Chapter 1696 — The Eighth Ancient Tree
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 3 of 4
Boom!
A wave of incomparable violence swept out, a storm raging, whipping Shen Mu's robes where he stood beside that Dao tree, forcing him back and back!
Shen Mu retreated the whole way, resisting that savage impact, and when the storm subsided he had already been driven beyond the village.
He opened the vertical eye in his brow and looked: the Dao tree still stood there, motionless, and around it there was no one to be seen.
Startled, Shen Mu searched carefully, and saw the girl hanging in her own Dao tree, one foot sticking out, her Dao fruit still clutched in her hand, unconscious.
The woman had fallen into her own well, gripping her washing bat for dear life, the bat wedged in the mouth of the well.
Shang Jun sat sprawled beneath his own Dao tree, the web of his hand bleeding where he gripped the saber, his eyes blank, the broken saber in his hand shattered to bits, the hilt crumbled to dust.
The old woman's hairpin was stuck in her own brow, her breath faint as gossamer; the old man's water pipe was broken, and his head had struck the great stone he always sat on, splitting his scalp and drawing blood.
And Zhu Santong's tusks were all broken off; he lay unconscious, clutching his Dao tree.
Shen Mu was dumbstruck. In that single instant, six Dao-attainers had all been defeated, all wounded!
"The Eldest Young Master!"
The old man sat up trembling, his arms shaking, struggling to fill his pipe with tobacco — but the water pipe was broken, and the water ran out.
His voice was hoarse, and in his eyes were both dread and fury. "It is the Eldest Young Master's Dao tree! He has been here all along! Heh heh, that old snake in the shadows..."
Shen Mu looked around, and his gaze suddenly fell upon the sun hanging high in the vault of the sky.
That sun blazed with fire, and had burned for perhaps ten cosmic epochs — who knew how many billions of years — burning from the seventh epoch down to the present!
By all laws, the sun should long ago have gone out, died, evaporated, and become void at last; yet this sun still lived. It could not but rouse suspicion.
"The Eldest Young Master is not here."
Shen Mu said suddenly, "He has only left his eye and his Dao tree behind."
The old man struggled to his feet and gazed up at that sun in the vault of heaven, then let out a desolate sigh, his voice hoarse. "I have been imprisoned here too long; I am long since no match for him. Heh heh. In those years I was his equal in fame, and now I am not the equal of one of his eyes..."
He was very forlorn.
For the sake of a single promise, he had guarded the Paralytic for ten cosmic epochs, and in those ten epochs he had let his cultivation go to waste, falling far behind the Eldest Young Master who had once been his equal in fame. The sense of loss in his heart was easy to imagine.
In truth, Shen Mu could see it too: the old man was revered by the people here as the old monster, and he must have been a figure of great renown in his day, so that many had heard his legends.
Yet of all the people in this little village, the strongest was not him, but Shang Jun.
Though Shang Jun had only one Dao fruit and one Dao tree, his strength already stood above that of the other Dao-attainers in the village!
That too was why Shen Mu wanted to take Shang Jun away.
Shen Mu stepped forward, drew the hairpin from the old woman's brow, gave her wounds a simple treatment, and patted the old man on the shoulder.
The old man came back to himself and said bleakly, "I cannot see the young master off."
The others struggled to their feet one by one and saw Shen Mu to the village entrance.
Shang Jun forced himself to stand, was silent a moment, and said, "I no longer have my saber. I fear I cannot do much for you. And my killing nature is too heavy, my enemies too many; I will only bring disaster upon you."
Shen Mu laughed. "What a coincidence. I have many enemies too — likely far more than you."