Chapter 502 — The Shenwang Hall of the Netherworld
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 2 of 4
The bird-headed deity Chixiu said, "Do not look at them. Beware lest they seize your body."
Shen Mu hastily withdrew his gaze, but his curiosity stirred again; instead of looking at the wandering remnant souls in the air, he studied the others.
Soon he discovered something peculiar: apart from those remnant souls in the sky, there were people here with no bodies at all!
He saw many who had not the least scrap of flesh, only a primordial spirit!
Even as bare primordial spirits, these people were exceedingly powerful; but since a primordial spirit's form differs from a human body's, they often took on the shapes of gods and monsters.
The most common were the primordial spirit forms of the four great spirit bodies: the Vermilion Bird deity, the Black Tortoise deity, the Azure Dragon deity, the White Tiger deity.
But more primordial spirits took shapes other than these four, shapes grotesque beyond reckoning: god-faces of blue skin and protruding fangs; bull-headed gods wreathed in fire with horns on their crowns; serpents with human heads; deities with three heads and six arms — every shape imaginable.
"These are no remnant souls; their primordial spirits are whole. Where do they come from? Since they have only primordial spirits here and no bodies, does that not mean their bodies are still alive?"
The key struck Shen Mu all at once.
The bodies of these primordial spirits were still alive!
He stared wide-eyed. There were many primordial spirits in the city; in the short span since entering, he had already seen more than two hundred of them in every shape. Did that mean more than two hundred deities were still alive?
Where in this world were there two hundred-odd deities?
More than that: those two hundred were only what he had glimpsed just after entering. Plainly this city held far more primordial spirits still!
And this city was but one divine city of Fengdu. From the high vantage he had taken on his last visit, Fengdu must hold a good many of them; nine or ten he had seen then, each of them immense!
Then how many living deities were there in this world?
"Why would these deities abandon their bodies and enter Fengdu? And where are their bodies... wait!"
Shen Mu's mind roared; blood and qi surged into his brain, and his ears rang.
There were so many deities in this world!
Only, all of these deities had already turned into stone statues!
Stone statues that sheltered the living in the Barren Ruins!
Did that not mean these statues might at any moment revive and become deities once more?
The conjecture was staggering!
For the longest time, the strange and uncanny events of the Barren Ruins had plagued Shen Mu, and if this conjecture held true, he could account for a portion of them.
For instance, the affair of the Heavenly King's stone statue at the Heavenly King Temple riding Long Qilin through the night to behead the Dragon King!
For instance, the affair of the White Bat idol of the Nether Valley coming back to life!
And again, the night he and the village headman wandered the Barren Ruins and saw gods and demons do battle in the dark!
Of course, many things here remained beyond explanation. In the night beheading of the Dragon King, the Heavenly King of the Heavenly King Temple acted on the Kaihuang's decree to slay the rebellious Dragon King — but whence came that decree?
In the White Bat revival, why was there deep in the Nether Valley a fossil deity that seemed to possess an Overlord Body? Why was there a passage there connecting to Youdu?
In the battle of gods and demons, who was the foe that the gods and demons of the Barren Ruins fought?
Moreover, the primordial spirits of the deities of Fengdu could not explain the overlapping of the five worlds at the source of the Yong River, nor Shen Mu's return to high antiquity.
"The uncanny phenomena of the Barren Ruins are like the sea of mist beyond Fengdu: brush the clouds aside and more clouds appear; it is hard to see their true face." Shen Mu thought.