Yama Rising

Qin Ye and Tezcatlipoca got onto the deck and looked out at the cold and forbidding sea before them.

The Caribbean Sea's climate was warm and pleasant all year round, yet they felt as if they had just sailed into the Arctic Ocean. However, there were no visible changes to the sea.

It was as if the mortal realm and the underworld were separated by an invisible line, and they had just crossed that line.

"The Yin energy here is extremely strong." Qin Ye was looking out at the sea with a wary expression. The surface of the sea here was such a dark blue color that it was almost black, and he could see that this dark color was coming from the Yin energy that had accumulated within the water over the past several thousand years!

Furthermore, there was no end in sight to this darkness.

"This Yin energy has already been here for a long time." He reached out before casually making a grabbing motion, and wisps of Yin energy surged toward his fingertips. He then carefully examined the Yin energy before concluding, "It has no conscious will, which means that it doesn't belong to anything."

"This is Cipactli's Yin energy," Tezcatlipoca said with a cold smile. "There's no way I could fail to recognize this Yin energy. Take a closer look, see what else is different here."

Qin Ye did as he was told, and several seconds later, he replied, "There's no life here at all."

Indeed, there were no birds or fish, nor any waves, and even the wind carried with it the scent of death and decay. It was as if this was the place that the ocean came to die.

Sailing through this completely silent and lifeless region of the sea felt like sailing toward certain doom, and the deafening silence was enough to drive one mad.

Far in the distance was a vast expanse of white mist that encompassed everything, and the contrast between the dark sea and the white mist made this place even more eerie and frightening.

"This area of the sea has already been corrupted by Cipactli's aura, and its resentment from dying here has made this place a natural prison," Tezcatlipoca said. "Any living being that enters this area will be suppressed by Cipactli's resentment, which has already been brewing here for thousands of years. No matter how powerful you are, your bodily condition will steadily decline until your demise. On top of that, no one is able to sense this as it's happening. Perhaps someone like the second King Yanluo would be able to. As long as you're not more powerful than Cipactli during its living days, you'll be susceptible to its power."

"How much longer?"

This question was directed toward Woody, who was standing behind them.

Woody was already doing everything in his power to minimize his sense of existence, and he was given quite a fright by this sudden question. He shuddered slightly before immediately replying, "Half a day..."

A terrifying thought seemed to have sprung into his mind, and he gulped nervously as he said, "That island is extremely strange. It only appears at night, and it's always enshrouded in mist, the exact same white mist that you're seeing right now. Mist is a natural enemy to all seafarers, so all ships will skirt around this place. If it wasn't for that map, we would've never imagined that an island would appear here at night."

Qin Ye's hair was being ruffled by the sea breeze, and he casually arranged it as he asked, "What's on the island?"

"Monsters!" Woody replied in a trembling voice that had become very high-pitched from fear. "It's impossible to describe those monsters... That island shouldn't exist in the human world! All of the people that were with me died, and I was the only one who managed to escape!"

His eyes turned completely bloodshot as he buried his fingers into his own hair and clawed at his own scalp. "No matter what you do, don't go there! Even you will be devoured by that hell!"

"It's alright, I come from hell," Qin Ye replied in a calm voice.

Woody faltered slightly upon hearing this, and only then did he notice that the two of them were casting no shadows under the sun!

Are they envoys of hell that are about to return to hell?

His entire body was drenched in cold sweat, and he didn't dare to say anything further as he squeezed himself into a corner of the ship, trying to get as far away from this demonic duo as possible.

Time passed by very quickly, and night soon arrived. Right on the stroke of midnight, Qin Ye and Tezcatlipoca, who were sitting in the cabin, looked up in unison before casting their eyes toward the surface of the sea in the distance.

The sound of gentle waves rang out like a soothing melody.

That wouldn't be noteworthy at all, except there were no waves at all in this area of the sea during the day!

It was as if the sea had suddenly awakened right on the stroke of midnight.

The death god had opened its eyes, and the demon had been uncaged. Qin Ye and Tezcatlipoca instantly appeared on the deck at the same time, but they weren't the only ones there.

"Gavin, Francis, why are you two here?" Tezcatlipoca asked with narrowed eyes as he turned toward the pair of sailors on the deck.

Why did they still dare to appear on the deck so late at night even after witnessing something so terrifying during the day? Logically speaking, they should've been cowering in the captain's room with Woody.

Gavin and Francis turned around with dazed expressions, and Qin Ye raised a hand to stop Tezcatlipoca from saying what he was about to say next. He could see that both of the sailors were trembling uncontrollably, and their faces were deathly pale.

He looked at the time to find that it was 12:03 AM.

"The ship... is moving..." Gavin's voice was completely devoid of any vitality, and even though it had only been a few hours, he seemed to have aged several years. His eyes had sunken in noticeably, and patches of white hair had even begun to appear on his head.

Furthermore, it was clear that he was extremely horrified for some reason.

