The deep ancient grinding sound echoed across the sky as the colossal shell of the Samsara Dream Clam slowly pulled apart. Li Yu's heart hamred against his ribs and his spiritual sense was pushed to its absolute limit. He was ready to Void Step away the exact microsecond a lethal attack erged from the darkness within the beast.
He waited. Morven waited. The three elite generals of the Violet Deep waited with their weapons drawn and their auras blazing. Malos watched with intense focus ready to bend space and ti to protect his friend.
Ten seconds passed. Then a full minute.
Li Yu started to feel a very bizarre and conflicting type of panic. This was quite possibly the weirdest crisis he had ever experienced in his entire life as a cultivator. It felt like watching the world’s slowest disaster unfold. The clam was so incredibly slow that even though the situation was undeniably eerie, it just didn’t feel dangerous. It was simply too slow to trigger any true fear.
The gap in the pearlescent armor finally reached a width of about ten feet. It was roughly the size of a large double door. The thick shimring mist continued to pour out of the opening and cascaded down toward the ocean below but nothing else happened. No tentacles shot out to grab him. No beams of destructive energy vaporized the air. There was just a door sized slot exposing absolute pitch black darkness.
Everyone remained entirely on edge but the sheer absurdity of the situation was beginning to outweigh the tension.
"Is it preparing an attack?" One of the generals asked nervously while gripping his water infused broadsword.
"If this is an attack, it is the slowest opening move in the history of the realm." Morven grumbled. The Lord of the Violet Deep lowered his trident slightly but kept his pale eyes locked on the dark opening. "It is giving its opponent enough ti to eat a al and take a nap before striking."
As soon as Morven finished speaking the grinding noise shifted in pitch. The two massive halves of the impenetrable armor stopped opening. They hovered in place for a few agonizingly long seconds and then they began to close.
It was just as slow as the opening process. The gap in the shell began to shrink inch by excruciating inch.
One of the Violet Deep generals lost his patience entirely. He could not stand hovering in the sky and waiting for a giant mollusk to finish its agonizingly slow routine. The general roared and swung his broadsword. He launched a massive compressed blade of heavy water directly toward the shrinking, door sized opening.
The attack crossed the distance instantly and struck the gap.
A shimring and transparent Qi barrier materialized across the opening the exact mont the water blade hit. The barrier did not shatter or even ripple. It perfectly absorbed the kinetic force and the water Qi of the general's attack, dissolving the energy into harmless mist.
"Do not waste your Qi." Morven ordered sharply. "If my Sovereign attack could not crack the exterior, your water arts are not going to breach its internal shields. We wait and we watch."
The clam shell finally closed with a deep resonant thud that echoed across the coastline. The colossal beast was once again a perfectly sealed monolith of pearlescent white. And yet it was still rotating and creeping forward continuing its incredibly slow pursuit of Li Yu.
Down below the effects of the closed shell were imdiate.
The hallucinogenic mist stopped falling over the border town. The sparkling haze slowly dissipated into the ocean breeze. Without the constant supply of the illusion inducing dust the citizens of the town began to stir once again. They had just escaped the mist and then were drowned in it and now escaped it again.
Li Yu looked down and watched the town wake up again.
A grizzled rcenary who had been weeping tears of pure joy suddenly blinked and shook his head. He looked around the empty street and his face twisted into an expression of annoyance.
"Ah, damn it all!" The rcenary shouted while kicking a wooden barrel across the cobblestones. "I was just about to open the vault! The gold was right there! Why did the giant rock have to leave so early?"
A few streets over a wealthy rchant who had been sobbing in agony wiped his face and let out a massive sigh of relief. He dusted off his expensive silk robes and nodded to his confused guards. "Well that was a terrible nightmare. Back to work everyone. The ledgers will not balance themselves."
All across the town people were waking up and simply going about their day. So were cursing the clam for cutting their wonderful dreams short while others were thanking the heavens the nightmare was over. Nobody seed injured and nobody seed traumatized. The local guards did not sound any alarms or mobilize any defenses.
"They treat it like a passing rainstorm," Li Yu observed in disbelief. "No one is running in terror."
