Chapter 303 — The Deep Valley and the Precipitous Chasm

"A ship? Could it be a ship from the Land of No Sorrow?"

Shen Mu's heart stirred. The other enormous ship that the village headman and his people had found had already been destroyed, leaving no way to reach the Land of No Sorrow. If this ship had come from there, could he not ride it back to his homeland?

The two white bats led the way ahead. The pair had odd temperaments and flew without the faintest sound; if Shen Mu let his attention stray even a little, he could not tell where they had gone. Yet the next moment came a rustle or two, and the two white bats would hang upside down from a tree or a cliff face, head below and feet above, then flap their wings and slip off again in silence.

The living things of this Nether Valley were utterly strange, and their ways of attack bizarre beyond measure. But the two white bats were the guardians of the place and knew every corner of it as if it were their own palm. With them leading, Shen Mu's road was free of alarms.

Now and then the two brothers would even go catch the grotesque creatures of the Nether Valley and eat them.

"Hey! When luck comes, nothing can block it -- to actually run into a mingbie!"

Shen Mu watched the two brothers fly over a stretch of lake water, plunge in, and drag out a colossal creature: a six-cornered insect whose body bore strange hexagonal patterns in orderly array, with two great pincers at its front, fierce and formidable.

But on the creature's back were white pupal eggs, each taller than a man. Some had already opened, like slender eggs with their neat lids lifted.

The mingbie's strength was terrifying. Unwilling to be taken by the two brothers, it snipped and snapped with its great pincers, and the air, thus cut, gave off thunderous cracks. Bolts of lightning were squeezed into being, and electric light hissed and crackled around the mingbie -- a fearsome sight.

The mingbie also sprayed jets of venom, which fell to the ground and dissolved everything -- soil and rock alike!

Shen Mu's heart quailed. This mingbie's strength was likely not much inferior to that of the dragon qilin, and its venom was especially dreadful, dissolving all things. The dragon qilin's powers were formidable enough, standing between the Seven Stars realm and the Heaven-Man realm, yet this mingbie's poison was likely more than even a Heaven-Man expert could withstand -- though whether the venom could actually land on a Heaven-Man expert was another question.

The two white bats were stronger still. Fu Yuqiu loosed a sonic blast from his mouth that stunned the mingbie outright; then the two brothers leaped onto its back and pried open two of the pupal eggs, as if opening the shell-lids of egg-like cabins.

The two white bats jumped inside, gave a comfortable groan, then beckoned to Shen Mu and the dragon qilin: "Come in, hurry up and come in!"

Shen Mu hesitated a moment, then leaped onto the mingbie's back with the dragon qilin.

Fu Yuchun poked his furry head out of the pupal shell, like a mouse just growing its fur, twitched his ears, and said, "Quick, find a pupa and hide inside. The mingbie is about to wake. This fellow is a master swimmer and the tyrant of the waters. It can carry us from the lake into the river, and down the river to that deep pit! Its nest is there!"

Shen Mu said doubtfully, "Can't we just stand on its back?"

Fu Yuqiu said, "This fellow is extremely alert, but it loves its children dearly. If we hide in these pupae, it won't attack us. And anything else that attacks us will be finished off by it."

Shen Mu looked at the dragon qilin and said, "Can you shrink your body?"

The dragon qilin's frame was immense -- two zhang smaller than this mingbie, but at its present size it certainly could not hide inside a pupa.

The dragon qilin snorted, shook its body, and its form gradually shrank. "Sect Master underestimates me. I was taught by the Patriarch himself, after all; I can change size at will."

It shrank to the size of a large dog and could shrink no further. Bulging its big belly, it kept urging its technique onward, straining for a moment, and at last said sheepishly, "Sect Master, do you think this will do?"

Shen Mu looked at the ball-shaped fellow, picked out the largest pupa, opened its lid, and tried to scoop him up and stuff him inside.

"It has been a long time since anyone held me," the dragon qilin said, wistful for the old days.

Shen Mu squeezed his belly hard and shoved him down with all his strength, but the dragon qilin got stuck. He could not push him in no matter how he tried, nor pull him back out; half the body was left hanging outside.

In a fury, Shen Mu clapped the eggshell-like white lid onto the dragon qilin's head. "Hold that pose and don't move!"

The dragon qilin, the pupal shell perched on his head, dared not budge an inch, and said pitifully, "Sect Master, you won't cut my rations, will you? I'm still growing..."

Shen Mu also opened a pupa and jumped in. The inside was like egg white; soaking in it proved unexpectedly comfortable, as soothing as taking a miraculous elixir.

He felt fine, slender energies drilling in through his pores, entering his muscles, blood vessels, meridians, and the five viscera and six bowels, nourishing his body, skin, and hair.

These energies even penetrated into his soul, nourishing it!

Astonished, Shen Mu tried to activate the Mystic Body Three Elixirs Art, and at once felt more energy flow from the egg-white liquid, making his primordial spirit grow steadily tougher.

"This egg white is several times better than any miraculous elixir. If I could cultivate inside it all the time, my primordial spirit would surely become extraordinarily powerful!"

He looked at the other pupal eggs. Most of the pupae on this mingbie's body were already empty -- no doubt the mingbie within had ripened, shed its shell, and gone -- leaving only two or three unripe ones.

"Good stuff. When we reach our destination, I'll steal those pupal eggs!"

He had barely had the thought when the giant mingbie woke, shook its head, and plunged headfirst into the lake.

This lake was a tributary of one of the rivers in the valley. The mingbie dived into the water, swam from the tributary into the main channel, and went downstream toward the place where the two rivers met.

The river water was strange too, teeming with all manner of creatures of the Nether Capital: long worms covered from head to tail with eyes; great fish all muscle and no scales; grotesque insects bristling with tentacles, each tipped with a round mouth full of barbed hooks; and glowing, soul-like things drifting to and fro.

Shen Mu also saw lotus flowers floating on the river's surface. Some had withered and grown seed pods, and from the holes of those pods crawled out plump, white, tender babies, bare-bottomed, dancing and crowing with laughter, innocent and guileless.

Suddenly one of the infants opened its mouth, and a tongue six or seven zhang long lashed out and coiled around a strange fish in the water. The tongue was hollow; in an instant it sucked the fish dry, leaving only its bones to drift down to the bottom.

Sated, the baby again danced and crowed with laughter -- then a great bird flew down from the air, pecked it up lightly, tilted back its head, and swallowed it whole.

"What kind of monsters does the Nether Capital breed!" Shen Mu shuddered with cold dread.

At last the mingbie brought them to the deep pit the two white bats had spoken of -- a pit that was less a pit than an abyss, where two rivers joined and the whole flood plunged over the edge into the depths, its thunderous roar never ceasing.

Just as they were about to plunge into the abyss along with the mingbie, it suddenly rose to the surface, leaped into the air, and with a swish spread two stiff wings -- and beneath the stiff wings were soft ones.

The soft wings quivered, keen as blades, buzzing as they beat, and lo -- the creature flew, winging its way into the abyss.