Man-Eating House

The power of the command faded.

The sand-pile demon slumped to one side. Its five eyes became chaotic and disorderly again, whizzing all over its body like derailed trains.

The Chaos Child was harmless.

Yicha considered that answer. It seemed understandable.

He turned and patted the Resting Stone cage.

Resting Stone was harder than a soul—better yet, it did not react with any matter, energy, or laws.

Just as its name implied, once imprisoned by Resting Stone, one could rest forever. It worked perfectly with the energy array directly linked to the Archduke of Hell.

"Oh, haha?"

The sand-like demon became lively again and wriggled over to the cage.

"Do you want to die?" Yicha asked politely.

Normally, he would not ask that question.

After all, there were too many demons locked up here. But this one had helped him just now, even if only passively.

The sand-pile demon's five eyes rolled back and forth.

"I want to get out, oho," it said honestly.

Yicha looked up.

The distant exit was a dim, blurry dot above his head.

"All right. Listen to me first. Then decide."

He lowered his head and took a deep breath.

"It will be thirty-two thousand four hundred years before the room you are in reaches the top, and only then can you get out.

"For those thirty-two thousand four hundred years, there will be nothing to eat and nothing to drink. No one will come to see you.

"No one will play with you. No one will come play with you.

"You will not be able to sleep, because other things will be screaming beside your ears every day.

"If you do not have ears, then they will scream directly inside your head.

"You could get sick at any time. The kind of sickness demons could never imagine, because the energy radiation here is too complicated.

"Even if you get sick, you will not die that quickly, because demons are not easy to kill.

"But neither will you get better. Your whole body will rot away—by then, you will have a new hobby: constantly picking up your own eyeballs.

"After a while, you will not even get to do that. Your eyeballs will rot too.

"If there is some holiday, the great King of Ten Thousand Demons will randomly select a few of you to light soul lamps for the occasion.

"If something bad happens, the great King of Ten Thousand Demons will randomly select a few of you to light soul lamps for the occasion.

"If something good happens...

"Oh. Nothing good happens to you.

"There was once a prisoner who got out.

"But in the entire history of Chaos Hell, there has only been that one demon.

"As far as I know, that was before the Isolated Island Era. Seven thousand years ago.

"So,

"Do you think the next lucky one to get out will be you?"

Yicha had finished speaking.

The low-level sand-like demon was stunned.

Its five eyes no longer darted about, but stopped on one side in a row like buttons.

"Oh... oh..."

Its wrinkled mouth stammered.

Yicha said nothing and did not look at it, reducing its pressure.

The sand-pile demon slowly collapsed into a thick pancake.

"Don't leave! Let me think!"

It suddenly shrieked in a voice like tearing cloth.

Yicha spread his hands, meaning—I haven't moved.

After a while.

"I..."

"I..."

"I... I want to die."

In the end, the low-level demon said softly.

Yicha drew his blade.

"Do you want to go to Gamenity, or do you want to die?"

"I want to die."

This time, the low-level demon answered very decisively.

The moment the words fell, a curved blade spraying black particles sliced it apart.

Black fireworks erupted.

"Oh... thank you." The low-level demon's voice vanished along with its existence.

Yicha sheathed the Yin Iron curved blade.

He clapped his hands and stepped over the threshold formed by the strange door's fat lower lip.

He entered the uncomfortable passage.

He stepped onto ground like a swamp.

The ground was as soft as granulated sugar, leaving a deep footprint the instant he stepped on it.

But he could not take a second step.

The rebound from his first step sent Yicha floating upward.

No gravity...

No.

Yicha drew up his legs and spread his wings in the narrow passage to keep his balance, barely keeping the tips of his wings from touching the yellow-green liquid patrolling everywhere.

Gravity was completely chaotic.

He could feel his body constantly being tugged back and forth by gravity shifting direction without any pattern. He had to continuously change the direction of his wingbeats along with it.

Fortunately.

He made himself adapt to the sensation, curled up, and shot forward.

This secret passage gradually became impossible to traverse.

With every bit he advanced, the walls, floor, and splattered slime became a little more chaotic in his vision.

Fragments of all sizes peeled away from their original positions, twitching back and forth irregularly amid black smoke.

It somewhat resembled the tangible form destruction energy took in energy vision, except it looked the same in both types of vision.

And judging by the half-drop of yellow-green liquid Yicha had accidentally struck just now, the material forms of these things had indeed changed as well.

This was something Yicha had never seen before.

He hovered in the air and stared at the fragments of varying sizes. Casually tearing off half a sleeve corroded by the droplet, he recalled the common manifestations of various common domain energies.

What lay before him was definitely not the disorder energy commonly used by demons, nor should it be destruction energy. It was not even true chaos power.

<Distribution and Classification of Chaos Hell Energy Sources> had never recorded these things.

No.

He carefully recalled the preface of that book.

There was a passage he had not paid much attention to...

"Although there is no evidence to support it, the author has discovered that the three different energies of true chaos, destruction, and disorder display a strange, unbalanced, and discordant distribution.

"Their estimated reserves in Hell conform to the famous Great Evil Ratio in another miraculous law (note: mathematics). Namely:

"1:396:947583261.

"Could this indicate that these three energies have some connection?

"Regrettably, this is the only connection the author has discovered.

"Therefore, the author has not included this immature conjecture in the main text.

"Friends with particular views on this matter are welcome to write and discuss it."

—<Distribution and Classification of Chaos Hell Energy Sources: Preface>

Some connection...

Yicha stared intently at the constantly moving fragments obstructing his path.

Like destruction energy, they scattered into sharp fragments. Yet black mist spread outward from those twitching fragments as their core, while also following the movement rules of true chaos power.

Was this that connection...?

The chaotic scene before him, whether it was energy or material manifestations created from it, should all have been radiated by the Chaos Children.

What the Chaos Children emitted appeared, on the surface, to be a combination of the characteristics of those three energies.

Was this true chaos...?

Could different energies merge into one?

He had already wanted to investigate the connections between different energy domains, but he had never made much progress.

Today, however, he had obtained an important piece of evidence.

No.

Or perhaps...

Destruction energy, disorder energy, and true chaos power had originally been separated from this ultimate chaos.

That was also very possible.

Now he had something to discuss with the author of <Distribution and Classification of Chaos Hell Energy Sources>.

He had already had a few questions he wanted to discuss with that fellow when he had the time.

But the urgent question now was:

How was he supposed to get past these obstacles and reach the other side?

He could blink through them, but what if there was nowhere to stand on the other side...?

He would crash headfirst into those dense fragments and be utterly destroyed, body and soul.

Yicha reached into his clothes and slowly rubbed the Resting Stone bottle containing Silent Ink.

Use void energy to absorb these things before him...?

There was only a little ink left. It might not be nearly enough.

No.

If it was not enough, then even if he fell short by only a little, it would all be completely wasted.

He needed to think of another way.

For earlier events, see Chapter Sixteen, Goodbye.