Chapter 513 — Boundless Terror

That eye behind him bore a hideous pupil: three pupils crushed together in one. As the eyeball rolled, the three pupils revolved with it, changing their positions.

The demonic light spilling from that eye spread like black butterfly wings, lending it a beauty both bewitching and profoundly unnatural.

"Silence!"

Shen Mu clasped his head in both hands and howled, "Stop your noise—!"

CRASH—

The space around him convulsed, cracks running across it like fissures in glass.

Yama had no thought left for the power packed into that howl; he only stared, dazed, at the baleful eye behind Shen Mu, murmuring: "Born in Youdu—so it marks you after all. The demonic nature in your body was being suppressed by the jade pendant. Now that I have suppressed the pendant, I have set your Youdu demonic nature free..."

"Stop your noise—!"

The demon tongue of Youdu poured from Shen Mu's lips with a fluency it had never shown before. As the sound rang out, the space around him shattered with a resounding crack, and the world that Yama's two blood-red eyes had conjured crumbled away piece by piece!

Behind him, another rift appeared. A second eye was about to open.

A chill of dread crept through Yama, as if he stood before some primordial beast on the verge of awakening.

"What savage demonic nature! I cannot let it loose!"

He struck without hesitation. The two blood-red eyes retreated at lightning speed, his cloak billowed out, blanketing the heavens and the earth, swallowing the whole of Shenwang Hall, as he marshaled every ounce of his power to suppress the demonic nature within Shen Mu.

A sinister voice—steeped in demonic essence, fluent in the tongue of Youdu—rang through Shenwang Hall: "A mere little ghost, and you dare suppress me?"

BOOM!

Shenwang Hall shook violently. Then it shuddered again, and yet again, convulsing over and over. The great pillars listed and tilted, the roof split open with sharp cracks, and the entire hall slumped askew, as though it might collapse at any moment.

At last, stillness returned to the hall.

Shen Mu opened his eyes and gazed around in bewilderment. Before him, several colossal pillars had snapped into segments, as if sheared apart by claws; others had been bent by some tremendous impact.

Blazing True Yang Fire spilled from the cracks in Shenwang Hall, its tongues devouring the wood.

It looked as though a great battle had been fought here. From above came a groaning and creaking, and every so often a clump of ash and broken tile came pattering down.

"What happened?" he asked, lost.

"You do not know what happened?" Yama's voice came from the darkness within the hall.

Shen Mu looked hurriedly toward it, and saw Yama embedded in the center of a bent pillar, his limbs splayed wide, as though some inconceivable force had driven him bodily into the wood.

Shocked, Shen Mu rushed forward to free him—but Yama waved a hand, wrenched himself loose with an effort, and asked: "You truly have no idea what happened?"

Shen Mu shook his head. He knew nothing of the events just past, only that Yama's eyes had looked at him, and he had sunk in endless circles between two blood-red orbs.

"Not knowing is a mercy. Whatever else you do, keep that jade pendant of the Land of No Worries close. Do not part with it. Never, ever part with it."

Yama released a cloud of stale breath and went on, unhurried: "That pendant means everything to you. Lose it, and things of unspeakable horror will follow."

Shen Mu slipped the pendant from his neck. "May I show it to others?"

Yama's body gave a violent twitch. "Best not!" he snapped.

Shen Mu smiled. "I have taken it off before. I have shown it to others many times."

Yama exhaled another stale breath. "Then they were fortunate. They should count themselves lucky to have survived. You may leave. Chixiu, see him out!"

The deity Chixiu poked his head in, peering about curiously. At the sight of the devastation inside Shenwang Hall, he shrank his neck back and said, "Sect Master Shen, come with me."

Suspicion churning in his heart, Shen Mu hurried out of Shenwang Hall and lowered his voice to the deity Chixiu: "What happened in there?"

"I don't know."

Chixiu shook his head. "It seems some dreadful being attacked Shenwang Hall. Don't speak—you carry the smell of the living..."

"One more thing!"

Yama's voice pursued them from behind. "You may walk into the darkness of the Waste, and the darkness will not harm you. And if the chance ever comes, you should journey to Youdu."

Shen Mu started, turning back with a cry: "I can enter the darkness of the Waste?"

But before Yama could answer, a thunderous boom rang out, and Shenwang Hall collapsed, burying him beneath the rubble.