Chapter 10 — The Wild Night's Black Tide Devours the Ruined City
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 1 of 3
Cold sweat rolled down Senior Brother Chu's forehead. His voice was hoarse. "No wonder these treasures have sat here all this time and no one has ever taken them. Junior Sister Qing, these treasures have gained a spirit of their own—whoever is not their rightful master will only bring ruin upon himself."
Senior Sister Liu shuddered to the bone and nodded again and again.
Shen Mu said coldly, "These treasures have been here all along. No one has ever dared take them—not even the strange beasts dare. There must be deadly peril in them. You knew the danger, and still you sent your own junior brother to risk his life. Your heart is vicious and poisonous. You are the true demon!"
"The fiend comes again to poison our hearts!"
Grief and anguish contorted Senior Brother Chu's face. He shook his head. "How could you possibly understand the bond between us brothers? A little mongrel is a little mongrel. You measure my heart with a demon's heart, so of course you think my heart is a demon's heart. For now I will not stoop to quarrel with you. When dawn comes, I will send you on your way."
Shen Mu frowned. This Senior Brother Chu was treacherous and venomous, cruel and ruthless—a man who would use even his own junior brother. He would never let Shen Mu leave this place alive.
But the man's strength was formidable. Shen Mu was no match for him at all—and beside him stood Senior Sister Liu, formidable in her own right.
Just then the earth lurched. The whole ruin shook violently. Muffled roars of strange beasts echoed one after another. The beasts in the ruins trembled and shrank back, retreating step by step, staring in frantic terror at the gateway of the ruins, their manner utterly stricken.
"What are these beasts so afraid of?"
Hardly had the thought crossed Shen Mu's mind when a darkness of inconceivable density came surging through that towering gateway like a tide!
Shen Mu was shaken to the core. He saw that the gateway seemed to hold an invisible barrier that blocked the darkness—while the darkness hurled itself madly against that barrier, striving to break through and be free!
The barrier warped and deformed under the darkness's assault, yet it never broke. And the darkness warped along with the barrier's contortions—now like sharp talons, now like smoke stretched taut by the wind, now like countless spikes—a thousand transformations, ten thousand shifts.
Suddenly the darkness ceased its assault, and the invisible barrier at the gateway grew still. After a moment the barrier slowly bulged outward, pressed ever further back.
The darkness forced the gateway's barrier into the shape of a face—a colossal face, its brow pressed against the sky above the canyon, its chin resting on the earth.
Every strange beast in the ruins lay prone on the ground, not daring to move, still less to lift its head and look upon that face.
That face had three eyes of pure black. At the sight of those three eyes, Shen Mu went cold all over, as though his very soul would be drawn away into the darkness!
The face suddenly opened its mouth. Its voice was deep and humming, speaking a language no one understood.
"Qikedo, samaya, bore bore samaya, qikedo bore samaya..."
That humming voice seemed to be countless voices blended into one, filled with an uncanny power that made the earth of the ruins tremble without cease. The palaces were shaken until their walls crumbled, their stone pillars toppled, their cracks and fissures ever widening.
Even the gateway trembled, shedding showers of stone dust—it clearly could not hold out much longer.
Just then a brilliant light blazed forth from the plaza. The pearl in the skeleton leader's hand shone with ever-growing radiance.
Shen Mu hurried to look back. The pearl had actually risen into the air, its brilliant light like a rosy cloud, its multicolored hues seeming somewhat viscous.