Chapter 28 The giant frog and the white-haired girl stood in front of him.
A giant, scarlet eye hangs high above.
Xiao Jiang subconsciously pulled Qin Yuqi back a few steps.
Qin Yuqi followed her gaze upwards and was startled by a pair of eyes that suddenly appeared above his head. He immediately raised "Jianxing" to his chest and faced the eyes suspended in the mist.
When those eyes saw what Qin Yuqi was holding, the red intensified, followed by a low growl.
Xiao Jiang realized something was wrong and immediately led Qin Yuqi to run in the opposite direction of those eyes.
Qin Yuqi already had difficulty walking, and after running only a few steps, he fell to the ground. The wound on his knee tore open again, and the intense pain made it impossible for him to stand up.
The thunderous footsteps sounded again. Without hesitation, Xiao Jiang slung Qin Yuqi over his shoulder and ran as fast as he could.
Before Qin Yuqi could react, he was already on Xiao Jiang's back.
The mist flowed rapidly around her as she weaved through the dimly lit forest, leaving Qin Yuqi with only the sound of her heavy breathing.
But he soon discovered that Xiao Jiang couldn't run anymore, not because she was out of energy, but because no matter how hard she ran, she couldn't take another step forward, as if there was an invisible wall blocking her way.
"Could this be another illusion?" Qin Yuqi muttered to himself.
Judging from the footsteps, the monster had followed her along the same route. How could such a thick fog have no effect on the monster?
Xiao Jiang stopped running. She put Qin Yuqi down, took a deep breath, and slowly said, "This is a spell, a barrier spell. It can trap prey within an invisible barrier. It's a pity I haven't learned it yet."
Unfortunately, she is now the prey.
She found a tree branch, held it in her hand, turned around, holding a knife in one hand and making a hand seal with the other.
Suddenly, a flame rose from the branch she was standing on, and as she urged it, the flame gradually turned into a blazing fire.
The blazing flames burned a gap in the thick fog in front of her.
But before the thick fog could dissipate, a pure white giant beast suddenly leaped out of the fog and pounced on the two of them.
The two then realized that the eyes were not suspended in the air, but were hidden in the mist because they were pure white.
Its body shape is very similar to that of a frog, except that it is so large that it looks more like a small mountain.
This monster, which could easily hide in the fog, had only one striking feature: its eyes were crimson. The two large red eyes against the pure white background made it look even more sinister, and its whole body exuded a frenzied aura.
Being pounced on by such a mountain of flesh is no different from being crushed by a boulder.
Xiao Jiang kicked Qin Yuqi aside, then dodged the white giant frog's attack to the other side. She aimed the flames from the branch at the giant frog, but the scorched areas on the frog showed no change, as if she were not facing flesh and blood at all.
The giant frog clumsily turned its enormous head, paused for a moment after seeing the ball of fire at its feet, and the red in its eyes faded a little, making it look somewhat confused.
But the confusion lasted only a moment. Soon, the bloodlust in its eyes returned, turning it back into a frenzied and violent monster.
Xiao Jiang circled around the giant frog's feet, but no matter where she attacked its body, she couldn't find its weak point, and her strength was ultimately insufficient to harm it.
The moment she saw the change in the giant frog's eyes, she was ready to face the attack, but she didn't expect the giant frog to turn around and rush towards Qin Yuqi's location.
Xiao Jiang's heart skipped a beat, realizing something was wrong. She could still dodge the giant frog with her agile movements, but Qin Yuqi, dragging an injured leg, had no way to avoid it.
After Qin Yuqi was kicked aside by Xiao Jiang, he tried desperately to stand up. He managed to support himself on one leg, but then he saw the giant frog-like body pressing down on him.
He knew he had nowhere to run, and all he could do at that moment was close his eyes and wait for death to come.
In that instant, many images flashed through his mind: as a child, he stood with his father on the Dew-Swept Terrace, receiving the worship of all the people, his father telling him that he would one day become the ruler who unified the world; during a heavy snowfall, he was punished to kneel in the ancestral temple, and his mother came to see him in the dead of night with food, her eyes full of heartache but warning him never to quarrel with his second elder brother again; on a clear and bright day, he asked someone for directions, but looked into a pair of golden eyes...
A few breaths passed, but the imagined catastrophe did not come. Qin Yuqi opened his eyes.
The white-haired girl stood in front of him, her hands desperately blocking the giant frog's webbed paw as it slammed down. Her skin turned red from the effort, and the veins on her arms were clearly visible...
The man, who appeared incredibly small in comparison to the giant frog, somehow managed to support the weight of the monster mountain.
At this moment, Qin Yuqi's thoughts seemed to be suppressed and completely stopped. The overwhelming shock nailed him to the spot, unable to move an inch or utter a single word.
"Go...hurry...go!"
Each word was uttered with all his might, struggling to be squeezed out from between his teeth.
Qin Yuqi suddenly woke up and immediately dragged his injured leg to the side. Even though the pain was excruciating, he dared not delay for a moment.
Seeing that Qin Yuqi was no longer within the giant frog's attack range, Xiao Jiang used a clever move to dodge to the side, collapsing to the ground as if all her strength had been drained. Even with her great strength, catching that blow had left her completely exhausted.
