Chapter 304 — The Giant's Body Lies Athwart

Shen Mu calmed his heart, put aside the tangle of thoughts in his mind, turned, and swam toward the ship.

In the years before the Wasteland Cataclysm, many things had happened that later ages would find passing strange; those bygone days had become dust-covered history, secrets unknown to any, waiting for those who came after to unearth the truth in them.

He was still weak, still without the strength to unravel the secrets of history. Shen Mu flew toward the ship that had come from beyond the heavens, approaching with care; the nearer he came, the more he felt its vastness. Of course, beside the Dawn Ark and the Soul Ark this ship was nothing, but beside the tower ships of Jingping Kingdom it was enormous.

This ship did not look like a thing of the mortal world.

Its hull was branded with all manner of strange runes; though many were damaged, some still flickered bright and dim, and between one flicker and the next the very shapes of the runes changed. Studied closely, the changes in those runes seemed to hint at many profound mysteries.

Shen Mu had no leisure to contemplate the runes and marks. He climbed quietly onto the ship's stern; the treasure ship was damaged in many places, but its main body still stood. The honeycomb seal left by the ancient gods was not aimed at them; it was meant only for the creatures of the Nether Capital, and posed no threat to living things of the real world.

Shen Mu landed, and behind him the dragon qilin and the two white bats came down onto the deck as well.

The deck was covered in green slime that gave off a faint glow; Shen Mu accidentally swam onto a patch of it and hastily drew back, only to find that the slime had been drawn out into threads.

"This must be the slime left when the viper worms died," said Fu Yuqiu, scooping up a handful and sniffing at it. The dragon qilin shook its body, and balls of true fire flew out, burning the slime on the deck away.

Suddenly a mass of demonic qi blew in from the direction of the ship's prow.

The dragon qilin's true fire went out at once, and Fu Yuqiu and Fu Yuchun, the two white bats, flashed forward to shield Shen Mu, opening their mouths in soundless shrieks that clashed with the demonic qi.

A thunderous boom -- a force beyond imagining struck them, blasting the two white bats away and hurling Shen Mu and the dragon qilin behind them up into the air as well.

Each of them came down on the deck and looked ahead, their faces wary. There, the darkness came surging toward them as if it were alive, pressing closer and closer. The dragon qilin roared in fury and shook its body; its flesh swelled with a crackling of bone, its dragon scales rasping against one another with a grating sound, and in a moment it revealed its true form, becoming a colossal creature half dragon and half qilin, thunder and fire blazing from its whole body, surging toward the depths of the ship. The dragon qilin opened its mouth and spat out a pillar of light that shot into the thunder and fire.

Its strength was great; even an expert of the Heaven-Man realm would likely have to give way before such a blow.

Yet when the blow fell into the surging darkness, it was like a clay ox entering the sea -- not the least ripple. The two white bats beat their wings and rose, spinning ceaselessly in midair; the white hairs on their bodies flew out like rain, hissing into the darkness like countless white needles.

The two white bats shot away every hair on their bodies, then tried to call their white hairs back, but could not draw them in at all; in an instant they were like two great rats stripped of fur, standing there shivering. The darkness still came on, unhurried, and from within it came a soft laugh and a phrase whose meaning none could tell.

It was not the tongue of the gods, nor the tongue of demons, nor yet a Buddhist true word. Suddenly Shen Mu's expression shifted, and he spoke the only sentence of the Nether Capital tongue he knew.

The darkness halted at once and no longer surged toward them, but receded swiftly; then countless hairs came flying back, hissing as they buried themselves all over the two white bats, until the two were bristling like hedgehogs.

The two white bats, startled and uncertain, hastily shook themselves and drew the white hairs back into their pores.