Chapter 1698 — The Chief of the Dao Sect
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 1 of 4
This time Meng Yungui had come to escort the supplies with few troops, most of them his own personal force, called the Yuhua Camp. He was a human god of Yuhua Heaven, and in recent years no small number of human gods had sought refuge with him, the greater part of them from Yuhua Heaven. He had a masterful hand at ruling soldiers, and most of those under his command were loyal to him to the death, yet the Celestial Court had also planted many demigods inside his Yuhua Camp to watch his every move.
After all, he was human, and the Court never quite trusted him. He had other forces at his disposal in the Court, such as the Ten Guards of the Celestial Court, but those armies obeyed only the Celestial Emperor's command, and he had no power to move them.
At the very moment Meng Yungui struck to execute Yan Yazi, a great purge unfolded within the Yuhua Camp as well, and by the time Meng Yungui had slain the gods and demons under Yan Yazi, the soldiers of the Yuhua Camp came sailing through blood, and the surface of the tributary of the Celestial River was already a sheet of crimson.
Sword in hand, Meng Yungui stood amid the many corpses of the Southern Heaven Palace and gazed at his own soldiers, slave ship after slave ship mooring by the riverbank, blood still dripping from the divine armor of the human gods aboard. The air grew heavy.
"Do you regret it? " There was none of his former confidence in planning within a tent in Meng Yungui's voice. This rebellion felt more like a decision made in a sudden rush of impulse than a complete and deliberate stratagem, and for a Celestial Master such as he, to be ruled by feeling was an absolute failure.
In his heart he knew full well that this rebellion could never succeed. The human soldiers who had followed him for so many years would likely all die. "If you rebel with me, we may never succeed at all.
What awaits you will be no honor and no glory, only defeat after defeat, only comrades and brothers-in-arms dying in battle one by one.
" Meng Yungui looked at his subordinates, his gaze sweeping across one familiar face after another, and said in a low voice, "When I led you out of Yuhua Heaven all those years ago, I may never be able to lead you back alive.
Perhaps only your corpses will return, perhaps not even your corpses will remain. If we lose, the history recorded by the Celestial Court will hold only our disgrace. " "If we die, there will be no tombstones.
A lifetime of cultivation may buy us only corpses like dead dogs upon the battlefield, and after death men will spit and curse, 'Look!
These are traitors!
'" "Will you still follow me? " he cried aloud. Aboard the slave ships, the soldiers of the Yuhua Camp fell silent, until suddenly one soldier pushed back his visor, revealing a resolute face.
"Celestial Master, you brought me out of Yuhua Heaven. " The middle-aged god spoke softly, yet his words shook the heart. "I know only this. Before I met you, I lived worse than a dog. When the calamity broke out in those years, the starved lay everywhere, and I followed the villagers to beg in the city, and heaven knows how many starved to death along the road.
I reached the city alive, faint with hunger, and searched the foul ditch of a demigod's manor for the food they had thrown away. I turned up the human bones they had gnawed clean, and I was starving and wanted to eat, and it was you who pulled me from that ditch. You told me we must have backbone and must not eat men, that we humans must make something of ourselves and live upright.
You said humans are not born destined to be slaves, nor destined to be food for the gods.
You said you would let humans live better. From that moment I followed you.
" Another god pushed back his visor, revealing a long scar like the mark of a whipping centipede, and said in a hoarse voice, "I too lived through that calamity, and from that time I have followed you.