Yama Rising

The spirit streamer promptly propped up the base of the mound of cabinets, restabilizing it in an instant. Ma Liu could feel his scalp going numb as he blurted nervously, “Stop… stop! We’re all colleagues, so let’s talk nicely about things…”

Hearing that, Qin Ye pulled lightly on his spirit streamer, causing the mountain of cabinets to teeter dangerously such that it was once again on the verge of collapse. Ma Liu gasped immediately and yelled at the top of his voice, “This resource center has a total of ten red cabinets, each of which is labelled with the imprint of the Harken at the top right hand corner to indicate its importance. They’re the cabinets which contain the most important resources!! There! I’ve said it, so you--...”

Before he could even finish speaking, Qin Ye promptly tugged with great force, and the entire mountain of gloomwood cabinets came crashing down like a landslide.

“You…” Time seemed to pause at this moment for Ma Liu. Before he could even finish speaking, the first cabinet that fell down struck him squarely across the chest.

Yet, he wasn’t given the luxury of time to operate the Yin energy in his body at all. A split second later, dozens of other cabinets crashed down like an avalanche of rocks, piling heavily onto Ma Liu’s body and sending him crashing straight out of the Pavilion of Transcendence with a look of great disbelief.

Astonishment was written all over his face as he reached out feebly. His lips appeared to tremble slightly, as though he were asking - Haven’t I told you what you wanted to hear?

“Did I ever agree to spare your life in exchange for that information?” Qin Ye looked down at Ma Liu as he sank into the abyss of blight vermin. He chuckled softly, “I might have given you a way out if the Prince of Lanling wasn’t planning an uprising. But now…?”

He transformed into a nethergale and rushed back to the other mountains of cabinets, “Go in peace. Watch out for the thorny roses down below.”

Fwoosh… Ma Liu’s silhouette vanished into the sea of blight vermin below, prompting the blight vermin in the vicinity to rush over towards his silhouette like a pack of piranhas. Within moments, the blight vermin piled on so quickly that there was a huge mound in the wake of where Ma Liu had fallen.

Qin Ye was naturally hardly bothered with the aftermath of his own actions. Instead, he had already rushed into the mound of cabinets and begun to search for his target - the red cabinets.

Given the sheer number of blight vermin below, eliminating them was hardly an option. His best bet right now was to grab as much as he could before making his quick escape. He searched as quickly as he could, and soon caught sight of a special-looking row of cabinets.

These red cabinets were all hidden behind mountain of cabinets, and affixed to the wall behind them by iron cables. As he got closer, he could also make out the image of the Harken imprinted on the top right hand corner of each cabinet. Unlike the rest, these cabinets didn’t have pull-out drawers, and were instead equipped with closed sliding doors. Furthermore, the doors were densely covered with traces of talismans whose lustre had already faded since a long time ago.

I’ve finally found it… Qin Ye heaved a sigh of relief and eagerly pulled open one of the sliding doors.

The inner part of the cabinets was compartmentalized in a peculiar manner. There was an eight-trigram taiji symbol etched on the back wall of the cabinet, while eight chains made of unknown materials suspended a Qiankun Pouch in mid-air. Unlike other Qiankun Pouches, this pouch had a ‘one’ embroidered in gold threads on its surface.

With a confident sweep of his spirit streamer, the Qiankun Pouch broke free of its chains and fell directly into his hands. But just as he was about to move onto the door of the next cabinet, his eyes suddenly widened, and his entire being froze in place as though he were thunderstruck.

Ka-ka-ka… A soft sound no different from shifting chains cut through the silence of the room. Qin Ye turned around with a grim expression as he glanced at the first of the red cabinets that he had just moved away from.

The sliding door to the cabinet was still open, and Qin Ye could see that the eight chains that were earlier suspending the Qiankun Pouch had already retracted slightly. The eight-trigram taiji symbol at the back of the cabinet was already rotating slowly, and it was clear that the soft sounds of shifting chains came directly from behind the symbol.

The entire resource centre was completely silent, and the soft sounds of the chains could be heard patently clearly. They started soft, but then slowly got louder and louder in a matter of seconds. Finally, approximately ten seconds later, the entire Pavilion of Transcendence resounded with a cacophonous sound of chains from the walls, almost as though a sleeping giant puppet was just about to awaken from its long slumber!

Buzz… A loud hum began to stir from the base of the Pavilion of Transcendence, growing louder and clearer with every second that passed. Qin Ye felt the ground underneath his feet tremble lightly, and then a muffle sound rang out from afar, almost as if something had… emerged from the ground.