Hasn't the ship always been moving?

Qin Ye's brows furrowed slightly, but he didn't say anything as he knew that Gavin would explain anyway.

"The ship... It's moving!" Gavin was on the verge of a mental breakdown, and he collapsed to the deck as his anguished wails echoed through the night. "The ship already ran out of fuel, yet it's still moving!!"

A grim look appeared on Qin Ye's face upon hearing this, and before Francis and Gavin had a chance to say anything further, he rushed over to the side of the ship and looked down at the water past the railing.

"Can you feel anything?" he asked with a serious expression.

Even Tezcatlipoca was feeling a little spooked at this point, and he replied, "No, but something seems to be dragging our ship along."

Indeed, they couldn't sense any Yin energy!

Even for two death gods like them, they were unable to sense anything. The sea and the mist remained the same, but the ship was somehow moving!

The two of them exchanged a glance, yet before they had a chance to say anything, the surface of the sea began to move.

The white mist that was still on the distant horizon in the afternoon was only three kilometers away from them at most at this point, and it was beginning to slowly spread open like a white lotus flower that was blooming on the surface of the sea at midnight.

At the same time, waves began to surge through the water down below, and upon reaching several kilometers away, the waves had already reached around a meter in height!

"The island is rising up..." Tezcatlipoca said as he looked into the center of the mist. "I can sense a godly aura slowly rising up, but it doesn't belong to our parent god!"

"Whose aura is it?"

"I can't tell!" Tezcatlipoca replied as he massaged his own temples vigorously. "I definitely recognize it, and it's extremely familiar, but the Yin energy is being obstructed by Cipactli's resentment, so I'm unable to sense who it belongs to!"

"Is it dead or alive?" Qin Ye asked.

"It's dead. It's a divine artifact, but it definitely isn't one that belongs to our parent god!"

Right at this moment, the white mist exploded violently! To put it more accurately, countless black shadows with long wispy tails trailing along behind them had just erupted out of the mist.

"ARRRRRGH!!" Francis and Gavin had never been this horrified in their lives, and they were hugging each other tightly as they sobbed and screamed like female leads in third-rate horror movies.

The wind sweeping through the area suddenly became stronger, causing Qin Ye's robes to flap incessantly, and he pulled the robe tighter around him as he stared into the distance.

The countless black shadows flashed through the sky like arrows, and they were so fast that they were leaving trails of mist behind them in the night sky.

Qin Ye could see that this was a flock of skeletal birds.

Before he had a chance to arrange his own thoughts, Tezcatlipoca suddenly exclaimed, "Yanluo Qin, look!"

Qin Ye looked down as he was told, and his pupils immediately contracted slightly.

Countless specks of bright light had appeared beneath the surface of the sea!

They were slowly floating upward as if they had been summoned, and within the span of no more than three minutes, they had risen to the surface of the sea, revealing themselves to be glass bottles, within which were rolled-up pieces of parchment paper.

Each bottle was around the size of a beer bottle, and there were too many of them to count, encompassing an area with a radius of at least three kilometers of the sea outside of the white mist.

Qin Ye's brows furrowed tightly upon seeing this. These things struck him with a sense of familiarity, but he was unable to immediately think of where he had seen them before.

Boom!

However, there was no time at all to think, and in the next instant, the ship rushed forward rapidly as if it were being pushed by a giant!

The bottles on the surface of the sea were scattered in the wake of the ship, and the sea breeze had transformed into a violent gale! The ship was traveling so quickly that even Gavin and Francis's screams were being left behind.

"We'll be entering the white mist in 40 seconds." Qin Ye took a deep breath as he tried to collect his own thoughts.

Countless images quickly flashed through his mind, and 10 seconds later, an enlightened look suddenly appeared in his eyes. "It's the three Caribbean death gods!"

"What?" Tezcatlipoca asked.

Qin Ye shook his head in response, and his eyes were glowing brighter and brighter.

Most of the mysteries that had been stumping him had been resolved, but there was one mystery that hadn't been resolved this entire time, which was how the grand script of death of the three Caribbean death gods had come into existence.

The Heavenly Dao had said that it wasn't a product of the underworld, so who had created it?

Furthermore, the three death gods had said that they had found the grand script of death in the form of a rolled-up piece of parchment in a bottle that washed up on the shore of the sea.

At the same time, he had also come into contact with one of those bottles, and the contents of the letter inside could even create severe mental disruption even for a Yama-King.

Could it be that all of those bottled letters came from this place?

Before he had a chance to think about this any further, a low roar suddenly rang out across the entire surface of the sea.

The sound was very low-pitched, but the volume was extraordinarily loud, and massive waves were being swept up on the sea by the violent soundwaves.

It was like the sobbing of countless children, the repentance of countless sinners, and it pierced directly into the deepest parts of one's heart.

"Help me..."

"It hurts so much... Save me..."

"I'll give you everything you want!"