Walker Of The Worlds

Chapter 4026: One Does Not Dare Question The Earth Sea Tyrant!

At first, the whispers were so faint that Lin Mu could barely distinguish them from the background noise of his own thoughts. Hundreds of voices seemed to speak at once, their words layered over each other until nothing coherent remained.

Some sounded angry. Others seemed desperate. A few carried such overwhelming grief that even their unintelligible murmurs conveyed the emotions they had possessed before becoming part of the weapon.

Then the whispers grew louder as they turned into moans, then the moans became groans and finally came the screams. Thousands of voices erupted through Lin Mu’s mind. There was Pain, Anger, Regret, Hatred, Fear and Accusation, fueling the voices.

The emotions crashed against his consciousness one after another as the Cestus attempted to overwhelm his will through sheer volume.

The fragmented souls within it seemed to have forgotten language, identity, and reason over the countless years they had remained trapped together. What remained was the final imprint of their suffering, accumulated through generations of judgment and death.

Lin Mu listened and then he chuckled. "Hah."

The sound was quiet. Yet within the suddenly oppressive chamber, everyone heard it. Several elders stared at him as though he had finally gone mad.

Zhenyu stood directly before one of the most dangerous forbidden artifacts hidden within the Heavenly Stream Guardian Sect, his bare hand resting upon it while an aura of accumulated resentment filled the chamber, and the old man was laughing.

"I’ve faced a world full of Death Qi with far more screams than this." Zhenyu uttered.

The elders froze and even High Elder Palm Saber’s expression became strange. A few disciples looked at one another as none of them understood what Zhenyu meant.

’A world full of Death Qi?’

’Had he actually gone somewhere like that?’

’Was this something that happened during the hundred thousand years he had been missing or was it before that?’

The statement sounded utterly insane. Unfortunately, after everything they had witnessed from Zhenyu so far, none of them could confidently dismiss it as boasting. Only Lin Mu knew exactly what he meant.

His thoughts briefly returned to the Bridge Plane in the Rust Sky World. He had spent years fighting there. Death Qi had filled that place so thoroughly that it had become part of the environment itself.

The aura of death had existed everywhere, seeping into the land and saturating the battlefield while Chimeric Beasts appeared in numbers that eventually stopped feeling real. There were millions, then tens of millions.

Lin Mu had fought until counting them became meaningless.

He had lived among death for so long that the sensation had become familiar. He had watched enemies die, watched allies struggle, endured exhaustion, injuries, killing intent, corrosive energies and the relentless pressure of a battlefield that seemed incapable of ending.

Compared to that, the screams within the Justice Crushing Cestus lacked scale. They were disturbing, they were tragic and they were certainly dangerous to someone unprepared. But Lin Mu had simply encountered worse.

Far worse.

And the Bridge Plane was only one example.

The Hollows of the Silent Lotus World had possessed a corruption that reached far deeper than ordinary fear. Their existence carried something fundamentally disturbing, something capable of affecting the mind and spirit through prolonged exposure.

Then there had been the Ephemerach.

Lin Mu’s expression became almost nostalgic for a moment. ’Compared to that thing, this is rather tame.’

The Justice Crushing Cestus apparently disagreed as its pressure intensified. The screams grew louder and Lin Mu felt the strange amalgamated energy pushing harder against his consciousness as though enraged by his lack of reaction.

This time, the others began experiencing it as well. One of the senior disciples suddenly flinched and his face went pale.

Another disciple grabbed his head. "What is that?"

"You hear it too?" The whispers had escaped beyond Lin Mu.

They spread through the Forbidden Relic Section and the disciples were affected first.

Every disciple present had experience beyond that of ordinary cultivators. They were senior disciples of the Heavenly Stream Guardian Sect and members of Wild Peak. They had gone on dangerous missions. They had fought beasts, killed enemies, witnessed death and suffered injuries.

Yet experience had degrees.

There was a vast difference between surviving several dangerous missions and enduring the accumulated screams of an artifact that had participated in countless executions across an unknown number of generations.

A female disciple staggered backward and her breathing became uneven. "I can hear people screaming."

"So can I."

"Don’t listen to them!"

"How exactly am I supposed to stop listening when they’re inside my head?"

The elders fared better as their cultivation was higher, their minds stronger, and most had lived long enough to accumulate experiences that would have broken younger cultivators. But even they were affected.

One elder clenched his jaw while another circulated a calming technique. High Elder Palm Saber remained standing steadily, though the muscles along his neck had tightened. His gaze stayed fixed upon Zhenyu.

The ancient elder remained completely relaxed.

Palm Saber found that far more disturbing than the screams. ’What kind of things did this man experience after disappearing?’

The answer was something he suspected he did not actually want. The Cestus trembled harder and its assault changed. Lin Mu immediately sensed the difference. The fragmented energy stopped battering against the surface of his consciousness and began searching for a path deeper inside.

Toward his soul.

’Oh?’ Lin Mu allowed his attention to follow it.

The energy forced its way inward through brute strength. It lacked the subtlety of a proper soul cultivation technique, yet the sheer accumulation contained within the Cestus gave it tremendous force.

If Lin Mu had wished, he could’ve easily stopped it. Merely using the Calming Heart Sutra would have slowed it down at the minimum or outright, stopped it. But he wished to see just how strong it was.

As such the energy entered his Soul Space and for the first time, the fragmented energy seemed almost eager. The mass surged forward and a moment later it stopped. Before it stood the barrier created through the Litany of Verdant Forests.