Chapter 86 — The Realm Where the Dead Dwell
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 3 of 3
"Cross a few mountains, pass through a gateway, and you will see the Land of No Sorrow. " "Many thanks.
" "Not at all.
" Shen Mu and the Village Head walked up into the mountains, and Shen Mu looked back to see the villagers still watching them, their gazes eerie.
The Village Head said, "In their eyes we are dead men; that is why they look at us so. " Shen Mu looked back and said, "Village Head, I think there is something strange here.
.
. The Blind Elder opened the Ninefold Heaven Sacred Pupil for me. My eyes are gone now, but I can still dimly see certain things.
.
.
" The Village Head halted. "What do you see? " Shen Mu said, "There is demon aura upon them. " The Village Head pondered, then said, "The realm where the dead live must alter the very rules of life and death; that is the power of gods and demons. When we enter here our flesh and blood seem to be gone, yet the instant we step back out they appear again, which means the flesh and blood do still exist — only the rules twist them so that they cannot be seen or touched. Shen'er, your Ninefold Heaven Sacred Pupil is still there, and you can still marshal your vital essence.
Can you use your vital essence to stir the Ninefold Heaven Sacred Pupil within your eyes? " Shen Mu set about trying at once, and soon felt his own eyes; then his vital essence flowed into them and roused the array-pattern of the Ninefold Heaven Sacred Pupil that the Blind Elder had branded there, and in an instant everything before him became incomparably clear. He looked back, and everyone in that village had changed appearance: they were no longer people, but withered bones — and even the chickens and ducks, the cattle and sheep, even that great fat pig, had turned to withered bones!
The bones of those villagers differed from human bones, misshapen and grotesque, plainly not the bones of humankind. Shen Mu described what he saw, and the Village Head pondered a while, then said, "It is the Heavenly Demon Host. " "The Heavenly Demon Host?
" Shen Mu was stunned.
"The Heavenly Demon Host are of the demon race.
Your Dark Demon Cult may bear the words 'heavenly demon' in its name, but its members are in truth human all the same, merely flying the banner of the Dark Demon Cult.
The Heavenly Demon Host is different. The Heavenly Demon Host is a race said to come from an alien realm, fiercely aggressive. As for where they come from, there is no way of knowing. Some legends.
. . " The Village Head paused and did not go on; he looked ahead.
"Can this place be the world of the Heavenly Demons?
Yet it does not quite seem so either.
Let us go on. If it is the world of the Heavenly Demons within, we come straight back out!
" They crossed several mountains and at last came to the gateway the old man at the village mouth had spoken of. Two mountain gates, with a stone bridge above them like a crossbeam, and on the cliff wall were written the two characters "Fengdu".
Shen Mu's heart gave a leap, and a foreboding came over him: Fengdu was the legendary gate of ghosts — could this be the world of hell? But the Village Head acted as though he saw nothing, and walked straight on. Shen Mu hurried after him, and as the two looked ahead, their hearts both quivered.
Ahead, in the center of city after city laid out in perfect squares, temples and shrines rose piercing the clouds, towering, magnificent; countless cities, countless palaces, countless temples — as far as the eye could reach, no end to them!
This was the world behind the gate of Fengdu: vast, boundless, spectacular!
"This should be the capital of Fengdu. " Shen Mu had scarce thought this when he suddenly caught sight of a wrecked ship. It was a ship formed of a mountain, chains streaming from it into the air like kite strings, and at the ends of those strings was tethered a gray sphere.
A massive sphere — but half of it was broken away.
It was a moon.