Chapter 507: Going Home

Just as Su Mu reached for the mechanical arm, a ratcheting sound suddenly filled the air. Click, clack...

Gears ground deep inside the limb, followed by a flash of cold metallic light. The mechanical arm had come alive!

It splayed its five fingers, exposing the intricate gears at its joints, and hovered silently for a moment before launching itself at Su Mu.

"Oh?" Su Mu's eyes narrowed as a crystalline blue light flashed within them.

Hum!

Materialized spiritual power pinned the mechanical arm firmly in midair. It thrashed violently, its gears grinding and jamming, but the struggle was utterly useless.

Given Su Mu's current strength, he could easily suppress Fallen Sin Maitreya face-to-face, let alone a severed demigod's arm.

"A god reviving?" Su Mu slowly took hold of the mechanical arm. The moment it fell into his grasp, the limb went deathly still, as if sensing some unfathomable terror.

With Wuming's strength, he could have easily suppressed this level of divine revival, he mused. Yet he chose to expend more effort sealing it rather than directly erasing the awakening divine consciousness inside the arm...

Bizarre. Every action Wuming took was fraught with strangeness and contradiction.

Pensive, Su Mu stowed the mechanical arm inside his dream world. He didn't intend to assimilate it right away, because... Wuming had arrived.

The palace doors slowly swung open, and the black-robed youth walked in, his expression perfectly calm.

He gave Su Mu a single glance. "Let's go," he said lightly. "We'll use the Primal Angel for your first practice run."

Su Mu shook his head. "The gods have slumbered for years; there's no need to rush. Although Fallen Sin Maitreya offers no boost to my Illusion Technique, it will still grant me some strength and increase our odds of success. I'll make my move after I've assimilated Fallen Sin Maitreya."

"Fine." Wuming nodded calmly. He spun on his heel and strode away without the slightest hesitation, as cold and indifferent as a robot executing a program.

"Before that, I need to make a trip back to Hell," Su Mu said suddenly.

Wuming didn't break his stride. "Your relationship with the Temple of God Slaying is purely cooperative," his voice drifted back as he vanished into the distance. "We won't restrict your freedom. Do as you please. Just don't delay erasing the divine consciousness."

"Alright." Su Mu smiled faintly, and his figure vanished from where he stood.

...

...

Hell, Holy Brilliance City.

Su Mu stepped out from a Primal Cultist's dream. Rather than announcing his arrival in Holy Brilliance City, he slipped away in absolute silence, heading straight for the Abyss.

Staring down into the massive, bottomless rift and feeling the aura of the evil gods seeping out from within, Su Mu smiled silently.

Once upon a time, when he first came to the Abyss, he was like an ant wandering into a human's house, carefully skirting around the giant occupants. Back then, he didn't dare cancel his Sleepwalking State; revealing his true body would have meant certain death.

But now...

Su Mu took a step straight into the Abyss. He stood alone amid the darkness, letting his aura erupt outward with absolutely no restraint, sending a violent tremor through the entire chasm!

"Old friends, I'm back." His voice pierced the darkness, echoing deep through the Abyss.

Hum!

Evil, ominous ravings arose in response, sounding like a chaotic symphony of countless discordant instruments playing at once.

Pairs of abyssal, malevolent eyes flickered open in the dark, fixing their unblinking stares on Su Mu.

"Xuan Tian's aura..."

"He has returned!"

Roar!

In the shadows, the evil gods roared. Su Mu could finally parse the ravings that had once been meaningless noise, fully understanding their intent.

The evil gods were screaming curses, damning Xuan Tian for bringing about their ruin.

In the next second, countless torrents of evil divine power barreled straight toward Su Mu.

The corner of his mouth curved upward. "The tables have turned."

A resplendent crystalline blue light burst out, instantly obliterating all the incoming divine power. The blue light then fractured into millions of ice-like spikes, hurtling toward the evil gods hidden in the darkness to pierce them through.

Cries of agony tore through the darkness.

"Xuan Tian! We will break free one day and take our revenge!" the Shadow God bellowed in a fury. Its terrifying shadow divine power sent ripples surging through the darkness of the Abyss.

Su Mu couldn't care less about their threats. The only reason he dared to antagonize all the Abyss Demigods at once was because they were completely sealed away. They couldn't crawl out of the Abyss to fight him to the death even if they tried.

"Quiet," he barked out. He activated his Illusion Technique, and the Abyss instantly fell dead silent.

"Your true enemies aren't me. It was the gods of Heaven who sealed you here. Strictly speaking, I'm a victim just like the rest of you.

"I came here today because I want to cooperate with you all. I can let you out, but on one condition: you must do something for me first."

The evil gods of the Abyss fell silent. Though they were utterly evil and insane, they weren't fools. None of them wanted to rot away in this endless, lightless prison forever.

"What do you want us to do?" one of the evil gods asked.

Su Mu smiled faintly. "I can't say just yet."

"Why should we trust you?!"

"It's not a question of why you should trust me. It's the simple fact that you have no choice but to trust me."

...

...

Xuan Tian World.

The members of the Seven Deadly Sins hadn't been having a good time lately—with the sole exception of Lin Canyang.

Out of all of them, only Lin Canyang possessed boundless ambition. He relished the feeling of being a King, loving the absolute authority that came with ruling a massive Empire.

The rest were miserable. The love brain Yang Dongqing, for instance, wanted nothing more than to stay glued to Jasmine's side for the rest of his life. But when forced to oversee and manage an entire Empire, he cursed his inability to split himself in two. His already unimpressive intellect was pushed to the brink by dealing with government affairs every day, leaving him completely drained.

Duanmu Qing had never wanted to be a King. As the hardest-working member of the Seven Deadly Sins, she had only just managed to extricate herself from the organization's daily grind, only to be forced to manage a whole Empire in the blink of an eye. She was busier than ever.

Jun Wushang's situation was a bit more bittersweet. Having become a King, he no longer had to spend money on his beloved foot massages; he could just summon people directly into the Imperial Palace to wash his feet. Even his Master, Taoist Priest Xuanqing, got to partake in the luxury, living out his twilight years in sheer bliss.

If Jun Wushang had been allowed to just be a decadent, incompetent ruler, he would have been perfectly happy. But Su Mu had assigned them a mission. Between driving all the necessary reforms, he simply didn't have much time to sit back and enjoy himself.

The others were all in more or less the same boat.

On this particular day, while the members of the Seven Deadly Sins were busy tearing their hair out over their governmental duties, their vision suddenly blurred as an endless expanse of white mist surged around them.

"This... this is..." Yang Dongqing stared in shock at the familiar scene before him. They were Above the White Mist.

"Is everyone here?" Jun Wushang looked around in astonishment. "Could it be..."

"He's back." Nangong Mengli stared intently at the massive round table deep in the white mist, her eyes locking onto the figure in the tailcoat seated at the head of the table...