Chapter 767 — The Karmic Red Lotus Stele
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 1 of 4
Tu Bo, unfettered.
The old netherworld emissary knew that because Tu Bo was a deity born of Heaven and Earth, much of his conduct was bound by the rules of Heaven and Earth within Youdu: he could not overstep its statutes, and even his growth had to be corralled within the system of Youdu; he could not leap clear of the laws of its Great Dao. He was the incarnation of the Dao of Youdu — though he possessed his own thoughts and awareness, his actions could never escape the bounds of that Dao. "But that little fellow born in Youdu is a different matter. He was the first womb-born being to come into existence in Youdu — unlike Tu Bo, and unlike the little imps, fiends, and demon-gods that took shape naturally there.
" Tu Bo's voice came from within the holy shrine. The old netherworld emissary turned to look, and there at the shrine threshold sat Heavenly Venerable Yu, gnawing on half a chicken.
"He was like me — at his birth, the Great Dao of Youdu laid its laws upon him. At the time, I even thought I was about to gain a younger brother. Only later did I realize it was not so.
" Tu Bo's third eye glowed with a hazy light, sealing their words within his eye so that none of them could reach the outside. "That little fellow grew at a terrifying pace.
And because he was a post-natal being, the Great Dao laws of Youdu held no power over him. Whoever he wanted to eat, he ate; whoever he wanted to beat, he beat.
" Though Shen Fengqing stopped at no evil, Tu Bo, watching him, found a strange, inexplicable satisfaction in it.
Shen Fengqing was like a little Tu Bo; had he grown to maturity, he would have become a full-grown Tu Bo who left no wickedness undone, and so Tu Bo had no choice but to seal him, suppress him, and exile him to the outer world. "But what is even stranger is this: the Shen Fengqing who was sealed, suppressed, and exiled became Shen Mu.
Shen Fengqing was merely beyond the control of the Great Dao of Youdu, but Shen Mu has stepped entirely outside it — cultivating divine powers and Dao arts from beyond Youdu! " Heavenly Venerable Yu, who was in the middle of eating his chicken, craned his neck to peer into the shrine and saw that the ox-horned, tiger-headed deity in mid-speech wore a strange expression — plainly puzzling over how Shen Mu could have leapt beyond the Great Dao of Youdu.
"My seal turned him into a mortal who could never cultivate.
Yet the second consciousness born within that body groped and crawled, rolled and stumbled, and somehow, inexplicably, worked its way around my seal — achieving no small accomplishment with a body that should have made cultivation impossible. " Tu Bo went on, his expression odd: "The first consciousness is Shen Fengqing, born of Youdu's demonic nature — like an ancient god, like a demigod, and yet again like a post-natal being. The second consciousness is Shen Mu, a post-natal being through and through.
And he is the one who surprised me most. " Under Shen Mu's reckless meddling, Shen Fengqing had more than once come perilously close to breaking through Tu Bo's seal, forcing Tu Bo to intervene again and again to repair the damage. Precisely because he understood them so well, of all people in this world, it was Tu Bo who held the greatest hopes for Shen Mu and Shen Fengqing. He wanted to find in Shen Mu a path by which he himself could break his own shackles.
To call Shen Mu another Tu Bo, one bound by nothing, was hardly an exaggeration. In Tu Bo's eyes, Shen Fengqing and Shen Mu were one and the same person, not a pair of brothers — even if, to Shen Mu and Shen Fengqing themselves, an elder brother was an elder brother, and a younger brother a younger brother. The younger brother was certain the elder had sins enough to overflow the cup; the elder brother was certain the younger held nothing but a bellyful of wicked schemes.