In fact, he could tell that the muffled sound was coming from right beneath his feet. Crash… crash… crash… crash! There was a constant sound that was initially muffled and dull, but quickly became clearer and crisper in no time! Cold sweat broke our profusely across Qin Ye’s forehead. Within moments, he understood that this was the sound of something that had been shot from the base of the Pavilion of Transcendence.

Furthermore, the object that had shot up from the ground was clearly penetrating floor after floor of the entire building, and the structural layers of the building did nothing to impede its swift approach.

For some reason, his mind instantly went into overdrive, blaring with warning signs of an impending life-and-death crisis. The walls had already begun to tremble violently, while the crisp cracking sound seemed to be drawing closer and closer right underneath his feet. He didn’t have the luxury of time to weigh his options. His body instantly swung into motion, and he promptly rolled several meters across the ground. A split-second later, the ground right beneath where he had been standing just moments ago burst open, and a long, dark object rushed straight through the fog of dirt and debris with a piercing wail!

It looked just like a frenzied dragon that was rising straight out of the waters, or a fiery phoenix that was blazing into the skies. With a deafening bang, the object shot straight through thirty floors of the Pavilion of Transcendence as though it were thin paper and rose to the sky at extreme speeds. In fact, it was so quick that it appeared no different from a fleeting shadow. The shadow was quickly followed by the thunderous roar of a sonic boom, before a violent wind suddenly swept through the Pavilion of Transcendence, sending Qin Ye’s clothes fluttering wildly.

Qin Ye’s entire being froze in place. He saw it. Even though the object was incredibly fast and practically indestructible, Qin Ye had still managed to steal a glance at its true form.

It was a spear.

A spear that had been ejected from the base of the Pavilion of Transcendence. The spear was approximately one meter across in girth and fifteen meters in length. At such speeds, all that stood in its way were bound to perish - including the dozen or so unfortunate blight vermin that had been skewered to the tip of the spear.

Incidentally, they were also the ones that made the spear appear completely black in colour. The spear ran straight through their tough carapace, and they were unable to do anything but shriek in misery.

It was simply inconceivable that a spear that had been propelled from a dozens of meters below could penetrate thirty floors of the Pavilion of Transcendence and still contain such frightening power.

Qin Ye simply couldn’t fathom the might of the mechanism that hid in the base of the building.

However, before he could even take a breather, Qin Ye’s body trembled violently, and he cursed under his breath, “Holy shit.”

Ka-ka-ka-ka-ka-ka… A series of dull, muffled thuds came from below him once more in the exact same fashion as before, followed promptly by the bursting sounds coming from every floor in the building.

The crisp cracking and crashing sounds were endless and incessant, and they caused a wave of extreme fear to wash over Qin Ye’s heart and mind. His teeth began to chatter, and he promptly grabbed all the Qiankun Pouches around him, transformed into a nethergale and rushed straight for the roof of the building. The spirit streamer in his arm instantly glowed with a dark lustre, and he thrust it straight at the roof using all of his might, blowing a hole that was over ten meters large in the roof as he rushed straight out.

And he did all that in spite of the fact that there was a great sea of blight vermin waiting for him below.

Because he knew full well that he would be skewered in an instant if he stayed in the Pavilion of Transcendence any longer!

In fact, he didn’t even want to be anywhere within a hundred meter radius of the collapsing building right now.

Anitya Hellguards were equipped with the ability of brief flight and gliding. His clothes puffed up, and the spirit streamer transformed into a massive umbrella that drifted in the sky, away from the Pavilion of Transcendence. And it was just then that the Pavilion of Transcendence suddenly erupted with an earth-shattering tremor, and countless spears rushed out of the building like a fountain of death.

Not a moment too soon - he would have been dead if he had left the building a single minute later.

Under the dark canopy of the skies, a building that was tilting dangerously suddenly blew its top with hundreds upon hundreds of massive spears which left thousands of holes in the building in its wake. The spears shot into the sky, and then flipped around and began to rain down like a cataclysmic meteor shower. The scene was completely breathtaking.

“Haa…” Qin Ye gasped and closed his eyes. His heart was palpitating uncontrollably. He was holding onto a dozen or so Qiankun Pouches in his hands, yet he simply couldn’t stop his fingers from shivering at all. His back was also soaked through with cold sweat.

A millisecond had spelt the difference between life and death. 

