The underground magma cave fell into a state of deep, sacred stillness. The violent spitting of sulfur geysers and the churning sloshing of molten melted rock waste had subsided, replaced by a deep, rhythmic hum that seemed to come from the very molten heart of the planet.
Astride the jet-black shoulder of the titan, Lin Xiao wobbled forward until he was resting directly between the creature’s huge, sweeping brow-horns.
The Earth-Core Magma Giant beast (Dixing Chiyan Shou) lowered its massive snout toward the calm, glowing surface of the molten pool. With a slow, deliberate movement, the ancient beast drew in a vast breath of underground air. It stretched its four-hundred-meter frame until its dark rock plates creaked like the heavy timber beams of an ancient mountain temple.
Then, the titan exhaled.
It wasn’t a roar of fury or a shriek of agony. It was a long, low, ringing sigh of boundless, unburdened relief.
HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO...
The sound was pitched so low that mortal ears could barely register the sound tone. But the physical shaking carried the mass of a moving mountain range. The ground-shaking wave traveled outward through the bedrock in nested rings, rolling through the world-size mantle and racing up ten thousand feet of solid granite to the surface realm.
