Chapter 502 — The Shenwang Hall of the Netherworld

Shen Mu and Long Qilin stared blankly, heads thrown back, at the colossus beside them, and could not find their voices.

The Taotie stood at their side like a goat the size of a mountain peak, its forelimbs immensely powerful, its hind limbs thick and short, its coat bearing bronze-colored markings, ring upon ring.

The creature had a face like a man's, yet its features were monstrously strange: its eyes grew beneath its armpits, at the place where the forelegs joined the chest; its mouth was square and wide, crowded with tiger fangs; its goat horns jutted out like spikes — it looked utterly savage!

Xing An's box had been refined from the hide and bone of a Taotie; the hide was the box's outer covering, the bone its frame.

Consider this: Shen Mu owned two Taotie pouches, and the Taotie hide used for both of them together was no more than a foot square. Yet the whole outside of this great box was Taotie hide!

Add to that the Taotie bone bracing the space within, and this box was luxury beyond all compare!

Shen Mu's Taotie pouches had not changed, because the space inside them was not joined to the world outside; the box, however, was joined to the outer space, and so it had become a Taotie!

The box had changed slowly, most likely because the space within it was a world unto itself; this time, after it spat out the people in its belly and opened, its inner space came into connection with Fengdu, so that the box too was affected by the realm of the living dead in Fengdu.

Shen Mu drew back his gaze and hurriedly clutched the Taotie pouch at his waist, thinking, "My Taotie pouches must be kept safe as well. I must never open them, or it will not be two Taotie pouches hanging at my waist, but me hanging at the waists of two Taoties..."

To be hung at the waist of two Taoties the size of mountain ranges, squeezed between them, would be no pleasant business at all; whether they squeezed or tugged, he would die a most wretched death!

The Taotie that the great box had become lifted a paw, still bewildered, quite unable to fathom why such a change had come over it.

But it did not ponder long; in the next instant it stretched its legs and ran, chasing the people fleeing toward Fengdu, opening its vast mouth in delight to swallow them.

Though it had been affected by the realm of the living dead and now possessed flesh and blood, its mind remained a simple one. After all, it was only a box that Shen Mu had awakened.

And the dead it pursued were frightened out of their wits, running for dear life.

The Taotie is the most notorious of the great ferocious beasts in the Barren Ruins; it eats anything, never choosy — small wonder they fled in every direction in terror.

Shen Mu hesitated a moment, then called out, and the Taotie came running back, casting one last reluctant glance at the dead who fled for their lives; then it looked at Long Qilin and brightened again, opening its inconceivably enormous mouth.

Long Qilin shuddered with cold. "You are not to eat me!" he cried. "I treat you as a good brother, and you mean to eat me — is there no justice in heaven or earth?"

Shen Mu soothed him: "Don't worry, it doesn't want to eat you. It just likes to collect bones, and severed hands and feet... Spit it out, spit it out this instant! Damned box, stinking box, you swallowed me up along with everything else! Spit it out..."

...

At last they came to the first divine city of Fengdu. Here Shen Mu saw every manner of strange passerby: some had no heads, some had a great hole split in their foreheads, others were missing an arm or a leg.

There were also, however, mighty ones who had died ordinary deaths, whole in hand and foot.

The first divine city was crowded, and strange beings drifted in the air as well — not dead men, but something like spirits.

"Those are mighty ones whose souls were scattered. Their remnant souls wander here; even in Fengdu they have no bodies."

The bird-headed deity Chixiu said, "Do not look at them. Beware lest they seize your body."

Shen Mu hastily withdrew his gaze, but his curiosity stirred again; instead of looking at the wandering remnant souls in the air, he studied the others.

Soon he discovered something peculiar: apart from those remnant souls in the sky, there were people here with no bodies at all!

He saw many who had not the least scrap of flesh, only a primordial spirit!

Even as bare primordial spirits, these people were exceedingly powerful; but since a primordial spirit's form differs from a human body's, they often took on the shapes of gods and monsters.

The most common were the primordial spirit forms of the four great spirit bodies: the Vermilion Bird deity, the Black Tortoise deity, the Azure Dragon deity, the White Tiger deity.

But more primordial spirits took shapes other than these four, shapes grotesque beyond reckoning: god-faces of blue skin and protruding fangs; bull-headed gods wreathed in fire with horns on their crowns; serpents with human heads; deities with three heads and six arms — every shape imaginable.

"These are no remnant souls; their primordial spirits are whole. Where do they come from? Since they have only primordial spirits here and no bodies, does that not mean their bodies are still alive?"

The key struck Shen Mu all at once.

The bodies of these primordial spirits were still alive!

He stared wide-eyed. There were many primordial spirits in the city; in the short span since entering, he had already seen more than two hundred of them in every shape. Did that mean more than two hundred deities were still alive?

Where in this world were there two hundred-odd deities?

More than that: those two hundred were only what he had glimpsed just after entering. Plainly this city held far more primordial spirits still!

And this city was but one divine city of Fengdu. From the high vantage he had taken on his last visit, Fengdu must hold a good many of them; nine or ten he had seen then, each of them immense!

Then how many living deities were there in this world?

"Why would these deities abandon their bodies and enter Fengdu? And where are their bodies... wait!"

Shen Mu's mind roared; blood and qi surged into his brain, and his ears rang.

There were so many deities in this world!

Only, all of these deities had already turned into stone statues!

Stone statues that sheltered the living in the Barren Ruins!

Did that not mean these statues might at any moment revive and become deities once more?

The conjecture was staggering!

For the longest time, the strange and uncanny events of the Barren Ruins had plagued Shen Mu, and if this conjecture held true, he could account for a portion of them.

For instance, the affair of the Heavenly King's stone statue at the Heavenly King Temple riding Long Qilin through the night to behead the Dragon King!

For instance, the affair of the White Bat idol of the Nether Valley coming back to life!

And again, the night he and the village headman wandered the Barren Ruins and saw gods and demons do battle in the dark!

Of course, many things here remained beyond explanation. In the night beheading of the Dragon King, the Heavenly King of the Heavenly King Temple acted on the Kaihuang's decree to slay the rebellious Dragon King — but whence came that decree?

In the White Bat revival, why was there deep in the Nether Valley a fossil deity that seemed to possess an Overlord Body? Why was there a passage there connecting to Youdu?

In the battle of gods and demons, who was the foe that the gods and demons of the Barren Ruins fought?

Moreover, the primordial spirits of the deities of Fengdu could not explain the overlapping of the five worlds at the source of the Yong River, nor Shen Mu's return to high antiquity.

"The uncanny phenomena of the Barren Ruins are like the sea of mist beyond Fengdu: brush the clouds aside and more clouds appear; it is hard to see their true face." Shen Mu thought.