Chapter 455: Skyshielding Monstrous Ape

Just as Shi Mu raised his head with his eyes on the golden-armored behemoth ape, the ape lowered its gaze gradually and met his eyes, too.

Due to the size of its head—which was probably a few hundred yards large—its eyes were about a hundred odd yards large too, with golden lights streaming down from its pupils as they glistened under its own brilliance. As Shi Mu's eyes watched the behemoth ape's, he felt less like meeting a pair of golden eyes but a big stretch of golden sea expanding into an unseen edge.

Before he could think of anything, he felt an immense pressure befalling him from above. His mind drew blank, and he didn't even feel fear—he just felt fatigue, a sort of indescribable tiredness; If the ape wanted to crush him right there and then, nothing he could come up with would even matter...

Shi Mu's heart skipped a beat. He tried to move his body, but he found himself inexplicably frozen; He wanted to say something, but his mouth refused to budge.

At the very next second, the same pressure suddenly ceased—as if it had never happened.

Shi Mu could feel his chest relax at the opening. He was just about to observe more of the behemoth before him when the head in the middle suddenly spoke.

"You shouldn't be here yet. You shouldn't even be here now."

The tone was calm, but its volume was akin to an explosion of thunder to Shi Mu's ears. His head was spinning and ringing just by listening to that booming sound, causing his blood to pump even harder as the voice echoed in his ears several times after the behemoth ape had spoken.

Then, the golden-armored behemoth ape suddenly raised its arm and extended a large, sky-obscuring shadow of a hand towards him. The hand came down in an even speed, but before Shi Mu could move, golden sparks escaped from the middle of its palm and stretched towards Shi Mu, wrapping and entangling him like pythons on a victim.

As the hand retracted, Shi Mu was brought back up into the large hand by that surge of golden lights.

Shi Mu did not feel much discomfort as he basked in this golden light. But before he could fully acclimate himself with this, though, he saw that the arm moved again—and his vision blurred.

His body suddenly felt light. He was flying backwards in an incredible speed; Or rather, everything around him was flying backwards in a different direction than his in an incredible speed!

The sounds of wars were fading exponentially, and Shi Mu finally managed to see the full image of the golden-armored behemoth ape: it was hovering in midair with its three heads and six arms, like a sort of domineering god watching over the world.

Then, suddenly, the ape became smaller and smaller in Shi Mu's eyes—and then the dirt-yellow-colored planet shrank in the same dizzying speed until it turned into a single speck of dim starlight lost in a fabric of shimmering galaxies.

For some reason, Shi Mu's heart grew cold of panic. He screamed.

And his eyes bolted open as he sat up.

Shi Mu panted and gasped, scanning his surrounding frightfully, but there were no stars, spaceships nor even any kind of apes in sight. Instead, he found himself in an old, antiquated cave that seemed to have been desolated for a long time.

"Phew, that was just a dream!" He exhaled a breath of relief, shaking his head out of its feverish state. He bulged his body a little and realized that his bottom was cushioned—he was sitting on a round putuan*.

[It's a sitting cushion of sort. Though it's not always so soft and fluffy and cushion-y, Shi Mu's was pretty soft and fluffy and cushion-y.]

His eyes ran all over the surrounding. He realized that he was being surrounded by some simple furniture fashioned from basalt, including a table and a chair. The design was simple and quite unrefined.

Though the ground was quite dusty, the furniture was spotless and clean.

Shi Mu almost had to turn a complete round to notice that there was a stone chair behind him, where an ancient-looking white ape clad in a green robe sat. Its back was bent, its one hand gripping onto a marble pot, and its other hand holding onto a cup made from white stone. It seemed to be enjoying some wine.

"It's been a while since anyone visits, but who knew it'd be a human fledgling?" The ancient white ape turned to Shi Mu the instance the latter had woken up, watching him placidly while speaking on a flat tone.

With that, it poured itself another cup before it finished it.

Shi Mu was quite unsettled by this. Thoughts were racing through his head like a stampede. Nonetheless, he stood up slowly as he asked, "Who are you, Sir? And where am I?"

He tried his best to recall what happened, and his memory slowly returned.

Something had happened in the middle of the transporting process. The Azure Ape King had been displaced into the space portal that was at the brink of complete annihilation, while he himself had lapsed into unconsciousness before having an incredibly bizarre dream.

Even if he ignored the harrowing, petrifying war he had just witnessed in his dream, he still had other questions to be answered, the most important ones being: was he spared from the anomalies of the space portals? Had he arrived at the receiving side of the transportation portal?

But Shi Mu couldn't see a single transportation formation in this cave—and it wasn't even a very big cave to begin with.

The elderly ape in green robe stared at Shi Mu's frowning expression with a sort of imploring smile, but it did not seem to want to answer Shi Mu's conundrum. Instead, it continued sipping its wine quietly.

Seeing the ape was not going to help, Shi Mu dismissed it altogether and started towards the entrance of the cave. Surprisingly, the elderly ape did not try to stop him either.

As Shi Mu was about the cave, he hastened his pace in confidence—

Boingngngngng. He crashed onto an unseen wall in full force.

From the interior of the cave came the elderly ape's outburst that sounded just a bit too sincere, "Pwahahahhahaa!"

"Hmph!" Shi Mu was quite crossed. He pushed the wall with all his might, but to no avail. The wall remained stubbornly. In fact—as Shi Mu stretched his hands out and ran his fingers around the area—the entire entrance of the cave had been barricaded by the same unseen wall.

