**Chapter 11: The Predator and the Pope**
The Papal Council Chamber was a cavern of intimidating grandeur. The walls were clad in polished obsidian, veined with gold filigree that snaked across the stone like captured lightning. A singular, massive stained-glass window depicted the first Seraphim God ascending to the heavens, casting a cold, ethereal light upon the long council table. It was a room designed to suffocate dissent and magnify the authority of the woman who sat at its head.
Upon a throne carved from a single piece of unknown black jade, Pope Bibi Dong presided over the meeting. Her presence was absolute. She listened with an air of regal detachment as Chrysanthemum Douluo, Yue Guan, droned on, his voice a florid and effeminate whine.
"...and I simply must insist, Your Holiness, that the resources allocated to the Rose Garden's preservation are insultingly inadequate. My sacred chrysanthemums require far more care..."
Suddenly, the grand double doors of the chamber—each weighing several tons and magically sealed—burst inward with a deafening *CRACK*. They didn't open; they were violently thrown apart, splintering the frame as they crashed against the walls.
In the gaping doorway, Ghost Douluo's form tore itself into reality. It was not his usual smooth, chilling fade. His spectral body was unstable and frayed, flickering violently like a recording on the verge of complete disintegration, his very existence struggling to hold itself together.
Chrysanthemum Douluo spun around, his face a mask of theatrical outrage. "Gui Mei! Have you lost your mind? Such a disgraceful entrance! Have you seen a ghost, old friend?" he scoffed, the irony lost on him.
Ghost Douluo did not spare him a single glance. His entire being, his very soul, was focused on one person. His ghostly eyes, usually voids of shadow, were wide with a soul-deep, primal terror. Ignoring the stunned silence of the other Elders, he took a stumbling step forward. His voice, when it came, was not the chilling whisper of a feared assassin, but the cracked, rasping sound of a man who had stared into the abyss and found it staring back.
"Your Holiness..."
The two words hung in the air, heavy with a dread so profound that the chill in the room deepened by ten degrees.
Bibi Dong leaned forward slightly, her perfectly sculpted face an unreadable mask of ice. Her sharp, beautiful violet eyes narrowed. "Speak, Elder Ghost. What could possibly warrant such an entrance?"
"The Titan Giant Ape..." he began, his form flickering violently. "The mission... we encountered it."
Chrysanthemum Douluo let out a derisive snort. "And? You are a peak Titled Douluo, Gui Mei. Do not tell me that brute gave you this much trouble."
"It was not a fight," Ghost whispered, the words seeming to cause him physical pain. "It... was not a fight." He raised a trembling, translucent hand. "A man appeared. He stood before the ape."
He inhaled sharply, his form solidifying for a moment as he forced the memory to the surface. "Your Holiness... the Ape's will... its very soul... it was crushed before he even moved. Its rage, its power, everything that made it a sovereign of the forest... it evaporated. It knelt before him. It was *begging* him to end its life."
The council chamber was utterly silent. The sheer impossibility of what he described was sinking in.
"And then," Ghost's voice cracked, "he kicked it."
He looked directly at Bibi Dong, desperate to make her understand the sheer, terrifying *wrongness* of the event. "There was no explosion of spirit power. No brilliant flash of an ability. There was only a sound... like a lid being placed gently on a box. He simply... removed it. He removed a hundred-thousand-year-old sovereign beast from his sight because it was an inconvenience."
He took another shaky step. "This was not a Limit Douluo showing off his power, Your Holiness. This was a man annoyed by a bug. A god would have treated that beast as a challenge, a worthy foe. This being treated it as *nothing*."
Chrysanthemum Douluo's arrogant smirk had shattered, replaced by a wide-eyed, pallid expression. The other Elders were frozen, their minds struggling to even conceptualize the scene. The raw, primal terror emanating from a peak Titled Douluo—a man they knew to be fearless—was more convincing than any footage, any report, any evidence could ever be. It was the testimony of a soul that had been fundamentally broken by what it had witnessed.
Bibi Dong remained motionless on her throne, but beneath her lavish papal robes, her knuckles had turned bone-white where she gripped the black jade armrests. "Where is this... 'man' now?" she asked, her voice dangerously calm.
"He is here," Ghost Douluo finally managed. "In the Elder's guest manor. He... accepted our 'invitation'."
Bibi Dong's eyes closed for a single, long second. When they opened, they were colder than a winter tomb.
"The council is dismissed," she declared, her voice leaving no room for argument. "Leave me."
The Elders scrambled to obey, their own fear now palpable. Ghost Douluo's spectral form dissipated, fleeing the room as if escaping a bad dream. The heavy doors were slowly closed by the guards outside, sealing Bibi Dong in the cold, echoing silence.
The moment the doors locked, the icy mask of the Pope did not melt. It shattered.
A choked gasp escaped her lips. She lunged from her throne, stumbling to her private study behind the dais and gripping the edge of her ornate desk to keep from falling. Her body trembled, not with fear as a lesser woman would know it, but with the violent convulsions of a predator that has just scented a creature infinitely higher on the food chain.
It was not just her mind that was in turmoil. Deep within her soul, the divine seed of the Rakshasa God, the source of her power, her ambition, and her all-consuming hatred, was in agony. For her entire life, that power had been a venomous, coiling serpent, hissing promises of vengeance and glory.
But now, that serpent was not hissing. It was *shrieking*.
A flash of a horrific, intuitive vision, a gift from her cowering divine patron, seared itself into her mind's eye. She saw the Rakshasa God—not as the glorious deity of slaughter and evil she revered—but as a small, twitching, disgustingly venomous spider, hiding in a dark crevice. And then, a shadow fell over it. A shadow so vast, so absolute and so utterly indifferent that it blotted out all light and all reality. The shadow was not even aware of the spider's existence. It simply *was*. And its passing would mean the spider's oblivion.
Finality. Utter and complete extinction.
Her breath hitched. All her plans, her decades of plotting, her ascension to godhood, her ultimate revenge against Spirit Hall, against the world, against *him*... everything was built upon the power of that spider. Upon her "god."
And this man, this Luo Yan, was the shadow.
Her violent trembling stopped, replaced by an unnatural stillness. The fear was still there, a cold, hard knot in her stomach. But it had been compressed by her indomitable will into a diamond-sharp point of ruthless resolve. She could not fight the shadow. She could not kill the shadow.
She had to *understand* it. She had to know why it was here, in her web.
She straightened her back, her posture once again that of the untouchable Pope. She smoothed a non-existent wrinkle in her robes.
"Guard!" she called out, her voice crisp, sharp, and brittle as shattered glass.
A Papal Knight immediately entered and knelt.
"Bring the 'Senior' to the Papal Throne Room," she commanded. "And his... attendant."
"At once, Your Holiness."
As the knight departed, Bibi Dong walked back to her throne, her movements graceful and deliberate.
She sat down, her hands resting calmly on the armrests, her expression a perfect portrait of power.
But inside, the shrieking had not stopped. The spider was cowering in its crevice, and the shadow was on its way.
To be continue.