Tang San smiled faintly. "Teacher Zhao, I've actually never been worried about that. Also, I never got around to apologizing to you. During that fight with you, you were holding back the entire time, and yet I..."
Zhao Wuji let out a bitter laugh and waved his hand dismissively at Tang San. "Come on, can we not bring up that embarrassing episode? I've already forgotten about it."
The two exchanged a glance, and a hint of amusement inevitably crept across both their faces.
At that moment, without warning, the smile vanished from Zhao Wuji's eyes in an instant. One hand shot out and seized Tang San's shoulder, yanking him close. An aura of bone-chilling intensity erupted from Zhao Wuji's body, and accompanied by a low roar, he directly summoned his Martial Soul. The Vigorous Vajra Bear fused with him in the blink of an eye.
"Everyone out of the tents — now!" Zhao Wuji's voice was a low thunder that rolled into the tents.
After days of training together, the students had developed a certain unspoken coordination. They burst out of the tents at full speed.
"Teacher Zhao, what's wrong?"
Zhao Wuji didn't answer his question. "Everyone, get behind me. If anything happens in a moment, don't worry about me — leave immediately. Get out of Star Dou Great Forest first. Mubai, while I'm not here, the responsibility of protecting everyone falls on you."
Whether it was Dai Mubai, Tang San, or any of the others, none of them understood what had just happened to make the ever-confident Zhao Wuji this tense. And at that very instant, they saw something eerie.
In the direction Zhao Wuji was staring, two towering trees slowly parted to either side, and an enormous figure stepped out from between them without making a single sound.
The moment they laid eyes on that colossus, everyone's breath seemed to stop. They finally understood what exactly Zhao Wuji had been afraid of.
It was an existence as massive as a mountain. Its body was covered in pitch-black fur that caught the faint starlight and moonlight with a subtle, shimmering gleam. Although it walked on all fours, the height of its shoulders easily exceeded seven meters. If it stood upright, it would likely surpass fifteen meters.
At first glance, it appeared to be a creature somewhere between an ape and a gorilla, entirely black save for a pair of lantern-sized eyes that glowed with a yellow-crystal brilliance. In the darkness of night, had it not been moving, one might not have even been able to make out its body.
This creature's frame was staggeringly massive — so massive it defied belief. Not only was it enormous in size, but every part of its body was covered in muscles even harder and more formidable than granite, bulging outward like small hills. Yet despite its colossal build, it moved through the forest without producing a single sound. Not even the whisper of its breathing could be heard.
The first to recognize it was Tang San. Relying on the knowledge the Great Master had drilled into him, he identified the creature's species almost instantly.
"It's the King of the Forest — the
Wherever the Titan Giant Ape appeared in any Soul Beast forest, it was an absolute overlord. No Soul Beast dared offend it, because the outcome was invariably death. Even a hundred-year Titan Giant Ape could hold its own against ten-thousand-year Soul Beasts of other species.
They possessed unmatched strength and speed, with virtually no weaknesses in offense or defense. Most terrifying of all, they could also unleash skills that resembled Soul Techniques.
No one knew what the Titan Giant Ape's true abilities were, because every human who had ever witnessed them was already dead.
Among ten-thousand-year Soul Beasts, strength could vary enormously — that was a matter of innate attributes. And the Titan Giant Ape was, among all Soul Beasts, unquestionably one of the few species standing at the very pinnacle of the pyramid. The terror it could unleash was the nightmare of virtually every Soul Master.