Chapter 1196 — The Drunken Elder
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 1 of 3
The grey mist of Fengdu spread on every side. Ahead lay the Sea of Mist and the Mountains of Skulls, skull piled upon skull, range upon range, seated in the fog, and upon them skulls beyond counting, some still crawling to and fro.
Shen Mu took out a Fengdu gold coin, meaning to summon Daoist Lingjing and ferry across the Sea of Mist, when of a sudden he froze.
In the Jingping Calamity, Daoist Lingjing had already perished, soul scattered and spirit dispersed.
The man had been a powerhouse of the Village Chief's era, stubborn to the bone, and had once challenged the Village Chief himself, hoping to seize the title of Sword God.
Later, when the Heavens Above invaded, he and the young Patriarch Wen Yuan had joined forces to block the gods of the Heavens Above, buying time for the Village Chief and the rest, until his body died and his Way vanished, and he became a ghost in Fengdu.
King Yama had granted him the post of ferryman, to pole his boat and carry ghosts and living men alike across the waters.
Back then he had still been fretting over buying a house in Fengdu, reckoning that after another thousand years or so of work, he might afford a place of his own.
When the Jingping Calamity broke out, Daoist Lingjing was again the first to leap forward, joining the past leaders of the Heavenly Sacred Cult to save lives. Yet he had only his primordial spirit left, and in that great calamity his soul was scattered to the winds.
He left behind no relics. Even had Shen Mu wished to summon his soul and reshape it, there was nothing to work with.
In the mist ahead, the ferry came. The ferryman aboard was dressed in rags, and standing in the small boat he seemed very tall, his tattered cloak streaming in the fog.
The boat drew up to the landing. Shen Mu stepped aboard, and the ferryman poled the boat toward Fengdu.
Standing on that boat, Shen Mu could not help but recall his conversation with Daoist Lingjing when the Jingping Calamity first erupted.
He had said: "Daoist Lingjing, you and the Patriarch gave your lives for Jingping, blocking the Heavens Above, and yet not one soul in Jingping knows you are the heroes who guarded them."
At the time, Daoist Lingjing had poled his boat through range after range of Mountains of Skulls, and answered him with a laugh: "But I know I am a hero. I follow my heart, and I do what must be done."
Daoist Lingjing had also said that the next time Shen Mu came, the man on the ferry might not be him.
Shen Mu looked at the ferryman. The man was not Lingjing, but another godfiend of Fengdu.
The boat reached the shore. Shen Mu paid the fare, leaped onto land, passed the boundary stone of the Realm of the Living Dead, crossed the ridges, and walked on toward Fengdu.
In this world there are all kinds of people, all kinds of ways to live, a hundred faces of sentient beings. Some are happy, some plain, some toiling, some suffering hardship.
But whether life is fair or foul, there are always those who carry the burden for you, who press on beneath the weight, and even give their lives.
Toward such people, we should not mock their choices, but grant them the respect they are due.
The great Way of Fengdu sought to alter Shen Mu's flesh, to transform this living man into a skeleton. Yet Shen Mu's understanding of the Great Way of the Nether Capital was exceedingly profound, and his cultivation was now immeasurably deep, so the Way of Fengdu could not change a single hair of him.
He walked on. Looking around, he saw that Fengdu was now far vaster than before, scarcely inferior to the Nether Capital of the Yin Son of Heaven, boundless and without limit. Clearly, the many Heavenly Masters and Heavenly Kings of the Kaihuang era had gathered here and built Fengdu up very well indeed.
Shen Mu crossed the ridges, and the divine cities of Fengdu appeared before him one after another.