Everyone immediately went on full alert. Every giant there had been tempered through countless battles, making each of them a born warrior. They roamed the mountains year-round and had long since adapted to jungle warfare.

"It's only a Ground Spotted Rat!"

The rustling in the distance had come from a Ground Spotted Rat darting through the forest, and it had only triggered a false alarm.

Just as Liu Wuxie was about to leap down from the tree, his eyes suddenly narrowed. The Giant Clan lacked a powerful divine sense, leaving them nearly blind at night. But Liu Wuxie could still capture everything within a radius of one thousand meters.

"Prepare for battle!" Liu Wuxie shouted, and the giants who had just sat back down sprang to their feet once more.

"Young Master Liu, what's going on?" A'Wu asked. The dense forest severely restricted their sight, and they could see only about 100 meters ahead.

"There's a pack of Scorpion-Tail Lions closing in on us," Liu Wuxie replied. Through Ghost Pupil, his vision pierced the vines and caught sight of thousands of Scorpion-Tail Lions lurking all around them.

"Young Master Liu, are you certain?" A'Wu asked, his expression turning grave. If they were truly surrounded by more than a thousand Scorpion-Tail Lions, breaking free would be difficult.

Liu Wuxie had considered keeping the giants inside the interspatial pouch to make traveling easier, but the giants were not cultivators. If they stayed inside for too long, they would suffocate. On top of that, the pouch could not hold that many of them for long, given their sheer size.

"What's going on? Why are the Scorpion-Tail Lions here when they live in the western mountain ranges?" A'Li asked in confusion.

Logically, this region belonged to the Giant Clan's territory, and ordinary astral beasts would never dare to invade it. It was no wonder everyone's expressions changed after hearing Liu Wuxie's warning.

"I suspect the Heavenly Howling Moon Wolves are behind this. They're trying to stop us from harvesting the Radiant Golden Bull Fruits," A'Lei said. But with time running out, they had no room to investigate any further.

Heavy thudding sounded from the distance as the Scorpion-Tail Lions closed in. These strange astral beasts had lion-like bodies, but instead of ordinary tails, they possessed scorpion tails. Those tails were highly lethal, capable of both stabbing prey and spraying venom.

If one of those poisonous tails struck a giant, the lightest outcome would be flesh corrosion. In more serious cases, it could easily prove fatal.

"Prepare to fight!" The Giant Clan had no choice now. They had to break through the encirclement.

If it had been daytime, the giants naturally would not have feared the Scorpion-Tail Lions. With their overwhelming strength, they could have easily opened a path. But night had already fallen, and the dense canopy overhead had long since blocked even the moonlight.

The darkness in the forest was so thick that one could barely see their own fingers. Even the campfire illuminated only a radius of fifty meters.

Pairs of green eyes began appearing in the darkness as the Scorpion-Tail Lions finally revealed themselves.

The Heretic Blade appeared in Liu Wuxie's hand. He had already decided to fight alongside the Giant Clan.

A'Lei's suspicion had not been unreasonable. The Scorpion-Tail Lions were most likely an ambush arranged by the Heavenly Howling Moon Wolves to intercept the giants. That way, the wolves would be able to enter the valley first and seize the Radiant Golden Bull Fruits.

The fruits had not fully ripened a few days earlier, or the giants would already have taken them. But now that several days had passed, the fruits had likely neared maturity, naturally drawing countless astral beasts.

This planet had two supreme overlords: the Giant Clan and the Heavenly Howling Moon Wolves. One ruled the east, the other ruled the west, and the enmity between the two ran deep.

The Scorpion-Tail Lions' tails began making sizzling sounds, and then twenty arrows tore through the air at once, each one locking onto a target. However, there were simply too many lions, more than a thousand of them, and twenty arrows could only kill twenty beasts.

Those thick arrows pierced straight through the Scorpion-Tail Lions and nailed them onto distant trees. But that only enraged the rest of the pack. They charged forward with savage roars, and the situation for the Giant Clan grew even more dangerous.

After all, close combat had never been the Giant Clan's greatest strength, just as it had not been when they had lost to the Dwarf Race in the past. In melee, the giants exposed many vulnerable spots, including their backs, armpits, and calves.

A'Wu suddenly struck. He threw a punch that unleashed an overwhelming force, and the resulting shockwave blasted toward a pouncing Scorpion-Tail Lion. The lion died on the spot, exploding into a cloud of blood mist.

The sight surprised Liu Wuxie. The Giant Clan's combat strength far exceeded his expectations.

A'Lei and A'Li quickly rushed forward. They were the only giants present capable of brief flight, since true essence had already formed within their bodies. Their punches also came much faster and hit much harder than A'Wu's. The two had grown tremendously after spending more than a year in the Heavenly Dao Society. In terms of cultivation, they were already comparable to the fourth- or fifth-level Heaven Gaze Realm.

Though their raw strength still could not match A'Wu's, none of the other giants present could compare to them.

The force blasted away the charging Scorpion-Tail Lions one after another. A'Lei and A'Li stood back-to-back, guarding one another's blind spots, and every time they threw a punch, another lion died.

Suddenly, the ground began to tremble. A second wave of Scorpion-Tail Lions had arrived, and this time their numbers were even greater than before.

"Everyone, fall back immediately!" A'Wu shouted. There were too many Scorpion-Tail Lions.

A particularly powerful Scorpion-Tail Lion leaped into the air and stabbed its tail toward A'Lei. If that tail struck A'Lei, it would poison him instantly.

