Chapter 516 — The Girl in the Shadows

Shen Mu drew his head back and looked around. Had he not broken the rules of the Waste, had the strange beasts in the ruins not pressed him so hard, he would never have plunged so rashly into the darkness.

He had never once imagined that a day would come when he too would step into the darkness; to step into it himself was a feeling utterly unlike sheltering under the protection of a stone statue or a box.

He felt as though he had melted into the darkness, like a fish in water, blending as water blends with milk: he was himself a part of the darkness.

To his eyes, the darkness was no longer mere darkness; it was like mist, hazy and indistinct.

"This is not true darkness, but a strange kind of substance."

Shen Mu was astonished. He had always been intensely curious about the darkness of the Waste, yet the insufficiency of his cultivation had barred him from entering it. And even with strength enough to enter, one likely could not discover its secrets, for godlike powers such as Lizheng and Xing'an drove the darkness back and would not let it come near.

To drive the darkness back is to make it very hard to discover the truth of the darkness.

Shen Mu, by contrast, had merged with the darkness, and so found it far easier to discover what the darkness truly was.

Lizheng had once conjectured that the darkness of the Waste was not true darkness but another world overlapping with the Waste; this he called a dark realm.

Later, Lizheng discovered that there was not merely one dark realm in the Waste, but many.

He counted Youdu among the dark realms as well.

Yet as Shen Mu came to understand Youdu, he uncovered another secret: Youdu could indeed be called a dark realm, but it was surely only a corner of the dark realm to which it belonged, and the world in which Youdu lay was the Dark Capital.

The Dark Capital was one of the dark realms within the Waste.

Both the Dark Capital and Youdu were in motion, constantly shifting position, and did not wholly cover the Waste. What covered the Waste entirely must be another dark realm.

Now, having stepped into the darkness, Shen Mu had discovered another truth about the darkness of the Waste: the darkness was a strange and wondrous substance.

"I entered another world from the cliff of the Waste, and found that in that world day and night are exactly reversed from day and night in the Waste. And so I made a bold conjecture."

Shen Mu's eyes flickered as he recalled what he had seen and surmised in the golden desert.

That world was the Waste of the Shanghuang era, a golden desert, where he had fled to escape Xing'an.

The desert too had its night and day, but they were exactly opposite to the night and day of the Waste.

So Shen Mu conjectured that the darkness poured in from the Waste of the Shanghuang era: when the sun set, the darkness flowed through the rifts from the Shanghuang Waste into the Kaihuang Waste; the Shanghuang Waste turned to day, the Kaihuang Waste to darkness; and when the sun rose, the darkness flowed back through the rifts into the Shanghuang Waste.

The two Wastes formed an hourglass, and the darkness was the sand within it, flowing back and forth.

Such was his conjecture.

But at the time he had been hunted by Xing'an, and only Ban Gongcuo had been nearby, so he had not spoken this conjecture aloud.

Now, standing within the darkness, he found that it was like some strange substance, which confirmed his conjecture.

"If the rifts in the cliff that cuts across north and south were sealed, could the darkness be dammed up in the Shanghuang Waste, so that from then on the Kaihuang Waste would suffer no more invasions of darkness?"

Shen Mu blinked. The method seemed feasible, though whether it could succeed, there was no telling.

Besides, the cliff was so long, the rifts so many, and more than one world lay beyond them; how to seal them was the greatest problem of all.

"Sealing is not the best way to solve the problem. The best way is to fathom the nature of the darkness and do away with this darkness that can devour other lives."

Shen Mu examined the dark substance closely. It was like mist, having form but no substance. He could see particles within the darkness: black particles that had form but no substance, and could pass through the skin.

"A bizarre substance!"

Astonished, Shen Mu summoned a thread of vital essence and used it to fix a portion of the dark substance in midair; then he passed his palm through the fixed substance. There was no obstruction at all, nor did he feel that he had touched anything.

"What substance is this, exactly? What are its properties?"

Shen Mu was deep in thought when suddenly Long Qilin's flustered voice came from the ruins: "Hierarch, are you still alive?"

The voice seemed very far away, as if it came through a thick wall. Shen Mu called back loudly, "Don't worry, I'm still alive. I'll feed you tomorrow morning."

"Oh."

Long Qilin answered, then protested, "It isn't breakfast I was worried about, it's the Hierarch's safety. Since the Hierarch is fine, I'll go to sleep. Hierarch, play a little while and then come back; tomorrow we still have to be fed and be on our way."

Shen Mu studied it for a while but could not make out what this dark substance was. Just then, he saw the demons in the darkness.

Whispering voices rose all around him. Countless demons hid themselves in the darkness, concealed in the shadows of rocks and the gloom of the woods, quietly watching him; now and then came a rustling sound. These demons in the black shadows moved like ghosts and spirits, leaping from one shadow to the next with such speed that even when Shen Mu roused his Sacred Pupil he could scarcely make out their movements.

Suddenly, he glimpsed a shadow that seemed half unreal, half real, walking in the dark.

These figures seemed to exist between the unreal and the real, coming and going in a flash, and they were not demons, but people!

Human figures!

"How can there be people in the darkness?"

Shen Mu's heart gave a small jolt, and he hurried in pursuit. Apart from himself, only beings with the strength of gods could walk in the darkness, Lizheng, say, or Xing'an, or else certain things that gave off divine light, such as Xing'an's box, forged from the divine bones and hide of a Taotie.

When they entered the darkness, they all gave off divine light that drove the darkness back and held it away.

Yet the figures in the darkness did not drive it back; like Shen Mu, they seemed to have merged with the darkness, and stranger still, they seemed to be made of darkness itself!

Shen Mu followed one of the figures. The figure ahead seemed curious about him as well; it stopped, as if waiting for him to come.

Shen Mu caught up and studied the black figure opposite him with curiosity. The figure tilted its head and studied him in turn; two long braids hung down from the black shadow.

It was a girl. Though he could make out only her outline, he could tell that she was young.

She reached out a hand, as if to touch Shen Mu. Shen Mu reached out too, and their palms met, yet they passed through each other, without touching at all.

The girl in the black shadow seemed quite surprised and said something; what reached Shen Mu's ears was a whispering sound, and he could not make out a word of it.

"How strange."

Puzzled, Shen Mu scratched his head and said, "Can you hear what I'm saying?"

The girl presumably could not understand him either; their voices were distorted by some strange power. Suddenly the girl crouched down, her two braids hanging low, and reached out to write something on the ground.

Shen Mu looked down, but could see only twisted black light flowing over the ground, no writing at all.

He wrote a line on the ground as well. The shadow girl shook her head, meaning that she too could not make out what he had written.