Chapter 1766 — Who Tempers Your Advance in Your Stead
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 4 of 4
Yet the fivefold decline had invaded the great heavens, and any god or demon who died soon rotted and stank, yet this youth forced down his nausea to eat the stinking carrion.
When the youth had regained his strength, he took up slaughter anew, striking at the gods who ruled the heavens, honing his saber and honing his Dao heart. Like a mad demon he slew from one heaven to the next, and gods and demons beyond counting fell beneath his blade. He was savage beyond measure, armed with an invincible faith, like the cruelest beast and the craftiest hunter, slaughtering at will to raise his Dao realm.
"Is that Lord Shang? " Heaven-Venerable Yue asked doubtfully.
Then they seldom saw Lord Shang's gentle side; he sat by a stream before a ruined hamlet admiring a small flower, while children sang and danced about him and set a garland upon his head, and contentment lit his plain face. Then Lord Shang walked the road of slaughter again, challenging higher gods and drawing his saber on stronger foes.
That day he at last became one of the mightiest beings of that universe and launched his assault upon the lofty Dao-achievers! In the moment a Dao-achiever died by his hand, he at last achieved the Dao through the Dao of killing.
But his aim was not to achieve the Dao; it was to slay those Dao-achievers who had stowed across, to slay those high beings who manipulated that universe! Slaughter was not his purpose; what he truly wished was to guard the common people of that universe!
Now he had such power at last! He donned the garland the children had given him and gazed at his own Da Luotian, looking down in joy upon the universe below, and the plain smile froze upon his face.
The first native Dao-achiever of the Sixteenth Age, and also its last, his achievement crushed that universe utterly and crushed the Ultimate Void.
The Great Annihilation came in that instant, and the whole universe sank into collapse and ruin, and countless common beings died miserably in its first wave.
He who most wished to save that universe and save its common beings became the last straw that broke it, the butcher who slaughtered clean those he had meant to protect!
In the moment the apocalypse of universal ruin erupted, Lord Shang went mad; caring nothing for how to survive the apocalypse, he struck madly at those Dao-achievers amid the cataclysm!
Heaven-Venerable Yue and Zaifu stared at this scene, until at last, with the ruin of that dream universe, the dream vanished. Shen Mu panted.
"Heaven-Venerable Yue, Grandpa Tu, can you wake the ultimate killing intent in Lord Shang's heart?
" Zaifu strode out and bade the soldiers fetch a hundred hundred-measure war drums and set them upright; he tore off his robe to bare his mighty thews and gripped two great mallets.
Heaven-Venerable Yue sat behind the great array of drums and restrung her zither; its notes drifted forth to answer the howl in the night, neither tight nor slack, neither hurried nor slow.
Thump!
The drums sounded as Zaifu swung his mallets, striking in the instant the zither and the howl broke off, deep and mighty.