Chapter 1521 — The Tall, Gaunt Stranger
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 2 of 5
The fissure stretched to either side, longer and longer, wider and wider. Divine light seeped out from within it; standing before the cliff, one would say a huge eye had grown upon the rock face.
In the fissure the divine light hung thick and hazy like an enormous eyeball; the eyeball rolled with a gurgle, and then its pupil fixed straight upon Shen Mu.
The sight was as though a monster of unimaginable vastness lay hidden within the mountain's body, peering out at Shen Mu with its eye.
Suddenly, within the great eye of light in the fissure, a human figure was walking outward.
Shen Mu's brows lifted. The divine bow lay right beside him, yet he forced himself to hold back and did not strike.
The man had not yet come over from the other universe; to attack him now would be the same as spending his own power to open a passage for him.
The figure in the eye walked for a long while and never managed to step out of the fissure in the cliff. When sunrise came, the figure dissolved, leaving only the cloven Great Black Mountain.
Shen Mu let out a long breath. Before long Xu Shenghua came carrying the bucket. "Does this mountain need mending?"
Shen Mu shook his head. "Mend this mountain, and there will not be enough dao-dew left to mend the others. We need only hold out one more day; then Tai Yi will return, and even if the man in the mountain walks out, he will not be able to stir up much of a storm."
Xu Shenghua frowned slightly and looked at the crack in the cliff. It already measured a hundred zhang or so.
Deep within the fissure was a human-shaped imprint, as though it had grown into one body with the Black Mountain.
Faintly uneasy, Xu Shenghua left with the bucket.
Night fell, and Shen Mu kept his watch before the fissure. The crack-crack-crack burst endlessly from within, the great eye of divine light in the mountain's body grew larger still, the fissure wider; the figure in the eye was taller than before, clearer, as if at any moment he might step out from the mountain wall.
In the small hours the divine light shot from the mountain wall lit six or seven nearby peaks, revealing every hair and thread of them; Shen Mu's shadow too was stretched very long.
And that enormous eyeball in the mountain wall seemed as vast as the whole Black Mountain, wedged in the center between its two cloven halves.
The body of the man in the eye was thin and tall, like the upright pupil of that eyeball.
His features were now clear to see. His face bore many stripes, like natural grain; his eye was like the strange eye in the mountain, save that he had only one.
That eye was fixed on Shen Mu now, and it had not blinked once.
He must be walking through a ruined universe, every step unspeakably hard. His flesh was like smoke, limbs ever shattering, ever gathering again like smoke.
Walking through a ruined universe, he might be ground away to nothing at any moment, yet he brimmed with hope, the hope of life.
He had never been able to cross the World Tree into the future universe. And now, at last, he could enter that future world.
Shen Mu's hand clenched the divine bow, poised to strike, nerves drawn taut, spirit drawn taut, the Mystic Body Three-Cores Art driven to its utmost.
The sky brightened by degrees, but the one-eyed, gaunt, tall stranger in the mountain never managed to emerge from the Black Mountain. The sun rose, the strange eye in the mountain vanished, and the gaunt tall stranger vanished with it.
Shen Mu let out a long, long breath. His whole body was drenched in cold sweat, yet he smiled. "It is over at last. Today, Tai Yi should return..."
Just then a Vermilion Bird beat its wings and came to him as a flash of fire, taking the form of the Southern Emperor's soul. "Little brother, Emperor Yunluo and the big-headed youth have come back."
Great joy surged in Shen Mu's heart. He rose and said, "They could not have come at a better time. Those two rascals have been gone so long; who knows what they have been up to."