Chapter 513 — Boundless Terror
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 2 of 4
Suddenly Yama began to move, pacing slowly around him as he said in a low voice: "There are few living people in Youdu, yet demons may be born there—for those demons are aggregations of wronged souls and the demonic essence of Youdu. You have seen the demons beneath the Bridge of Helplessness; they came from Youdu. Your birth in Youdu was not like theirs. Those demons are born of the resentment of heaven and earth and of demonic nature, while you were born of the womb. But even so, there is a chance that you have been tainted by the demonic essence of Youdu."
"Tainted by the demonic essence of Youdu?"
Shen Mu probed, "What do you mean?"
Shock stirred in his heart. Once, a demon god had told him that they were alike—both of them demons. Could it be that the demon god had not been lying, and that he truly carried demonic nature within him?
And that he had been born with it?
Yama did not go on. Instead, he pushed back the hood of his black robe, revealing the face beneath.
Before Shen Mu could glimpse his features, he saw that Yama's eyes had become two spinning vortexes, drawing his mind and spirit helplessly into them.
"Do not be afraid. I am merely probing your soul, to see whether it differs from that of a man born in the world of the living."
Shen Mu felt heaven and earth wheel around him. In that moment, he seemed to be standing at the center of two enormous eyes, blood-red, impossibly vast, their pupils fixed upon him—one on his left, one on his right. He spun and fell, plummeting endlessly, as though he would never touch bottom.
It was as if he had plunged into measureless darkness once more, sinking deeper without end.
Yama's voice came to him, seeming immeasurably far away—beyond the ninth heaven: "No human has ever been born in Youdu, and I do not know what changes such a birth might bring. But I can guess that something utterly dreadful happened when you came into the world. The demonic essence and lingering souls adrift in Youdu would have tried to force their way into your body. Your mother could likely have held off the wandering ghosts of Youdu, but she may not have been able to hold off its demonic essence. I want to see what Youdu has done to you..."
Shen Mu strove to anchor his wandering mind. Then, abruptly, the jade pendant at his throat floated upward, its light exploding outward with a hum, as if defying Yama's blood-red eyes.
The two eyes swelled even larger; the pendant's light blazed ever brighter. In the end, Yama's blood-red eyes crushed that radiance down.
Shen Mu wanted to struggle, but not a shred of power in his body would answer his call. He could only let those blood-red nightmare eyes continue to probe him, continue to press down upon him.
He felt his physical body lose all its weight—as though his flesh had been peeled away from his soul.
Like a drowning man, his breath failed. His soul drifted, bit by bit, out of his body.
At that very moment, Shen Mu's spinning suddenly stopped. All around him came whispering, as if countless demon lords hid in the boundless dark, muttering in low voices.
The whispering drew closer, growing louder, growing more raucous, until it swelled into a thunderous clamor of countless voices, speaking different words in different tongues—a din that threatened to split his skull, scattering his thoughts and consciousness into chaos.
At last, all those voices folded into one another and became a single voice.
It was the demon tongue of Youdu!
"Silence!"
Shen Mu bellowed in fury—yet the sound that tore from his throat was not the speech of men. It was the demon tongue of Youdu!
Suddenly a power of unspeakable terror erupted from within him, and his body could move again. He still stood alone between the two blood-red eyes—and behind him, in the fathomless dark, a rift tore open in the blackness!