Chapter 1300 - Saving the Giants

Three experts attacked together as they charged at Liu Wuxie. They hadn't even seen how he had appeared.

Liu Wuxie ignored the three, reached out, seized the golden rune, and tore open another spatial rift before vanishing into it. Their strikes missed, and the three cultivators stared blankly at the mending rift.

"He disappeared?" they said, looking at one another, completely bewildered.

Liu Wuxie slipped out of another space with a faint smile tugging at his lips. He continued to communicate with space, searching through the spiritual runes for more golden runes. Another rune surfaced before long. He ripped through space and collected it in less than a minute.

Each time he collected a golden rune, he vanished without a trace. In less than a day, he had gathered about five or six golden runes. He still had three more days to harvest golden runes and begin crafting another profound talisman.

He shuttled through folded space, pausing whenever he encountered spatial fragments. As he refined more fragments, he grew increasingly proficient with the Great Spatial Mythical Art. Gradually, rumors spread throughout the ancestral talisman that a mysterious figure could roam within it at will, plundering runes without restraint. No one knew who he was. Some claimed he was Emperor Haoyuan's heir. Others insisted he was a phantom, not even human.

He instantly devoured all the spatial shards within a radius of thousands of meters, then tore space and entered another spatial dimension. The moment he emerged on the other side, a giant axe cleaved toward his skull. He couldn't dodge in time, so he countered with a punch. The loud collision knocked the giant axe backward, and he slid aside to avoid its edge.

Only then did he notice that several giants battled dwarves. Dwarves swarmed in from every direction, climbing the giants and chewing at their bodies. Liu Wuxie had appeared from the spatial rift at the center of the battlefield, and the falling axe had landed where he stood a breath earlier. One step slower, and it would have split him in two.

A giant glanced his way with apology and confusion flickering in his eyes, clearly startled by Liu Wuxie's sudden appearance. Since the Myriad Race Ceremony, this was Liu Wuxie's first encounter with dwarves. Giants and dwarves were mutual enemies. They did not interact; when they met, blood flowed.

The giants towered with colossal size. The dwarves stood at the opposite extreme. The tallest reached barely half a meter; the shortest, around thirty centimeters. They excelled at burrowing with terrifying speed, allowing them to slip through the giants' defenses with ease. Those who had climbed onto the giants' backs drew short spears and stabbed them into flesh. Hundreds clung to a single giant, raining blows in a frenzy. In the blink of an eye, their own blood drenched the giants, crimson sheets falling and dyeing the ground red.

It didn't take long for their backs to bristle with short spears, turning them into living porcupines as hoarse bellows tore from their throats. The dwarves also possessed razor-sharp claws that bit into tough skin; a hard yank could rip away a piece of flesh.

All three giants fared poorly beneath the swarming assault. As Liu Wuxie assessed the battlefield, he recognized one of them.

"It's him!" he murmured. This giant had saved him from the spatial storm when he was about to fall into a spatial abyss. A giant's arm could not reach its own back—its natural blind spot—so the dwarves targeted it relentlessly. At this rate, the giants would bleed out.

Liu Wuxie had little interaction with giants, unlike the elven race, where his acquaintance with Vandore gave him a natural affinity. Even so, the giants had helped him before, dragging him back from the spatial storm and saving him from Yi Shuifeng's attack, akin to saving his life. The giants also recognized Liu Wuxie; people still discussed how he used the Heaven-Severing Strike to escape. Several dwarves bared their teeth at him, warning him not to meddle.

Dwarves on the ground leveled their short spears at him. If he refused to leave, they would show no mercy.

"Get lost!" Liu Wuxie said, and he kicked the nearest dwarves, sending them tumbling away.

The dwarves were insidious and venomous, a dark race that lived underground and fed on insects. The oceanic clan was cruel by nature; the faceless clan was eerie; the ghost clan was cunning; and the rakshasa clan was vicious. Every race had its own trait.

The dwarves he had sent flying bared their teeth again and vanished as they tunneled underground, a unique ability of their race. Suddenly, short spears shot up from beneath the earth, an ambush from below. It was a vile tactic. If the spears struck, they would flay him even if they failed to kill him.

"You're courting death!" Liu Wuxie roared. Fury burned in his eyes. He hadn't intended to slaughter the dwarves; he bore them no feud. But they had ambushed him, and he would show no mercy.

