Chapter 495 — The Broken Arm, the Blood Grudge
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 1 of 4
Silence settled over the chest once more, a stillness absolute; no sound could be heard, not even the sound of breathing.
Yet Shen Mu moved through that darkness with perfect ease, and without the faintest whisper of sound—until a single drop of sweat fell, struck a pool of blood, and made the softest of noises.
The owner of that drop of sweat shifted his feet at once, and then felt a sudden agony in his chest: his heart had been pierced through by a bamboo staff.
Shen Mu drew the staff out from behind him and moved on, silent and soundless; behind him came the sound of a body toppling.
That sound at once set off a violent upheaval. The many otherworldly demons all around struck out in turn, and a storm of divine abilities and blazing primordial weapons came crashing toward the place the sound had come from.
Amid the flare and fade of divine abilities and primordial weapons, Shen Mu flickered through the interior of the chest like a ghost, and one wielder of divine powers after another died at his hands. When the lights died and darkness returned utterly, the wielders stood swaying, then toppled dead to the ground.
Stillness returned once more.
The interior of the chest spanned a hundred zhang in every direction—by reckoning not small at all, a hundred and thirty or forty mu in area.
Several hundred people spread across such a space would by no means be crowded, even with a colossal creature like the Dragon Qilin among them. Yet to wielders of divine abilities such as these, the space seemed utterly cramped.
For them, a divine ability could arrive in the blink of an eye; a mighty enough art could sweep every corner of this place.
When Shen Mu had gathered them into the chest, panic had seized them all and they had instantly fallen to fighting, which was why the chest had shuddered and rocked so violently at first.
That had been the darkest, most chaotic hour of all: every man struck out in every direction to save his own skin, and no small number of the powerful died at the hands of their own side.
The chaos did not last long. A powerful being of the Heavenly Human realm spoke up at once, telling everyone not to panic.
That Heavenly Human realm expert was a clever one, but the next moment Shen Mu ran him through, and chaos broke out afresh. In the midst of it Shen Mu killed with staff in hand, and even those of the Heavenly Human realm could not escape death once he closed in.
When that bout of chaos subsided, someone tried to open the chest and let in the light—and was pierced dead by a single thrust of Shen Mu's staff.
In the interval they went through several more life-and-death struggles. Now every soul in the chest feared for his life: they suppressed the beating of their own hearts, held their breath, and even pressed their wounds shut, refusing to let blood flow, lest they draw Shen Mu's attention.
They even had to shut their eyes, for eyes would betray their position in the dark.
These wielders of divine abilities had mostly cultivated pupil arts, divine powers of the eye, and their eyes gave off light—making them without doubt Shen Mu's choicest targets.
Shen Mu was like a bat in the darkness, appearing and vanishing at will; any sound at all would rouse him and bring death.
In this suffocating darkness lurked a demon king ready at any moment to take their lives.
The chest opened and shut and spat out a few more corpses. In the instant it opened, light poured down from above, and everyone within felt a chill of dread. They shifted their positions one and all, not daring to stay where they were. After a brief spell of chaos came again the clash of divine abilities and the sound of bodies hitting the ground, and several more died in the confusion.
"I can't take this anymore!"
One of the otherworldly demons could at last bear that unbearable atmosphere no longer. His mind shattered, and he flung divine abilities and primordial weapons in every direction, shrieking, "Nobody come near me! Die! All of you, die!"