Chapter 697 — Rebirth in the Netherworld

Shen Mu drew a long breath and quelled the agitation in his heart.

To gather Lady Tianyin's soul, the Soul-Summoning Art alone could never suffice.

Soul-Summoning was a divine ability that drew souls forth from the Gloom Capital, leading the departed back to their own flesh.

But Lady Tianyin had been devoured by starving wraiths until only her skin remained, and her soul, in all likelihood, had been eaten clean away, dissolved into the Tianyin Realm and made a part of its countless grains of black sand. To gather her soul, he would have to remold the Soul-Summoning Art itself!

It was the Kaihuang god who had "awakened" him to the idea of using a remolded Soul-Summoning Art to recollect Lady Tianyin's soul.

Should her soul return, the Netherworld's grip on the darkness of the Wasteland could be sealed shut.

What was more, Lady Tianyin surely knew a great many secrets unknown to anyone else, and she might well help Shen Mu unravel much of the Wasteland's hidden truth.

And since she was a heaven-born sacred being, this great ally might lighten the pressure on Jingping as well. Of course, all of it rested on whether his remolded Soul-Summoning Art could avail — whether it could gather Lady Tianyin's soul.

If the gathering failed, he could never escape her pursuit; death was his only road. The footsteps grew heavier and heavier; through the murky air Lady Tianyin's colossal silhouette came looming in and out of view.

She had come following the sound of Shen Mu's voice; but what occupied that skin was, after all, a starving wraith, not the true Lady Tianyin, and no vast divine powers did it command.

It could not see what lurked in the gloom; it could only fix its position by sound. Shen Mu steadied his mind, and behind him the Heaven-Bearing Gate suddenly took shape; the scroll in his hand gradually turned from dim to distinct.

Standing atop the pagoda's spire, he opened the ancient scroll and read out the Gloom Capital script upon it, the cadenced words of the Gloom Capital tongue flowing from his mouth unhurried, obscure, and profound.

Behind him, the Heaven-Bearing Gate abruptly flipped over — what had opened outward now opened inward; what had been the lintel was now the threshold, and what had been the threshold was now the lintel. The Heaven-Bearing Gate, as its name declared, was the portal that bore up heaven and earth: heaven was the Mystic Capital, earth the Gloom Capital, and above this portal's lintel stretched the domain of the Mystic Capital while below its threshold lay the domain of the Gloom Capital.

Never before had Shen Mu considered what place stood between heaven and earth; now he saw the answer clearly. Between heaven and earth lay the human world, but there was also a place called the Yin of Heaven.

By upending the Heaven-Bearing Gate he made heaven and earth turn over, and the Yin of Heaven, which had been beneath heaven, would become that which crowned heaven. This change, of course, was not a true flipping of the Tianyin Realm so as to set it above the Mystic Capital; rather, he was altering the structure of the Heaven-Bearing Gate ability.

Alter the structure of an ability, and its function differs from its former self; this time he had reversed it completely. The scroll in his hand was not a tool for working the ability but a tool for making sure he mispronounced not a single word — a dictionary of the Gloom Capital tongue, as it were.

As the rise and fall of his voice swelled ever wider, the high notes growing ever more stirring and the low notes ever more resonant, the Heaven-Bearing Gate no longer sent forth gusts of chill yin wind; little by little, light came shining from within it.

At the same time, Lady Tianyin finally fixed his position. She came straight toward him, her form growing ever more distinct.

When the black mist before her scattered, she stood before the high tower.

Without an instant's deliberation, the Kaihuang god opened the Book of Life and Death, and in the twinkling of an eye its light fell upon Lady Tianyin's face! Her features twisted, and she burst into a shrill, anguished howl, black smoke billowing from her eyes, ears, nose, and mouth.

Whoosh! Her palm rose to cover her face, and her five fingers writhed at once like worms, shriveling at shocking speed.

Her other hand came up, groping for the Kaihuang god on the tower's top; but this palm too was deflated by the Book's light, and by the time it reached the spire it had become a limp weightless husk.

It harmed neither Shen Mu nor the Kaihuang god.

Shen Mu, undistracted, went on chanting in the Gloom Capital tongue.

The light within the Heaven-Bearing Gate burned ever brighter, pouring out in ever greater floods, and when that dazzling radiance streamed from the portal it was borne on a vast sound that shook heaven and earth.

That sound overlapped with Shen Mu's voice until the two seemed one, yet it had been magnified a thousandfold by the Heaven-Bearing Gate as it crashed back and forth between heaven and earth!

With a resonant hum the light from the gate struck Lady Tianyin's body, and her shrieks grew yet more piercing, so ear-splitting that they nearly eclipsed the Gloom Capital chant from Shen Mu and the gate.

Suddenly she shifted, dodging the Book's light, and her hand recovered at lightning speed. This sacred being, born of heaven and bred of earth, actually seized the tower's base with one enormous hand and bodily lifted the measureless pagoda aloft!

The Kaihuang god hastily shifted the Book of Life and Death, and its light fell upon her face again. Black smoke gushed from her visage as her features withered before the eye, until she became a faceless woman. Shen Mu's Heaven-Bearing Gate moved with her too, its light never once leaving her face from the start.

The light within the gateway blazed more brilliantly still, and the voice within it rose ever louder on high and sank ever deeper below, until ears hummed and chests vibrated in resonance. Her body was illuminated; darkness streamed madly in from all sides, pouring into her, even as the darkness inside her streamed madly out through her face!

Lady Tianyin struggled, shrieked, and swung the pagoda as though it were a trifling toy. Such frightening strength was enough to astound the age — worthy of a heaven-born sacred being indeed!

Shen Mu stood with both feet solidly planted on the spire; however she whirled the tower, he remained unmoved, turning pages and chanting on.

The Kaihuang god did everything in his power to hold his footing, keeping the Book's light on Lady Tianyin's face to drive out ever more black sand.

The black sand rushing in gathered into a rolling torrent of darkness, thick as a dragon, pouring frantically into Lady Tianyin's body. This was soul-summoning!

With the improved Soul-Summoning Art, Shen Mu summoned Lady Tianyin's soul: throughout the whole Tianyin Realm, within every grain of black sand, any fragment of her soul that remained — even the smallest mote — was stirred by his ability and sent flying into her body.

Nor did it stop there: his ability could reach into the Wasteland as well, into every one of the heavens connected to the Tianyin Realm! The Soul-Summoning Art had originally been a spell of the Gloom Capital; only because the practitioners of Jingping had little command of the Gloom Capital tongue had they gradually replaced it with the demon speech in the course of transmission.

Even so, the Soul-Summoning Art could send an ability's power straight into the Gloom Capital and wrest the souls of the dead from Lord Earth himself — such was the strangeness of this art. Only after Shen Mu had mastered the Gloom Capital tongue did the art return to its original face, and the first time he displayed it in dazzling glory was in the Land of Ill Omen in Taihuang Heaven, where he awakened in a single stroke the thousands of god-demons who had died in battle there!