He took a deep breath and balled his left hand into a fist. In a succession of white lights, his left arm turned scorched black. He let out a loud cry and slammed his fist forward without holding back any strength.

His fist, engulfed in white flames, carved out a single white mark on the air as if the fist's momentum had torn a gash on the fabric of space. In a blur of white, his fist smacked onto the unseen wall with full impact.

Yet, far from what Shi Mu had expected in the script of his own making, there was no rumbling similar to clasps of thunder, nor did the cave quake like it was about to tumble—worse, there wasn't even a single sigh nor a small vibration the moment his fist struck onto the wall!

This was the same punch that had allowed him to smash through the void! But now it was like he had just punched the air... and there wasn't even any sort of vibrations!

Just what sort of magic could be so powerful that it managed to neutralize a void-shattering punch like this?

"What Is going on?" Puzzled and lost, Shi Mu retraced his steps and returned to where he started.

"Please, senior. Please enlighten me on where we are to this confused one," Shi Mu said, bowing at the elderly ape in green robe.

"Ha, ha! Now this is more like it. You youngsters really need to learn to respect your elders." The elderly ape in green robe sipped another cup of wine and grinned.

Shi Mu somewhat disagreed with that elderly ape's notion, but outwardly Shi Mu remained deadpanned as he watched the ape intently, waiting for it to answer him.

The elderly ape in green robe set the bottle down and finally said, "You can say this is a special space locked inside Heavenrouser."

Shi Mu was stumped. "Heaven...rouser?"

"C'mon, that golden rod thing you were holding onto a while ago? That stick? Remember that?" The elderly ape pouted its lips.

Shi Mu's expression shifted a bit at the realization before nodding very slowly. There was still a lot in his mind that he had not understood.

"How may I address you, Sir?" He asked.

"I'm... Well, I mean..." The elderly ape in green robe suddenly hesitated. A look of melancholic forlornness suddenly crossed its face.

"I'm a single strand of spiritual consciousness left behind by the Grand Ancestor White Ape back before a great calamity had befallen him. Just called me Green Ape would do."

Shi Mu froze after listening to his answer and cupped his hand before his chest, his tone now filled with even more deference, "This junior would like to express his respect to Senior Green Ape."

"Meh heh heh. Looks like the fledgling is not too savage... and also quite good at buttering someone up too, apparently," the elderly ape chuckled as it replied.

"Senior Green Ape, why is this junior, well... Here, in this secret space within Heavenrouser?"

"The Grand Ancestor White Ape had once decreed that only those worthy of Heavenrouser would ever be allowed into this space, though I have no actual idea how you ended up here," The elderly ape replied. "But hey, I have been sealed in here for thousand of years by the White Ape, you know. It's been so long since I finally have a visitor."

A swarm of thoughts roused within Shi Mu's mind. After a while, he finally said, "Senior Green Ape, when this junior faced life-threatening perils as well as the chaos in space... It was you who had controlled Heavenrouser to protect this lowly one, wasn't it?"

"Well, how could this old geezer not save a punk worthy of Heavenrouser?" The elderly ape said flatly.

"Thank you so much, Senior, for saving this junior's life." Shi Mu gave a respectful bow after some a few moments of silence.

The elderly ape waved its hand dismissively, then pointed at the sitting cushion before it. Shi Mu obeyed.

The elderly ape started staring at Shi Mu, sizing him up from head to toe wit such intensity that Shi Mu was starting to feel very awkward before it suddenly broke into a quiet mumbling, "I would have never expected a human fledgling to be the Heir of the White Ape's Blood. Normally, even if a human managed to trigger the Inheritance of the Grand Ancestor White Ape's blood essence, they would still be too subpar to achieve this..."

Before Shi Mu could answer, the elderly ape's eyebrow suddenly raised as two rays of green lights shot out of his eyes and melted into Shi Mu's body.

Shi Mu was appalled, but he was too slow to evade it. In fact, he found his body completely locked into immobility by the green light.

Then, he felt a strange prickling sense coursing through his body. Fortunately, it didn't make him sick, so he relaxed a little.

The elderly ape's pupils moved, and the green lights faded out of its eyes. At the same time, whatever that was holding Shi Mu's body in place ceded, returning him his body.

"Hee hee, so that's why, eh? That's why!" A strange expression crossed the elderly ape's visage as it cried out in realization.

"What's why?" Shi Mu raised his eyebrow.

"Your blood, little punk. You possess the bloodline of the Stone Monkey—a bloodline that was known to humans as a useless bloodline, which is true in most situations... except that it's also a distant descendant of the Skyshielding Monstrous Ape," the elderly ape answered. "The White Ape was a Skyshielding Monstrous Ape, so in other words... Possessors of the Stone Monkey bloodline are eligible of evolving themselves into the heavenly bloodline of the Skyshielding Monstrous Ape."

"Wait, a Stone Monkey bloodline can actually do that? I have never heard anyone say that!" Shi Mu said, shocked. The Stone Monkey bloodline was always known as the "useless bloodline" throughout the Dongzhou and Xi He continents—who knew that it actually shared any sort of connection with a heavenly beast?!

"Puh-lease. Few in this entire starfield could have possibly known this fact... Really though, you're a bit ahead of yourself with that excited grin there, kid."

Shi Mu was just basking in a surprised joy when the elderly ape suddenly doused his fire with a cold bucket of water.