"Slash!" Liu Wuxie did not hesitate. He sent the Heretic Blade flying, and it cut the Scorpion-Tail Lion down in midair.

He had left Nightmare City behind at the Liu Clan, while the Heavenly Dao Society still needed the Radiant Mirror for protection. That meant Liu Wuxie had come here alone.

If the two teams had been present, they would have been able to sweep across the battlefield with ease.

The Heretic Blade moved independently, hunting down Scorpion-Tail Lions on its own. In the blink of an eye, it slaughtered countless lions, and corpses soon littered the forest floor. By now, the blade had already become comparable to a Quasi-Immortal Artifact, and its destructive power and speed were both terrifying. It no longer needed Liu Wuxie to control it directly.

With Liu Wuxie's intervention, the tide of the battle slowly began to shift in the Giant Clan's favor. The ground grew crowded with Scorpion-Tail Lion corpses, and the air grew thick with a nauseating stench of blood.

The battle dragged on for an entire hour before the Scorpion-Tail Lions finally retreated. If Liu Wuxie had not been here, the Giant Clan would surely have suffered devastating losses. Even if they had managed to break free, the price would have been heavy.

"Young Master Liu, thank you for helping us," A'Wu said as he walked over. Blood covered him, and he gave Liu Wuxie a deep bow.

"Uncle Wu, there's no need to be so polite with me. Everyone must be exhausted. I'll keep watch tonight while you rest," Liu Wuxie replied.

All the giants were genuinely exhausted after the battle, and they collapsed on the ground to recover. If Liu Wuxie had not warned them, the ambush from the Scorpion-Tail Lions would have ended in disaster.

When dawn finally arrived, every giant awoke from sleep with dew covering their bodies. They resumed the journey at once, hoping to reach the valley by evening. Their pace quickened, and Liu Wuxie even rose into the sky to scout the way ahead, helping them avoid powerful astral beasts along the route.

The rest of the journey went smoothly, and by evening, a massive valley appeared before them. Strange trees filled the valley, and most of those trees bore fruit on their branches. These fruits were the Giant Clan's primary food source, known as Wild Luo Fruits.

The Radiant Golden Bull Fruits grew deeper inside the valley. Besides beast meat, the giants also consumed Wild Luo Fruits every day.

A'Lei plucked a Wild Luo Fruit the size of a washbasin and cracked it open, drinking the juice inside. The Wild Luo Fruit could both quench thirst and satisfy hunger. They could also dry its flesh into rations for the Giant Clan's children.

"The Radiant Golden Bull Fruits are inside," A'Wu said, pointing toward the depths of the valley.

A few days earlier, they had discovered the Radiant Golden Bull Fruits by chance while gathering Wild Luo Fruits.

"Let's go!" A'Lei said urgently, barely able to contain himself.

With the Radiant Golden Bull Fruits, Liu Wuxie would be able to break through to the ninth-level Heaven Gaze Realm, and their side's overall strength would rise dramatically.

"Hold on!" Liu Wuxie called out, and the giants stopped in their tracks and turned to look at him.

"Young Master Liu, did you discover something?" A'Wu asked.

"Look at the tracks on the ground!" The giants rarely paid attention to the earth beneath them because of their immense size. They usually stepped over ravines and obstacles without a second thought.

However, Liu Wuxie had noticed many strange footprints on the ground, and those tracks clearly did not belong to the Giant Clan.

"These are the Heavenly Howling Moon Wolves' tracks!" A'Wu crouched down and touched the footprints, his expression turning grave at once. He immediately sensed that something was wrong.

"Could it be that the Heavenly Howling Moon Wolves got here ahead of us?" A'Lei asked, crouching down as well. If the wolves had truly beaten them here, it would be disastrous for the Giant Clan.

The two races had fought each other for years, remaining evenly matched. If the Heavenly Howling Moon Wolves managed to use the Radiant Golden Bull Fruits to produce even more experts, they would surely attack the Giant Clan.

"No. We concealed the area around the Radiant Golden Bull Fruits. Ordinary beasts shouldn't be able to find them," A'Wu replied, shaking his head. Even if the Heavenly Howling Moon Wolves had come, they likely hadn't come for the fruits. There had to be another reason for their presence.

"What should we do now? Are we going to give up here?" one of the giants asked. They had already come too far to turn back. Even if a mountain of blades or a sea of fire lay ahead, they were determined to push through.

"Of course we're going in," Liu Wuxie said firmly.

Not many of the treasures available in the astral domains could help him break through to the ninth-level Heaven Gaze Realm unless he refined the core of a super planet.

But only demonic cultivators would ever destroy a planet and kill all its inhabitants for the sake of its core.

Liu Wuxie had already gained the blessing of the astral domain force. If he recklessly refined a planet's core, he would become the enemy of the entire astral domain. That meant the Radiant Golden Bull Fruits were something he had to obtain no matter what.

"Let's move out now and stay close together as we advance," A'Wu said, taking the lead and walking ahead of the group to guard against a possible ambush from the Heavenly Howling Moon Wolves.

Liu Wuxie rose into the sky and spread out his divine sense to scan the entire valley. But strangely, he found no trace of the Heavenly Howling Moon Wolves, making him wonder where they had gone.

He knew they had to be hiding somewhere that could block both his divine sense and Ghost Pupil.

With extreme caution, the group advanced through the woods, their steps producing a steady rustle as they moved deeper into the valley.