Chapter 692 — The Carefree Village of the Netherworld
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 1 of 4
Shen Mu looked ahead, and saw only gray-toned mountains and rivers; the earth too was gray. Not far off, black shadows came and went with an eerie elusiveness—demons, surely—drifting to and fro like dark smoke, sudden in their coming and going, impossible to seize.
A demon circled round behind a dark gray tree and secretly took his measure.
Again Shen Mu heard a rustling at his ear—rustling, rustling: when those demons drew near, the darkness flowed, and gave forth that sound.
He walked on. Though beings such as these demons lived here, the place was desolate through and through; perhaps it was the gray that made it so. Yet trees and grasses grew here, and flowers too, and nameless demons besides—let a few more colors be added, and it might well have been another scene altogether.
The demons were indeed stealing toward him, but they kept their distance and only watched, never pressing closer, and to make out their true appearance was difficult besides—it was simply too dim here.
Suddenly something stirred in his heart, and he took a piece of beef from the Taotie Pouch.
Shua—
The beef in his hand vanished in an instant, as if bitten clean away by something. Shen Mu started; he could barely make out a blur of shadow pouncing at the meat in his hand—he had not even seen what it was!
"These strange creatures are everywhere, and their speed is beyond belief. Just what manner of beings are the demons of the Yin Realm?"
This explained why one could not lightly set foot in the darkness of the ruins—once you stepped into the dark, these ubiquitous demons would pounce and gnaw at flesh and blood.
From somewhere far off came the sound of chewing. Shen Mu followed it with his eyes and dimly made out a demon hiding behind a boulder, eating something.
He stepped forward; the demon fled in a fluster, and still he could not see what it looked like.
The sky was murky and uncertain. Shen Mu turned back and fixed the direction he had come from, lest he fail to find his way home, and only then went on.
Out of the gloom came many whispered voices; some demons had gathered together as if deliberating something, and when they saw him approach they scattered like black sand struck by a wild wind.
"Is the whole Yin Realm gray and dark like this? Is there nothing else? Does the darkness truly come from here?"
Shen Mu searched a while and found nothing of use. At last he could bear it no longer: he took out the Book of Life and Death and shone it at one of the demons.
The demon suddenly gave a shrill, wretched scream; black smoke gushed from its body, and the demon shriveled in an instant and dropped to the ground.
"This is..."
Shen Mu's expression changed drastically. He hurried over, and saw that the shriveled demon had become a sheet of human skin!
Just like the god-man he had seen before the stele of the Yin Realm—nothing left but an empty skin!
Alarmed and uncertain, Shen Mu murmured, "Are these demons, then, all skins? Does that mean there are no true demons at all?"
His mind was in chaos; he could not understand how such an outrageous thing could be. After thinking a moment, he drew some distance away and watched from afar.
After a while, darkness came like quicksand, rustling as it bored into that skin, and soon the demon stood up again, appearing and vanishing like a ghost, coming and going without a trace.
Shen Mu steadied himself and abruptly turned back along the way he had come, until he reached the stele. He bowed to the god-man's skin and said, "Senior, forgive the intrusion."
He lifted the skin in both hands and walked once more into the Yin Realm.
Once inside the Yin Realm, the human skin he held in his hands at once took to its legs and ran, vanishing in an instant!
"So that is how it is!"
Shen Mu was deeply shaken. These demons were indeed no true demons, but skins, one after another!