He cast the Great Spatial Mythical Art to freeze the surrounding space and immobilize the hidden attackers. Then he executed the Dragon-Grasping Hand and seized them. A simple squeeze would reduce them to a puddle of blood.

The dwarves that posed a significant threat to the giants were like dolls in Liu Wuxie's hands, their lives at his mercy. But his action also enraged the dwarves clinging to the giants' backs. Dozens leaped down and streaked toward him like meteors. They fanned out to flank him on all sides, and for anyone else it would have been troublesome to handle so many at once. Meanwhile, other dwarves split up and burrowed underground, waiting for a chance to launch a sneak attack.

"Since you're all courting death, I'll naturally fulfill your wish!" Liu Wuxie said. He formed seals, and hundreds of dragon claws surged out to grasp the battlefield.

A dragon claw caught a dwarf the instant it burst from the ground. The claw tightened; the dwarf shattered, and blood sprayed across the sky. He stripped the laws from their bodies, and they flowed into him; he devoured them on contact. He hunted with purpose, consuming the laws in their bodies to help him reach the seventh level of the Origin Conversion Realm. The killing didn't slow. One after another, dwarves vanished. In the blink of an eye, he had killed over thirty with ease, leaving the three giants stunned.

The remaining dwarves sensed danger, leaped off the giants, and fled without daring to linger. The Dragon-Grasping Hand countered them too thoroughly; they were gone in an instant.

Gratitude shone in the giants' eyes. The one who had rescued Liu Wuxie earlier extended a massive hand for him to step on. Liu Wuxie hesitated only a moment before climbing onto the palm. The giant lifted him gently and set him on his shoulder so they could talk more easily. Dozens of meters tall, the giant made Liu Wuxie seem no larger than an ant.

From the shoulder, Liu Wuxie surveyed the field. The giant angled his head with a pleading look.

"Understood," Liu Wuxie said. He flickered out of sight, reappeared on the giant's back, and yanked out the short spears. Blood spurted with each pull, but the giants showed no pain and let it flow. Their robust constitutions would mend such wounds within minutes. When Liu Wuxie returned, the giant gently tapped a finger before him in gratitude.

"My name is A'Lei. What's yours?" the giant asked. His voice boomed like thunder—soft for him, yet strong enough that a true roar could shatter space.

"My name is Liu Wuxie!" he said. The other two giants were A'Li and A'Ya.

Liu Wuxie found himself liking the giants. Though they looked terrifying, they had pure hearts, free of the schemes that plagued human dealings. They lived in tribes under a chieftain.

"Where are you heading? We'll take you there," A'Lei said. He didn't know Liu Wuxie could travel through space, and wouldn't have offered if he had. Because of their size, giants ran swiftly; the ground trembled with every stride.

"Over there!" Liu Wuxie said, pointing left. He had sensed a rune in that direction, and no one lingered near it.

The giants weren't versed in spiritual runes and had come mainly for the experience. The same was true for the dwarves. Their true goal was the final trial, the Divine Sun-Shooting Tower.

A'Lei strode where Liu Wuxie pointed. Giants were straightforward; since he had saved their lives, they meant to repay him. Seated on A'Lei's shoulder, Liu Wuxie felt the wind roar past as the landscape streamed by. In less than fifteen minutes, a golden rune shone ahead. A'Lei walked straight to it and stood so Liu Wuxie could claim it.

Liu Wuxie reached out and collected the golden rune. He now had eight. He needed only three more to begin crafting a profound talisman.

"Liu Wuxie, how did you know that there was a rune here?" A'Lei asked, puzzled that he could sense it from so far away.

A'Ya and A'Li looked over, equally curious. A'Ya, the only female among them and slightly shorter, raised her head to regard him.

"Perception," Liu Wuxie said. He couldn't explain further. Ghost Eye perceived a world different from what others perceived, and he had refined so many spatial shards that he had formed a link with the ancestral talisman. Spiritual runes wove the internal space like a densely packed net, and he located golden runes through that web.

"Since that's the case, let's hurry up and find the next rune!" A'Lei said, fired up by the hunt rather than the details of perception.

Just like that, Liu Wuxie led the three giants on a sweeping search for the runes over the next few days.