The giant frog slammed its paw into the open ground, the immense force causing the ground to tremble continuously, the thunderous roar sounding like a mountain collapsing.
When its first attack failed, the giant frog became even more agitated. It no longer ignored the little human girl who had been harassing and hindering it. It swept Xiao Jiang aside with a slap and went straight to find Qin Yuqi.
Xiao Jiang's body was swept away and only stopped when she hit a tree. The impact was so solid that when she slid off the tree, she felt as if her internal organs were about to be shaken out. Her head was buzzing, and a mouthful of blood unexpectedly gushed from the corner of her mouth.
Before she could even calm down, she saw Qin Yuqi struggling to escape through the forest. He hid behind a tree, trying to use it to fend off the giant frog, but under the giant frog's grasp, these thick trees, which had grown for who knows how many years, were as fragile as a withered branch, breaking with the slightest touch.
Xiao Jiang wiped the blood from the corner of her mouth. She felt her blood surging, clamoring for battle. She stood up and rushed over, leaping up using a broken tree stump as leverage. As she landed high in the air, she used all her strength to plunge the bone dagger into the giant frog's thigh.
It wasn't the expected feel of a blade cutting into flesh; the vibration from the giant frog's body contacting the bone dagger made Xiao Jiang's wrist go numb. This wasn't flesh and blood; it was as hard as rock. Even with all his strength, the dagger tip only penetrated an inch.
Soon after came an extremely faint "crack".
The bone dagger shattered, while the giant frog's thigh was left with only a tiny, almost invisible red dot.
This attack caused almost no real damage to the giant frog, but it successfully diverted the frog's attention from Qin Yuqi on the ground to the girl who jumped onto it.
Qin Yuqi also noticed that Xiao Jiang's weapon was broken. Without thinking, he threw the "Jianxing" in his hand at Xiao Jiang.
"Catch!"
The giant frog swept its webbed paws across, about to grab Xiao Jiang's body.
Xiao Jiang then used "Xianxing" (a martial arts technique), instinctively slicing the giant frog's webbed hand with her short knife as it approached. This time, she didn't use any force; it was just a light slash. The giant frog immediately withdrew its hand as if it had been electrocuted.
Red blood flowed from the shallow wound, standing out starkly against the giant frog's white skin.
Xiao Jiang stared in disbelief at the short knife in his hand. How could such a seemingly ordinary knife possess such destructive power!
She didn't notice anything unusual, assuming it was just a finely crafted blade.
The giant frog was completely enraged by the wound, roaring furiously and attacking the culprit that had hurt it even more frantically.
Xiao Jiang was thrown off the frenzied giant frog, but she used her agility to escape beneath its feet, making it unable to catch her.
But the giant frog had no patience to play cat and mouse with her. It cast a barrier spell on the soles of its feet, and soon the "mouse" that had driven it mad was unable to escape.
The giant frog stomped down with enough force to kill the most ferocious beast in the forest, let alone a human.
But it is indeed smaller than this seemingly tiny human being.
Just as the frog's paw was about to press down on his head, Xiao Jiang leaped up to reach it, then used the momentum to flip onto the frog's paw. He then swiftly plunged his short knife into the giant frog's foot, and pulled the knife out, quickly slashing upwards along the frog's leg until it bled profusely.
These actions were not conscious, but rather driven by the instinct for survival, yet they flowed smoothly and each move was deadly, as if she had been born knowing what to do.
If she jumps any higher, onto the giant frog's back, she can slit its throat or cut its heart.
But the giant frog didn't give her that chance.
The webbed hand, still bleeding from her cut, swept across and this time firmly grasped her.
Xiao Jiang struggled desperately, but the webbed hands tightened their grip, and even as "Xianxing" repeatedly cut wounds into him, he did not loosen his grip at all.
It truly wanted her dead; it even used its other "hand" to snatch the dagger from her hand and throw it into the mist, leaving her without any weapon to harm it.
As the giant frog's webbed hands tightened, Xiao Jiang felt as if her internal organs were being squeezed and deformed, and her body was about to break in two. She had no strength left to struggle, and she could no longer even think.
She will die here, her body turning into a bunch of indistinct things.
But she didn't want to die. She hadn't found her father yet, she hadn't seen what her mother looked like, she hadn't seen the outside world, and she hadn't sent Xiao Hai home...
If she dies, Qin Yuqi will also die.
She insisted on bringing him here, so she should protect him.
Suddenly, there was a "crack" sound, and something in her arms broke.
"This is what the Mountain God asked me to bring you. It means that if you encounter a very dangerous situation, eat it." The words of the gray magpie as it bid her farewell echoed in her ears.
Xiao Jiang regained some of her senses, and she desperately reached one hand into her bosom.
She carefully kept the warm green jade. She couldn't imagine any danger and was skeptical about the jade's effects. However, she cherished all the gifts others gave her and always carried them with her. She never expected to need them so soon.
The jade stone shattered; she only managed to touch half of it, the other half having been pushed to who-knows-where.
Without hesitation, Xiao Jiang immediately put half of the jade stone into his mouth and swallowed it.
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