Chapter 765 — Old Memories of the Nether Capital
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 3 of 4
After a while, Shen Mu brought the boat to a stop by the gate. The tall, towering gate-towers and walls had all been smashed to powder; gate and wall alike had been punched through by a great hole, a hole shaped like a man. From it one could tell that this nameless existence of Youdu had a plump, squat body, yet was savage beyond measure, its physical body so mighty as to beggar the imagination.
The little boat sailed in through that breach, into the abandoned fortress. Within, everything had been wrecked past any trace of its former glory; all had been smashed to bits.
Suddenly Shen Mu came to the center of the fortress, and there he saw the bleached bones of tens of thousands of gods and demons standing upright, arrayed in great circles, one within another. These white bones of gods and demons all leaned toward the center, as though some tremendous force of attraction at the center were drawing their bodies, and they were struggling against it.
Shen Mu urged the boat to the center of the circles, and there, at the very middle, were two enormous footprints.
His little boat halted above those footprints. Shen Mu stood aboard, gazing at the skeletons of gods and demons on every side. These white bones must have come charging from all directions after the nameless existence had broken the fortress; and then, at that moment, that nameless existence suddenly erupted.
"Aaaah!"
Shen Mu opened his mouth, turned his head, and let out a shout at the surrounding skeletons of gods and demons. Then he shook his head. "No, they were not blasted to death by sound waves. It must have been..."
He turned his head and drew a long breath, sucking in the air all around. Then he nodded. "Yes, that's it. That nameless existence suddenly drew out the primordial spirits of these gods and demons and devoured them clean, not a scrap left! To swallow tens of thousands of gods and demons in a single breath. Savage. Truly savage!"
The little boat leapt over the fortress and went on until it reached the bend of the Lord of Earth's leg, where there were chain cities: thick, massive chains strung together to form cities one after another.
Shen Mu steered the boat through a towering gateway, only to find another world within. Here palaces rose high and stretched on without end, cities within cities, but all had been beaten into ruins, heavy with demonic aura. Only a few green-skinned imps lived here, and they were terrified of people: when they saw his boat fly in, they turned into wisps of black smoke and slipped away, no one knew where.
A strange look came over Shen Mu's face. He hastily backed out of the gateway and looked up, and saw that this towering portal too had been struck and broken off.
He lowered his head and searched, and after a moment saw the characters upon the broken gateway. He drew in a sharp breath.
"The Southern Heavenly Gate! This is a Heavenly Palace!"
His mind reeled. He steadied himself, then entered the Heavenly Palace again. He flew past the Jade Terrace and the Jade Pool; the Jade Pool was dry, as though someone had drained it in a single gulp. The God-Slaying Terrace had been smashed to powder, the Jade Capital City battered down, and great holes punched through the Lingxiao Hall. The Imperial Throne had been dragged out and seemed to have been crushed by a great backside, pressed into the ground of the Jade Capital City, smashed to bits.
"The souls qualified to dwell in a Heavenly Palace were, in life, either mighty ones of the Imperial Throne realm or beings of the Lingxiao realm. And yet the nameless existence wrecked their palace. I fear the master of this place was eaten too, by that existence savage by nature!"
He left that Heavenly Palace, and the more he saw, the more his heart quailed. Youdu twenty-two years ago had clearly suffered a catastrophe beyond measure; the souls who lived here had met with a massacre at the hands of that nameless existence, with grievous losses.