Chapter 1767 — The Powerful Minister's Dao-Slaying Melody
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 1 of 4
When the drumbeat rose, the spiritual power and vital breath of heaven and earth at once fell to seething. The rhythm was simple, nothing but the purest dong, dong, dong, yet every stroke seemed to land upon the heart, upon the blood and the breath, setting the blood aboil and filling the heart with killing intent!
The ponderous drumbeats were like supreme authority, like boundless might; they came crashing down like mountain after mountain pressing upon men's Dao-hearts, pressing until a man could scarcely draw breath.
Yet Heaven Venerable Yue's qin music was not the least troubled by the drumbeats; rather, she kept her notes very low and very calm, and yet those notes pierced through the drums, limpid as a trickling stream, flowing into every heart. In the ruined wreck of the Heavenly Court's great camp there remained only the maimed and wounded officers and soldiers and the alchemists of Jing Ping hurrying to and fro; listening to drum and qin, the officers and soldiers gradually ceased their groaning from pain.
On the battlefield in the night the fires of war had not yet gone out, and far off the Dao-light of the Great Luotian Heaven of the One Qi burst forth from time to time, making this night seem singularly beguiling.
The drumbeats grew heavier and heavier, as though they would crush the qin music utterly; the killing intent and the oppressive might within that monotonous beat, like a restless sea suddenly boiling over, were as savage and as perilous as a battlefield, slaughter everywhere, flying swords and halberds everywhere, limbs flung in all directions, heads rolling along the ground, all living beings writhing beneath iron hooves, weeping, wailing, howling!
Zaifu's drumbeat was truly magnificent! One man, two hammers, a hundred drums, stripped to the waist and drumming, pouring into that drumming all the authority and all the power of those who sit on high, so that the killing intent in the drumbeat grew stronger and stronger, giving full vent to his worship of power and his hunger for it, wielding that power without restraint, trampling everything underfoot! Trampling the right to live, trampling proud life, manipulating war, manipulating slaughter!
The drumbeat brimmed with the ambition to glut itself on power, and it made men feel as they had felt when the Ten Heaven Venerables held power, oppressing heaven and earth, all things, all living beings.
And still Heaven Venerable Yue's qin music was unmoved, still like a spring breeze blowing, like a little river running, like moonlight in the night, warm and gentle. Her qin did not scatter the frenzy of the drumbeat; it was like the long life-force of all living beings, destroyed within the drumbeat, harvested within it, and yet stubbornly growing forth again, multiplying and enduring.
The suffering of all living beings seemed gathered into her qin music, bearing every calamity and every pain, every parting of life and death, yet living on tenaciously, enduring in silence.
Zaifu's drumbeat soared, full like the man himself of a hegemon's spirit that sweeps the world, raising the killing intent that fills the world to its utmost limit!
Of a sudden his body quaked violently; he roused the Mystic Art of Creation, and one after another his arms flew, beating the drums in near madness, the drumbeats frantic to the extreme!
The killing intent in the drumbeat turned savage, twisted, raging, like a Dao-heart warped, like a devil released, as though the nightmare of a dream had come into reality!
Power, which turns clouds with a flick of the hand and rain with the back of it, manipulating the people of the world, manipulating the world itself, to its heart's content!
Ten Heaven Venerables were exchanged again and again, revolution upon revolution, reform, change; the hopes and yearnings of all living beings, amid the turmoil of the times, all became froth and bubble and dream-shadow!