"I told you it does not harm anyone." Morven sighed while relaxing his grip on his trident. "It is just a massive inconvenience. It cos, it puts everyone to sleep, it eats their emotions and then it leaves. The fact that it is currently trying to follow you is the only unusual thing it has ever done."
Li Yu looked at the massive creeping shell. It was still inching toward him with relentless and agonizing patience. He decided he had entertained the giant beast long enough. He was going to fly back to the capital and let the clam slowly drift over until it got bored.
He turned away from the Samsara Dream Clam and prepared to activate his Void Step. Behind him the massive shell cracked open again. It did not open to the size of a door this ti. It only opened a tiny sliver.
Against all the known historical facts about the beast and completely contrary to its agonizingly slow nature an impossibly fast beam of white light shot out from the sliver.
There was no warning. There was no buildup of Qi. The beam crossed the hundreds of yards between the clam and Li Yu in an instant.
It hit Li Yu square in the back.
Li Yu froze. He did not feel any pain and he did not feel his ridians burning or his soul tearing. He was simply bathed in a warm blinding light that completely paralyzed his body and his Qi circulation.
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Morven Malos and the three generals were absolutely stunned. They had spent the last hour watching the slowest creature in existence crawl through the sky and the sudden instantaneous strike caught them completely off guard.
"Li Yu!" Malos shouted as he drew his sword. Before Malos could swing his weapon, the white beam violently retracted.
It did not pull Li Yu through the air. It folded space itself. Li Yu vanished from the coastal sky in a flash of light and was instantly pulled through the sliver and directly into the dark interior of the clam.
The pearlescent shell snapped shut with a resounding boom. Silence fell over the coastal sky.
"Brother!" Morven roared with his pale eyes blazing apocalyptic fury. The Sovereign of the Violet Deep lunged forward and slamd his heavy trident directly into the center of the pristine shell. The impact generated a shockwave that flattened the coastal trees for miles but the clam remained completely unblemished.
Malos appeared instantly beside the shell. He pressed his hand against the pearlescent surface and attempted to use his understanding of space to warp directly through it and into the interior. Malos grunted and was violently thrown backward as the shell actively rejected his spatial manipulation. He tumbled through the air before stabilizing his flight.
"I cannot breach it!" Malos yelled with panic creeping into his usually cheerful voice. "The interior is a sealed pocket dinsion! The laws of the shell block all external spatial displacent!"
The three elite generals unleashed a renewed frenzy of attacks. They battered the giant clam with water blades, corrosive acid and kinetic shockwaves but the result was exactly the sa as before. The Samsara Dream Clam ignored their existence entirely.
The most ridiculous and absurd part of the entire situation quickly beca apparent. This was undeniably the slowest kidnapping in the history of the cultivation world.
The clam had successfully captured Li Yu but it did not possess any thod of rapid escape. It simply resud its crawling agonizingly slow pace through the sky. It was drifting away from the border town at what is probably its absolute top speed, which was still slower than a walking mortal.
Morven hovered in the air and was staring at the slowly creeping monolith with a mixture of imnse rage and utter bewildernt. His sworn brother had just been eaten by an indestructible giant mollusk and the culprit was currently trying to make a getaway at a speed that anyone could catch.
A glowing communication talisman suddenly flared to life on Morven's belt.
Morven snatched it and listened to the frantic voice of his chief administrator back at the capital. The northern kelp forests had escalated their tariff dispute into a localized rebellion and several important trade routes were completely stalled. The Sovereign was urgently needed back at the throne.
"Dammit" Morven cursed and crushed the talisman in his fist. He looked at Malos and the three generals.
"I must return to the capital," Morven commanded with his voice full of frustrations. "This beast is too slow to escape anyti soon. You three generals will remain here and guard this clam. Do not let it out of your sight. If it opens its shell again you must find a way to pull Li Yu out imdiately."
"Yes Sovereign!" The three generals shouted in unison.
"I will stay as well," Malos declared while sheathing his sword. He looked at the massive slow moving shell and let out a deep sigh. "I suppose I am now a clam herder. I will watch over him, Morven. Go handle your empire."
