Sixteen nine-tailed scorpion golems rushed into the large canyon, whose two sides were so far apart, they could barely be seen.
Their stone legs cracked the ground with every step and ahead, the canyon widened revealing giants.
Two of the Stone Knights stood closest. Far behind them, spaced evenly down the canyon's throat, stood four more pairs. Ten Stone Knights in total.
Each one was a mountain — a hundred meters tall, plated in dense armor and wielding a straight double-edged long sword.
The Scorpion Golems meanwhile were only fifteen meters tall, barely reaching their mid-shin but way below their knees.
"No reason to fret though. The number series are sixty meters long with devastating combat potential."
Bian remained calm with his own assertions. The nine-tailed scorpion golems weren't so easy to kill as all nine of their cores had to be destroyed simultaneously to put one down.
But how about the Stone Knights?
Bian unleashed the Emperical Aura, drowning the world in an indigo hue. Just like before, the aura reached their stone armor and stilled.
It was very rare for any power to counter or block the Emperical Aura. The only other time such happened was when Bian was fighting Executioner White and he could not deploy the Emperical Aura because he was in the fiend's Perpetuity Halo.
Bian had to take a second glance at these golems, as though he was seeing them again for the first time.
Then something weird happened. The Emperical Aura seemed to change slightly and Bian could sense a faint control over the ubiquitous light.
Just like when the Emperical Aura had forcefully ruptured the Executioner's Halo, once again it was fighting back against these monstrosities.
The two closest Stone Knights were pushed forward by the ground, their speed betraying their hulking size.
"First volley, aim!"
While Bian concentrated the Emperical Aura towards the Stone Knights, he also directed the number series to take aim at one of the Stone Knights.
"FIRE!"
Sixteen Scorpions with nine stingers each, fired off a volley of one hundred and forty four rounds towards a single target.
A storm erupted.
These weren't the same rods that Bian could easily ignore. After gaining the strength of eight more Scorpion Golems, each of those projectiles could pierce through the unplated parts of his sacred beast soul armor.
The spinning rods struck the Stone Knight with deafening noise. The ensuing cacophony echoed to the very ends of the valley.
The other Stone Knights began to move towards their location but at the same time, a change occurred in the indigo coloured light.
The Emperical Aura had gathered around both knights like thick gel. The light slowly dyed their armor indigo, while the armor resisted it with all its might.
The delicate stalemate was broken by the volley which damaged the Stone Knight on the left.
The Emperical Aura rushed in through the holes made in its armor, before they could recover.
"What is this?"
Dust!
Bian could sense nothing in them aside from a layer of dust particles which seemed to be shielding their interior.
The Stone Knights answered his volley with their own attack.
Their armor shuddered, then bled dust. A thick cloud burst from the seams in their plates, washing out in a massive wave. The dust swirled unnaturally, forming a crawling, suffocating haze that rolled across the canyon floor.
"It's that troublesome attack."
The Stone Knights were a couple of steps away. Bian had the number series continue their assault as he keenly observed the effect of the dust.
He had seen previously how the terrifying Evolved Purple Mantis was easily taken down when surrounded by it.
To Bian's delight, the dust did not seem to affect the surrounding scorpion golems.
"It must be because they are the same type as the Stone Knights. The dust is ineffective against other golems."
Bian had assumed this would be the case, so he wasn't too surprised by this. He commanded the number series to split into two groups and attack the Stone Knights.
From each group of eight, four stayed back and launched a barrage of stone rods while four lunged at the Stone Knights biting, stinging and tearing away at them.
With a swing of the sword, a Scorpion Golem was badly damaged. Another swing later and it was severed down the middle.
A reserve Scorpion jumped at the Knight, giving the fallen scorpion golem enough time to recover and join the ranged attackers. For constructs of stone, they were agile and spider-like, fluid in a way no rock should be.
The Knights meanwhile were not so easily damaged with their heavy armor on, and gradually recovered from any injury but the incessant attacks of the numbered series gave them no time to fully heal.
They could barely hold themselves together.
'I won't win this battle if I don't get involved.'
Know your enemy and know yourself and you can fight a hundred battles without disaster.
It was a quote everybody knew, but not just anyone could do so. The courage to leave comfort and face danger to know your opponent, how many people could do so?
What mattered right now, as of this moment, was that Bian could!
Taking in a deep breath, he willingly stepped into the dust cloud, fully aware that the next wave of Stone Knights would be upon them in minutes and mindful of the fact that he wouldn't be able to escape if he couldn't crack this technique.
As soon as he stepped in, Bian felt something was wrong. It didn't sting, didn't burn, didn't choke him like normal dust would.
No, the dust grabbed him like invisible hands pressing against the Silver-Plated Armor.
The first sensation that came was weight. A pressure settled on his shoulders, arms and legs, subtle for half a beat, then suddenly crushing.
Every muscle in his body had to fight just to stay where it was yet this wasn't the end. It only got worse when he tried to move.
As he lifted his foot, it felt like the dust had hands wrapped around his ankle, pulling it back down.
Bian was tempted to run Jadebody at full force in an attempt to break the force constricting him, yet he threw this idea out the window just as it came in.
He had to use Jadebody when fighting against the Evolved Mantis and even it couldn't escape the dust with its raw physical might.
Bian calmed down and systematically circulated each power in his arsenal, looking for one that would be effective against the dust cloud.
Yet no matter what he tried, even the dongxuan sutra could not break the technique.
"The Stone Knights are getting closer."
The more dangerous the situation became, the calmer he got. Thanks to the spirit pillar, Bian rarely got flustered as danger approached.
His body suddenly started vibrating and the dust lost its power over him. It was still there, all around him, but it no longer held onto him or weighed him down.
"What! Terraslip of all things worked?"
The geno art which he learned as a suppressor unexpectedly came in handy here.
In retrospect, Terraslip truly was the best art to use. Not wasting anymore time, Bian ran through the dust cloud, heading for a kneeling Stone Knight.
One of its legs had been severed as well as both of its arms. The knight was kept from healing by the constant assaults and literally became a sitting duck.
Bian reached the foot of the massive Stone Knight and jumped towards its shin.
The armor felt like a very thick layer of mud that would take him about half an hour to phase through.
Instead of wasting his time, Bian entered from one of the large damaged cracks that was three meters apart.
As soon as he crawled in, the Emperical Aura faded away from the Golem Valley while the Stone Knight began to emit a brilliant and resplendent indigo light.
'I was wrong, it doesn't have a layer of dust protecting it. It's made up entirely of dust!'
The amount of dust surrounding Bian had basically turned to a fluid, flowing around the large interior of the hundred meter tall Stone Knight.
'But if its inside is made up entirely of dust, then where is the core keeping it alive?'
Bian suddenly felt his heart sink to his stomach and his body involuntarily shuddered.
Surely, the core couldn't be a single speck of dust flowing among the countless other specks in here.
'NO! NO! NO! NO WAY!!'
Imagine if you went to every single beach, every desert, and every ocean floor on Earth and collected every single grain of sand.
If you took all that sand from the entire planet and poured it into a pile, it would roughly equal the amount of dust inside this one statue.
Now imagine looking for a single speck, identical to the others and flowing furiously among the hundreds upon hundreds of trillion other dust particles.