No one knew how to react as the Pope slowly vanished into the air until Lily muttered, "What did the old man mean by that?"
Vivian shook her head. "I don't know... but I know our target's right ahead."
The door at the end of the passageway was vaguely visible. They quickly approached it and noticed that the door was magnificently huge. It was also different from the other doors on the spacecraft: its gloomy black surface was etched with a weird pattern, and it was lined with two columns, which looked purely decorative on the sides. Something special had to be behind the door. Nangong Wudi squinted his eyes, carefully scanning their surroundings with his demon hunter vision. Everything appeared calm.
"Clear." The old demon hunter nodded to Hao Ren.
Hao Ren stepped forward and placed his hand on the door. He was expecting the door was locked. Just when he was contemplating whether to use explosive, the door just opened itself as if it was touch sensitive.
Everyone kept their guards up and cautiously walked through the door. They felt their steps heavier as they stepped inside while their breathing was returning to normal. Hao Ren glanced over his shoulder and saw a light film on the door behind them. "The gravity and artificial atmosphere seem to be working normally here."
"This place is huge," Lily looked up and around in awe. "I'm already dizzy by just looking at it."
Behind the door was an unusually vast rectangular hall. Doubtless, things that the giants built were huge, but this place was just at another level. They almost felt that they had come to the open air. There were humanoid sculptures on both sides of the long hall, all more than 20 metres tall and obviously sculptures of the giants that were supplemented with a certain artistic exaggeration. Between the giant sculptures, dark-red patterned curtains were hanging from the ceiling to the floor. Right above on the ceiling, a series of lamps formed into various abstract patterns that somehow reminded Hao Ren of the icons of the Disciples of Glory.
The decoration and atmosphere of this place was somewhat beyond expectation. It did not look like a cabin of a spacecraft. It was more like a sacred place of some secret religion. Vivian was in shock. She sighed. "It seems the giants are very artistic... Never have I expected them to be able to build such a place before turning into brain-monsters."
However, rather than the sculptures and decorations, something else had caught Hao Ren's eyes. He saw a huge black seat in front of the long hall. A giant was sitting on the seat with back on them. He did not know whether the giant was dead or alive. He could not help but relate the scene to a fairy tale: A group of humans strayed into the castle of the giants; everything around looked so massive and there was a giant sitting on the throne.
While he was in thought, the giant on the 'throne' suddenly moved. It slowly got to its feet.
Everyone was surprised. They were all alarmed as the giant slowly walked towards its uninvited guests. Standing at ten metres tall, the giant had glowing dark-red skin, draped in a tattered uniform of indeterminate material. It used a weird long staff to support itself standing as it looked at the uninvited guests, eyes full of hatred. Although not expressed on its face, anger was spreading in his eyes.
"Then let's just die." The giant had just uttered these words, its voice like thunder. It raised his long staff pointing at Hao Ren and his entourage. A giant plasma arc was hitting Hao Ren's shield and was deflected but almost hitting those around him. Everyone dodged frantically with retaliating manoeuvres. Lily was screaming as she jumped left and right. "I thought it was just a brain? Now it comes with a body!"
"How would I have known?" Hao Ren was just as confused. Wielding his spear to deflect the electric arc onto the ground, he shouted to the giant, "Rightly speaking, this is the brain monster we are looking for... Let's stop fighting; we can talk it through, shall we?"
He knew this thing could talk. Although it was not very friendly, it seemed to be more communicable than those mute brain-monsters. He had an important reason to do so; he had found that the crystal shield did not work on this giant like how it worked on the brain-monsters. The crystal could directly incapacitate the brain-monsters, but was only effective in preventing the mind attack from the giant. It had no effect on the giant itself. That was rather unexpected. So Hao Ren could only take it as it comes.
Their counterattacks had only stricken the mental shield of the giant. In fact, they did not want the giant dead. The giant also seemed to be aware of this fact as it uttered angrily. "What do you want of me? To humiliate me?"
"I just wanted to talk to you!" said Hao Ren, jumping left and right to avoid the electric arc attacks. "We came from other universe. We are clueless about the situation here! We just want to know why you are so adamant to destroy the world... you really don't want to stop, do you?"
"I won't negotiate," the giant stomped the stuff on the ground while waving the other hand in the air. Its mighty mind power instantly created a lightning storm in the air and then struck at them. "I would rather die than compromise with the treacherous childen."
Hao Ren gritted his teeth and turned to look at the others. "We have no choice but to take him down—alive!"
A strong plasma arcs slammed down on the ground and spurred a lightning storm. They swiftly dodged the lightning and lunged at the giant.
Lily wielding her Frostfire Claws like a vicious dog sprung ten metres up in the air before striking at the giant head-on. She hit the mental shield. Her long white hair fluttered in the air. But she ignored the burning sensation the mental shield was causing and kept attacking the seemingly weak barrier with her Frostfire Claws, hoping that brute force attack would overwhelm the mind shield. At the same time, Vivian was summoning her bats to strike the giant, also hoping to overwhelm the enemy by burying it alive in ice and lightning. While Y'zaks and Nangong Wudi quickly were joining the barrage of attacks with fist and bolts, Hao Ren took his spear and filled up the last gap in the encirclement.
The giant roared furiously as it was under siege. It waved its arms trying to fend off the 'little' enemies as if they were annoying mosquitoes. However, the skilful little enemies began to overwhelm the giant. The giant had suffered injury from the explosion earlier; its combat strength was weakening rapidly.
Suddenly, a memory of the Mythical Era flashed across Vivian's mind; a group of humans surrounded and killed a pure thunder-giant.
She shook the thought away. The giant had finally exhausted all its strength. Its mind-powered shield came down. Everyone took a few steps back as the dozen-metre-tall body began to fall to the ground. However, the giant suddenly planted its stuff on the ground to prevent itself from falling; it was still struggling to balance itself. Looks like it would rather die than fall in front of these people in shame.
"Would it blow itself up without warning?" Hao Ren took a deep breath, mumbling worriedly.
As soon as his voice trailed off, he noticed a bright electric glow on the body of the giant. The strong energy field began to distort and heat up the surrounding air.
At that crucial moment, Y'zaks acted. He struck out a large number of demonic runes from under his feet to suppress the last attempt of attack from the giant.
All eyes fell on Hao Ren who as waving his hand haplessly. "Don't look at me like that… at least I did warn you guys…"
No one was giving a shit to him. Hao Ren hemmed a couple time, feeling like a fool. He then turned to look at the giant. "Well, well, shall we talk nicely now?"