Chapter 1447 — May the Good Prosper
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 1 of 4
Zaifu was on the battlefield as well, gazing from afar at that dazzling blade-light. In the instant when all the Yuan soldiers were lifted into the air, the great Dao of the blade thundered, and he knew that Dao well. The Dao of the blade: to cry out against injustice, to cut through thorns, to guard a place.
And now Shen Mu had achieved the third step.
When that spirit of guardianship surged skyward, the will of the multitude became a great wall, empowering the common iron in Shen Mu's hand and granting him the strength to break through all things.
Cheers rose across the battlefield. The morale of Jingping's officers and soldiers soared at once, hot blood racing through their veins; that wild, fierce blade-light and blade Dao spurred them on, driving them to fight with desperate courage, fearless of death, charging into the enemy ranks.
The demigods of the Southern Heaven hesitated, some of them panicking. On a battlefield, morale is like a balance scale: let one side weigh but a little more and it presses down the other; rarely is there ever a perfect equilibrium. Facing such a host of tigers and wolves, they were afraid, they turned coward, and they began to fall back. Even when the supervising officers behind them drew their swords and cut down dozens in succession, they could not halt the rout.
Seeing them flee, Jingping's army grew only more fervent, pursuing and slaughtering at their heels, until the battlefield turned bloody and savage. The sun sank in the west; the blue mountains were like a sea, the dying sunlight like blood. This battle was but one corner of the vast battlefield of the Southern Wastes, and by no means the most soul-stirring, the most bitterly fought or magnificent of the Southern Wastes' campaigns.
The wars that had raged there included others far more breathtaking, far more tragic and worthy of tears and song. By the time the fighting was no longer so fierce, night had fallen. The commanders of the various armies began to count their numbers, and General Bashan asked, "Where is the man who split open the Southern Emperor's divine weapon?
" The soldiers sought out the squad Shen Mu had belonged to. In Jingping, ten men made a squad; of those ten, three remained, and Shen Mu was not among them.
A young scholar shook his head.
In the pursuit, they had lost all trace of Shen Mu. The soldiers fell silent. They went back and reported to Bashan, and Bashan too fell silent.
A general dies in a hundred battles; on the battlefield, such things are common. Deep in the night, ghost fires speckled the battlefield. Those with divine arts lit torches and searched the field for the bodies of their comrades.
The three young Jingping scholars searched everywhere, hoping to catch sight of a familiar face. Only now did they understand why that old soldier with the scarred face had told them to memorize their comrades' faces.
To remember, so that when the fighting was done they might send them home, so that their bones would not lie cold in the wind, so that they would not be buried in a foreign land, but return to their native place with the honor due a warrior and be laid in the ancestral graves.
Blood like frost congealed on the surface of body after body.
Ghost fires drifted: envoys of the Netherworld, come to gather the wandering souls of the battlefield.
Old men whose faces none could remember appeared in every corner of the field aboard paper boats, and whether friend or foe, they took the souls of the slain aboard and ferried them down to the Netherworld. Each time these underworld deputies' lanterns fell upon a wandering soul's face, no matter how great a general he had been in life, or how lowly a common soldier, he must board the boat. Just then, aboard one paper boat, Shen Mu and the Netherworld Heavenly Venerate sat together, while Zaifu sat beneath the lantern.