Chapter 1566 — The Path to Attaining the Dao
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 1 of 4
Granny Zhu, the Silent Artisan, and the rest stood on the deck and stared at one another — and there, also aboard, thousands of ancient behemoths were staring at one another in just the same way. "Where did Shen'er come by a ship like this?
" They looked all about, and only then discovered that this golden ship was far vaster than anything they had seen: to stand outside it and to stand upon it were two entirely different worlds.
Golden halls stood one after another along its length, each branded with strange runes that turned and flowed without cease. The ancient behemoths dared only stand where they were on the deck, not daring to wander; the others, bolder by far, went poking about in every direction, searching for some way off the ship.
"What is inside these golden halls?
" The Blind Elder examined in fine detail the doorway of one absurdly vast golden hall. "This door is unlocked," he said.
"Let me see whether I can open it.
" After a moment the hall's doors swung apart, and a rush of qi poured out from within. They covered nose and mouth, and waited until the qi had dispersed before stepping warily into the hall.
What met their eyes was a vast and glorious world of the heavens — a world with sun and moon and stars, a world of countless cities, and through those cities went white-boned skeletons, hurrying busily to and fro.
Hundreds of millions of white-boned skeletons walked the streets; in the city a woman opened her robe and suckled a child, merchants plied their trade, a white skeleton haggled with a shopkeeper, and not a few labored over empty ground beyond the walls.
They stared dumbstruck at the sight. "These white bones — what are they? " Scarcely had Hua Xuanxiu spoken when the whole heavenly world collapsed; in an instant countless white bones dissolved into the qi of chaos, bodies came apart, cities caved in, and sun, moon, and stars shrank inward upon themselves!
Boom! A tremor ran through the golden hall, and within it nothing remained but a haze of chaotic qi. They stared dumbly at the sight, and for a long while could not speak.
Just then a figure came walking from no one knew where, treading through the boundless qi of chaos, which rose past his knees.
It was a phantom, like history's afterglow, a silhouette burned into this place.
He walked through the ruined world and looked about him in bewilderment; nowhere around him could he find his kin, his old friends, the living things he had sheltered. He opened his mouth and howled into the chaos like a wounded old wolf, calling out — and no one answered him. Granny Zhu, the Blind Elder, and the others watched that figure, and a nameless grief rose in their hearts, and they could not hold back their tears.
The figure worked his arts within the chaos, unleashing strange divine powers, as though he were cleaving heaven from earth and setting the cosmos in motion once more, and as though he were tracing time backwards, restoring to life all that had passed away.
His powers left them gasping in wonder, skill and subtlety pushed to their utmost; slowly the qi of chaos began to change, slowly the stars appeared, the sun rose, the moon climbed westward.
City after city rose from the ground, and skeleton after skeleton stood up out of the chaos.
What manner of power was this, that could warp the heavens and weave the earth? It showed them Dao-mysteries without end, showed them the divine art of raising the dead, showed them the wisdom amassed by a civilization at the final stage of its universe.
And yet all of it collapsed once more, ruined in a single breath.
After a long while, the Blind Elder and the others withdrew from the hall and closed its doors behind them. "Who was that man?
" Granny Zhu murmured, "When he cried out, it felt as though one's heart were being torn in two. It was as though, as though.
. .