Chapter 1151 — Hating Them for Their Want of Spirit
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 2 of 3
All the Southern Heaven was like this; whether he killed the Lishan Deity or not made no difference. Kill the Lishan Deity, and the land he protected would only suffer more calamities, and more people would die. "The pure land the Fire Heavenly Venerable created.
Heh heh.
. .
" He departed with the Dragon Qilin and Yan'er. The Lishan Deity watched him go far off, then frowned and said, "What a strange fellow, with no manners at all!
An outland barbarian!
" As Shen Mu traveled the Southern Heaven, he saw that it was a primitive society in perfect order: the people burned brush and sowed with hoes, and the divine ability users dwelt in seclusion in the deep mountains, never lending a hand to common folk.
And the gods of the human race sat high above, calling the gods among the demigods brother, holding that once they became gods they were no longer of the same race as men. Ask them to fight for the human race, to risk their lives for mortals, and they would only laugh at your foolishness.
They would never do such a thing.
They wore bright, splendid robes and rode in gorgeous carriages, hastening to banquets with the gods among the demigods; those they kept company with were all gods, and they chatted and laughed with ease, observing a propriety that was almost rigid.
The Southern Heaven was a land of ritual and propriety.
Traveling here, Shen Mu saw sect after sect, sects founded by the gods of the Southern Heaven, almost the same as Jingping in the old days. But in Jingping of those years, though the sects stood thick as a forest, they ruled over the life and death and fate of mortals, manipulating the wars of mortal kingdoms and seizing land. The sects of the Southern Heaven, by contrast, loved and respected one another, never trespassing on each other by so much as a hair.
All here was peace and harmony, a harmony like a pool of dead water. A common man could only ever be a common man his whole life, and his children and grandchildren after him could only be common men; never would there be a chance to rise above his station!
What ambition, what ideals, what delving into the arts of the Dao and divine abilities for the good of the people, all of it was a dream, a bubble, a shadow!
And moreover, no one even thought such things, no one did such things. It was a world so still it stifled the breath. Shen Mu's face was as still as water.
What the Fire Heavenly Venerable had done seemed to shelter the common people of the Southern Heaven, but in truth he made all the human race meekly accept a fate already fixed for them, with never a day of turning it over! He came to a divine city, and in that city stood a statue of the Fire Heavenly Venerable, tall, towering, with a wheel of flame carved in bronze behind its head.
In that sculpture, the Fire Heavenly Venerable's gaze seemed infinitely far-seeing and profound, gazing into the distance, wise and divinely martial. Here were many disciples of the Fire Heavenly Venerable, and they too taught disciples, passing on the traditional system of the Divine Treasury and Heavenly Palace, step by step, by the letter, without the slightest variation.
Should any disciple raise a doubt, he would be severely reprimanded, scolded, even beaten, and the fellow students around him would cast him looks of contempt. The disciples of the Fire Heavenly Venerable, their divine abilities were almost identical, their divine weapons identical, and even their clothing identical. They wore the same garments, wore their hair in the same topknot, trimmed their beards to the same shape; they met everyone with a face full of smiles, spoke the same words of greeting, performed the same courtesies.
Shen Mu clenched his fists and passed by the statue of the Fire Heavenly Venerable, his robes whipping and snapping like a great banner in the wind. Crash!