Chapter 338: Trapped in the Abyss

Su Mu could tell the Pope only wanted him to go, even if it meant handing over two supreme treasures of the Primal Divine Cult.

He had originally assumed the Pope was simply clinging to power—dissatisfied with a newly dropped-in divine envoy and worried about losing control, hence sending him to the Abyss to die. Now, however, it seemed that wasn't the case at all.

The Pope had known about the nightmare apostles all along, and he was scheming something regarding Su Qing.

There was still one thing Su Mu couldn't figure out. Even if the Pope had an ulterior motive, why put on an act? He clearly possessed the strength to control everyone. It couldn't just be because he enjoyed acting, could it?

He had never exposed his Dreamwalking Mode to the Pope. From the Pope's perspective, if he wanted Su Mu to go to the Abyss, he could have easily just used force.

Knowing about the nightmare apostles, luring him to the Abyss, taking a special interest in Su Qing... As all these clues connected...

Su Mu's eyes narrowed slightly as he arrived at the answer.

Supreme Heaven!

The Pope had fought the First Red King, so it was highly likely he had learned about Supreme Heaven and the nightmare apostles from him.

He knew the conditions for using Supreme Heaven: only someone with the bloodline of the Chiyan Imperial Family could use it. This was a threshold the Chiyan Imperial Family had set using Supreme Heaven itself, and establishing this barrier had cost the Royal Family a massive price.

It was incredibly difficult for an outsider to remove this threshold. It wasn't as simple as paying an equal price. Because you weren't a member of the Royal Family, no matter how steep a price you paid, you couldn't even use it, let alone unlock it.

It was an impossible knot. It reminded Su Mu of a joke he had once read: a man left home and forgot his keys, so he called a locksmith. The locksmith asked for his ID, saying he needed to prove the house was his before he could unlock the door.

The man replied that his ID was inside the house, and he could show it once the door was open.

The locksmith said, "If you don't show me your ID, I can't pick the lock for you."

"Once you open it, won't I have my ID?"

"How can I unlock it if you don't have your ID?"

The current situation with Supreme Heaven was somewhat similar.

It seemed the Pope's goal was Supreme Heaven. He had controlled Su Qing for her Chiyan Imperial Family bloodline. After all, since Su Qing was a flesh-and-blood avatar of King Chi, she naturally possessed the royal bloodline.

‘Luring me to the Abyss was just to make me focus entirely on finding Supreme Heaven and bringing it out.’

At this thought, Su Mu gradually sorted out the cause and effect, but a few lingering doubts remained.

How did the Pope know the conditions for using Supreme Heaven? Why would the First Red King have told him?

How did he know Su Qing was King Chi's avatar? And why was he so certain Su Mu could successfully retrieve Supreme Heaven?

Su Mu stopped dwelling on it. Perhaps once he brought Supreme Heaven back, all the answers would reveal themselves.

Soon after, Su Mu left Holy Brilliance City and headed back to the Abyss.

That was right, he still had to go to the Abyss. Regardless of the Pope's motives, Su Mu was determined to obtain Supreme Heaven. Exposing the Pope's conspiracy and tearing up their cordial facade right now would be meaningless.

Relying on dream traversal, Su Mu quickly arrived at the Abyss. Looking at the bottomless, gaping rift, he didn't hesitate in the slightest and leaped straight down.

...

...

Darkness! Endless darkness!

There was no light whatsoever in the Abyss, nor was there any sound. It was as cold and lonely as the depths of the starry cosmos.

Su Mu fell continuously. It was as if he had plunged into a bottomless pit. He had already been falling for five minutes and still hadn't hit the ground.

Ten minutes, twenty minutes, forty minutes... an hour!

He still hadn't landed. It was as though the Abyss truly had no bottom.

"A bottomless pit?"

Boundless mental power surged out, probing in all directions. Bizarrely, however, his mental power vanished into thin air merely three meters away from his body, as if swallowed by something in the dark.

"I can't just keep falling blindly like this. The space here isn't normal; I might never reach the bottom."

Su Mu activated Severed Thoughts in Sealed Dust. He halted his descent and began to explore horizontally.

An hour later, he stopped in his tracks. He had flown horizontally for an entire hour and still hadn't touched an edge!

The Abyss was clearly a massive rift. If he explored horizontally, he should have quickly hit a rock wall. Yet, he hadn't.

It was like plunging into the depths of the universe—there was no end to the top, bottom, left, or right. Or rather, there was simply no top, bottom, left, or right here at all. There was no sense of direction.

Su Mu frowned slightly. In this kind of environment, finding Supreme Heaven was no different from searching for a needle in a haystack. And the most bizarre part was—what about the origin of nightmares, the sealed evil gods, and the endless nightmare monsters he had been told about? Why hadn't he seen any of them?

He controlled his own dream realm, making it expand madly in an attempt to blanket the Abyss and find his bearings. But even as the dream realm stretched to its absolute limit, all he could sense was still darkness.

After that, he tried to open the Two Worlds Passage to travel straight back to the Real World, but it failed. The passage simply wouldn't open.

He was completely and utterly trapped in the Abyss.

Faced with this situation, Su Mu was at a loss for now. He could only continue exploring. He flew on and on—one hour, two hours... until a whole day had passed.

Finally, there was a stir in the darkness. Buzz, buzz, buzz...

Eerie whispers gradually drifted from the depths of the darkness. It felt like a pair of invisible hands peeling back your scalp and stroking your skull.

"This is... the evil god's whispers!" A crystalline blue light flashed through Su Mu's eyes. He would rather face an evil god than die of boredom.

Gradually, the evil god's whispers grew louder. Those grotesque syllables drilled madly into his soul. At the same time, things even blacker than the darkness itself began to emerge in the surrounding gloom.

Their outlines were completely indistinct, seemingly amorphous.

"Scared... I'm scared..."

Su Mu paused. The voice was none other than Bubai's. Hiding in the shadows, Bubai was trembling continuously, as if it had sensed a terrifying existence in the dark.

"What are you afraid of?" he asked.

"The Sha... Shadow God..."

These were the whispers of the Shadow God? The Pope had mentioned before that the evil god closest to the Abyss's entrance was the Shadow God. It seemed he had reached its sealing grounds.

So the Abyss was actually this vast. A whole day had passed, and he had only just encountered the nearest of them, the Shadow God.

Wait, no!

Su Mu's brows furrowed slightly. He had been falling straight down earlier, and then flying horizontally. Could it really be such a coincidence that he would run into the Shadow God regardless of which random direction he picked?

"Scared... Scared..." Bubai trembled even more violently, its form faintly showing signs of collapsing.

Su Mu found it inconceivable. Because he was currently in Dreamwalking Mode, Bubai was naturally inside the dream realm as well. Yet, even across the boundary of the dream realm, the Shadow God still exerted such a massive influence on it.

The next second, Su Mu changed direction, intending to put some distance between himself and the Shadow God first.

But something bizarre happened. Even though he was clearly flying in the opposite direction, the whispering voice was actually getting closer and closer.

Bubai was already on the verge of collapsing. Su Mu had no choice but to keep changing directions. Yet, whether he went up, down, or any other way, he couldn't shake off the whispering voice.

The voice drew nearer and nearer, until finally... Bang!

Bubai exploded.