan’s gaze was cold, though inwardly he breathed a sigh of relief. He had discovered the giant’s weakness, but killing it seemed a daunting task. A truce was the best outcome.

“I’ve been sleeping here all along, but there’s always noise above, driving me mad. I hammered at it many times, finally cracking the surface. That’s when I got angry,” the rock giant explained, scratching its head as it turned and ran to a corner of the collapsed palace. There, among fallen walls and growing plants, it carefully picked a fruit the size of a fist.

Cradling it in its hands, it hurried back, eyes still filled with fear, the terror lingering, yet now showing a fawning expression.

“This fruit is delicious—would you like to try it?” It knelt on one knee, offering the fruit to Yang Fan.

At this moment, Yang Fan was tense, his earth sense pushed to the limit, ready to strike at any sign of trouble. Yet the giant’s attitude left him feeling oddly out of place. He looked at the tiny fruit in the massive palm.

He took it and remarked mildly, “Your change of attitude is rather abrupt.”

“Father said, if you can’t win, run; if you can’t outrun, submit!” The rock giant was very honest.

“Your father?” Yang Fan pointed to the huge corpse.

“Yes.” The giant looked saddened. “He died not long after I was born, leaving me all alone here. Father said, unless I grow as tall as his chest, I must never go outside. So I just kept sleeping and sleeping. Lately, I’ve been disturbed, sensing many worms—no, people—digging for stone. Very strange.”

“If you never went out, how do you know the human language so well?” Yang Fan asked.

“Father taught me. Before he died, he passed everything to me, so I naturally learned it. Oh, I’m called Stone Strong—that’s the name Father gave me. He said we come from the earth, take stone as our surname, and I must always be strong, so he gave me that name!”

Yang Fan was perplexed. “Passed down? How? By heart? By spirit? Or some similar ability? It must be something like that.” But only one rock giant—could it reproduce? Were there male and female? Did they have… the necessary parts? Could they mate?

A thousand thoughts flashed through Yang Fan’s mind. Yet he realized something else: as their conversation continued, Stone Strong seemed to have lost all hostility toward him, even displaying a kind of pet-like dependency. Odd.

“Tell me about this place,” Yang Fan kept his guard up, but examined the fruit in his hand.

[Red Heart Grass Fruit]: A barely qualifying spiritual fruit, juicy and sweet-sour, filling and thirst-quenching. The seed is mildly toxic; in large quantities, it can be refined into grass fruit poison, a single coin’s worth enough to kill a hundred people. Contains 0.1 units of vital energy.

Yang Fan didn’t use his “Qi Absorption” technique, but took a bite. Hungry and thirsty, he found it most valuable to eat. Sure enough, it was crisp, fragrant, and bursting with juice.

“This place,” Stone Strong scratched his head, “Father told me that long ago, a great war broke out here. The mountain was shattered, the land sunk, countless powerful beings died. Oh, inside the palace, there are many corpses. There’s a bald one, its bones bronze-colored. Another has horns on its head—probably the legendary demon. There’s a skin I can’t identify; it sometimes twitches, quite terrifying. Oh, and in one room, I saw a shadow—yes, a shadow—trying to escape but trapped inside.”

Yang Fan shuddered. The bald one must be a monk—he recalled the ruined temple in Ghost Marsh. But why were the bones bronze? Horned demon—wasn’t there one suppressed beneath that temple? And the twitching skin and shadow—what could they be?

He glanced toward the palace, suddenly feeling watched, his hair standing on end, an ominous premonition rising.

“Are you not afraid?”

“With Father nearby, what is there to fear?”