Morven nodded his thanks and vanished in a flash of blue light to return to his administrative duties. Malos floated up and landed gently on the top of the massive pearlescent shell. The surface was incredibly smooth and seed completely flat across the apex because it was so large. The three generals landed beside him.
One of the generals reached into his spatial ring and pulled out a small intricately carved miniature pagoda. He tossed it onto the top of the shell and channeled a burst of Qi into the artifact. The pagoda rapidly expanded, transforming into a fully functional portable courtyard complete with stone benches, a small pavilion and a tea table.
"Well." Malos said while taking a seat at the tea table and crossing his legs. "We might be here for a while. Deal the cards General."
The four powerful cultivators sat comfortably in the portable courtyard resting on top of the giant clam as it slowly, incredibly slowly, crawled its way across the coastal sky. There was nothing that they could do so they were doing the only thing they could, wait.
Inside the clam Li Yu expected to be imdiately dissolved by a lake of corrosive stomach acid or crushed by massive internal muscles. He had activated his Devouring Abyssal Leviathan Physique the mont the light hit him ready to fight for his life against the digestive tract of an ancient beast.
The blinding light faded and Li Yu landed squarely on his feet. He did not land in a pool of acid. His boots struck solid smooth stones.
Li Yu kept his staff raised and his eyes darted around as he was analyzing his surroundings. He slowly lowered his weapon as his brain struggled to process the sheer impossibility of what he was looking at.
‘What kind of situation is this?’ Li Yu thought to himself as he forced his racing heart to calm down.
He was standing in the middle of a beautifully maintained courtyard. The ground was paved with interlocking stones of pale blue jade. Lush green willow trees and vibrant exotic flowers grew in neat and ticulously pruned garden beds.
Directly in front of him stood a modest single story house constructed from dark rich wood and elegant paper screens. Behind the house, slightly elevated on a small artificial hill was a beautifully crafted three story tower. The architecture was ancient but incredibly pristine.
Li Yu looked up. There was no sky. A massive glowing pearl the size of a small sun hung suspended in the dark void above and was providing a soft warm light that illuminated the entire area.
He looked down and focused his spiritual sense through the jade stones beneath his feet. Deep below the foundation of this peaceful courtyard, he could sense the massive slow beating heart and the fleshy mantle of the living clam. The beast was literally carrying a pocket dinsion on its back and directly inside its shell.
"What in the world is this place?" Li Yu muttered as he was stepping forward onto the paved path.
He reached into his robes and pulled out a communication talisman intending to send a ssage to Malos and Morven to let them know he was alive. He channeled a sliver of Qi into the talisman but it didn’t work.
The laws of the shell completely isolated this dinsion from the outside world. He could not send ssages and he could not use his Void Step to warp back out. He was completely trapped inside the creeping monolith.
Li Yu kept his staff ready and slowly walked through the courtyard.
He checked the garden beds. The soil was rich and the flowers were actively blooming. He approached the small wooden house and gently slid the paper screen door open. The interior was simple and elegant.
There was a low wooden table, a set of tea cups and a woven sleeping mat. There was no dust on the floor and no cobwebs in the corners. The place was relatively maintained but he could not sense a single living soul anywhere nearby.
He walked around the house and approached the three story tower in the back. The doors were closed but not locked. Li Yu was completely baffled. He had expected a brutal fight for survival inside the belly of a beast. Instead he had been kidnapped and deposited into a peaceful quiet retirent estate.
He walked back toward the center of the courtyard and was standing beneath the light of the massive glowing pearl. He needed to figure out a way to bypass the dinsional lock or find whatever chanism controlled the opening of the shell.
Before he could take another step a sudden overwhelming sensation washed over him.
It was not an attack. There was no killing intent and no hostile Qi. It was a wave of absolute drowsiness. It felt like the accumulated exhaustion of a thousand lifetis crashing down onto his shoulders all at once.
His Devouring Abyssal Leviathan Physique tried to resist the sensation but it was entirely useless. It was sothing else entirely.
Li Yu swayed on his feet. His vision blurred and the soft light of the glowing pearl slowly faded into darkness. His knees buckled and he collapsed onto the smooth jade stones, passing out completely in the middle of the silent empty courtyard.
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