Chapter 512 — Scion of the Netherworld

"Xing An!"

Shen Mu rushed to the riverbank. The mist over the water grew thicker, fighting the sun's flames, and he could no longer see any trace of Xing An.

"He's fallen into Youdu."

The god Chi Xiu flapped his wings twice; the sun's true fire was useless against him as well. He urged, "Hurry — King Yama is still waiting!"

Shen Mu steadied himself and followed him into Shenwang Hall.

Inside Shenwang Hall, King Yama still wore his black robe and black cloak, shrouding both face and body in darkness. Shen Mu looked around but saw none of the ghost kings.

"Chi Xiu, you may leave," said King Yama, seated high on the throne of Shenwang Hall, his voice drifting down.

"Yes." The god Chi Xiu withdrew from Shenwang Hall.

On the throne, King Yama leafed through a volume of records; the rustle of turning pages whispered through the hall. Now only the two of them remained, and he seemed entirely untouched by the rising of the sun.

Shen Mu's heart was uneasy. After a moment, King Yama rose. The lamps of Shenwang Hall dimmed into murk, and Shen Mu felt himself wrapped at once in darkness.

"You come from Carefree Township, is that right? Who is your father?"

Shen Mu was taken aback, not understanding why he should ask such a thing so suddenly. "My father is Qin Hanzhen. His ancestral home should be Carefree Township, but I was not born there..."

"Qin Hanzhen?"

King Yama was stunned. He murmured, "So it has come down to the Han generation? Yu, De, Chang, Ming; Han, Feng, Huan, Zhen. By your generation, the Shen surname should have passed a hundred generations."

He picked up the book he had been reading, found the character Han, and said, "Han is the hundred and sixth generation; Feng is the hundred and seventh. Your true name is not Shen Mu. There should be a Feng in your name."

Shen Mu nodded, but did not tell his true name.

Ever since he had met the Great Venerable, he had understood that speaking his true name was a perilous thing — and most perilous of all before a being like King Yama, who held all of Fengdu in his grasp.

There was, to be sure, Shenwang Hall here, and King Yama possessed the Shen family genealogy. Yet he could not afford to act without caution.

"You were right not to tell me your name. This world is indeed monstrously treacherous."

King Yama said, "I too am surnamed Shen, though mine was a bestowed surname. I was an adopted son. I was nothing at all to begin with — an orphan, alone and without kin. His Majesty permitted me to enter the Shen clan register, and my name stands upon it."

Shen Mu understood: an adopted son, a foster son. He meant that he had not originally been of the Shen family, that later he was granted the surname Shen and taken in as a son.

"It has been a very long time since I last saw a visitor from Carefree Township."

King Yama walked past him to the hall doors and looked out at Fengdu drowned in flame. "I had thought His Majesty would return to this place from Carefree Township. Instead I waited twenty thousand years and never saw him — only the hundred and seventh generation of his descendants. When you used the powers of Youdu to snatch several souls from me, I sensed that your features bore a certain resemblance to His Majesty's. That is why I did not stop you."

Shen Mu was still doubtful. He ventured, "You mean to say Kaihuang is still alive?"

King Yama's face remained shrouded in the black robe; even so fierce a blaze could not pierce the darkness beneath that black cloak. "His Majesty lives. After Carefree Township was opened, he led the last of the gods out of this world, preserving their strength, awaiting the counterattack. His Majesty was a man of great ambition and grand strategy; he perceived early that calamity was coming, and so commanded me to open Fengdu, that the gods who had no time to leave might sink into silence, enter Fengdu, and bide their time until they could rise once more. That wait has lasted twenty thousand years... You said just now that you were not born in Carefree Township. Then where were you born?"

Shen Mu was silent a moment. Then, with effort, he said, "Youdu."