He finally had it all figured out. The cabinets imprinted with the symbol of the Harken required special ways of operating and retrieval of their contents. As long as someone attempted to remove something with the incorrect method, particularly when the Pavilion of Transcendence was such a place of great importance, then it could only mean one thing.

Hell had fallen into the hands of invaders.

And Hell would rather destroy everything than let it all fall into the hands of its enemies!

The mechanism of the spears was a last resort to preserve the everlasting dignity of the old Hell. Qin Ye was most fortunate that the defensive talismans protecting the building had already lost its effect. Otherwise, with the talismans sealing the building in from outside and the spears devastating everything in its path from within, not even an Infernal Judge would be able to escape from certain death in that instant.

Much less a mere Anitya Hellguard like Qin Ye.

He drew a deep breath and channeled his Yin energy as he hurried away from the Pavilion of Transcendence at top speed. Fengdu Necropolis had stood for three thousand long years, and there were most certainly mechanical traps still hidden all over the place. Even if Hell’s residents were long gone by now, a single misstep might still very well lead to death.

Boom! Boom! Boom! The massive spears fell back down as soon as he got several hundred meters away from the building, crashing into the ground like unyielding bolts of thunder. Crash! Crash! Crash! Like meteorites, each spear crashed into the ground with such force that it left a web of cracks rippling outward from the epicenter of impact. Innumerable blight vermin surrounding the building were completely obliterated within moments, while the shattered Pavilion of Transcendence appeared like a valiant warrior on its final hurrah of martyrdom.

It’s fate had clearly been sealed in stone.

With its foundation having been gnawed away by the copious blight vermin around, the activation of its final defense mechanism was like the last straw that broke the camel’s back. As soon as the final spear from its defense mechanism landed right back down onto the ground, the Pavilion of Transcendence erupted with yet another earth-shattering tremor. And then, the building that had been in existence for thousands of years finally collapsed under the sheer weight of its own existence. It snapped right in the middle and crashed down mightily, sending a large cloud of dust and debris scattering everywhere. The massive shockwave from its collapse expanded outwards like a massive tsunami, causing houses to collapse and generating more debris as it went. The entire Hell trembled violently, as though paying homage to its end.

Rumble… Qin Ye watched silently as the imposing Pavilion of Transcendence fell like a dragon that had lost its wings. He was filled with emotion at the sight. Then, when the dust finally settled, he saw copious dark shadows surge up from beneath like an all consuming tide, engulfing what little remained of the Pavilion of Transcendence at once.

“Earth to earth, ashes to ashes and dust to dust.” Qin Ye sighed softly, “There’s no everlasting dynasty in this world, nor are there any immortal humans. Everything comes and goes in its own time. Go in peace… I shall personally see to it that your glorious legacy will be reborn once again.”

He swept a gaze wistfully across the horizon, “My mission here is completed. I wonder how the others are doing? Arthis didn’t even tell me where I should be meeting up with her. How irresponsible…”

Then, just as he was shaking off the tension in his mind, a tyrannical roar suddenly reverberated through the corners of Fengdu Necropolis!

SSSSSSSS!!!

It was almost as though a superstorm was brewing in the distance.

Qin Ye immediately glanced over, and his heart nearly skipped a beat.

“This is…”

……………………………………………………..

Murai Sadakatsu stood valiantly with his two sabers in hand at the top floor of a tall building. 

He was clothed in his crimson great armor. Four additional hands extended out of his back, while there were two sides to his face. He resembled an asura incarnate. His pupils blazed with jade-green netherflames that rose a meter into the air. A twenty-meter large blight vermin shrieked in despair, before it promptly split in two right down the middle.

Whoosh… The Yin energy from the blight vermin was sucked into the necklace of skulls dangling around Murai Sadakatsu’s neck. He licked his lips greedily, “How dare mere insects like you obstruct my path. Insolence.”

Then, he turned to look at a location behind the blight vermin, where a statue of an asura was located. The asura had three heads and six arms, replete with a green face and menacing fangs. With its two middle arms, the sculpture held a box that appeared to be made out of jade.

“Is this the place? The most crucial of all places for the Cathayan Yin soldiers?”

His tongue lashed out and motioned to retrieve the jade box. But just as it was about to touch the box, a violent roar suddenly reverberated throughout Hell!

“This is…” Murai Sadakatsu gasped in horror and froze in his place as he looked out of the window, “Infernal Judge? And not just one Infernal Judge at that!”