Chapter 14 — Primal Qi Washes the Bones to Forge the True Body
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 1 of 3
"And what's to be done with Senior Sister Liu here?" Shen Mu forced himself onto his feet and looked at the girl beside him, still unsteady from her fright.
"Or else—"
Granny Zhu's eyes lit up at once. She nudged Shen Mu's shoulder with her own, nearly toppling the boy who had struggled so hard to stand, and said with a grin that boded no good: "Leave her to be your little wife? You were the sweetest thing when you were small; now that you've grown you're nothing like so sweet as you used to be, but a fat baby you'd make with this little girl would be sweet as anything too — Granny does love children..."
Shen Mu glanced at Senior Sister Liu, whose face was swollen to a pig's head, and hesitated: "Granny, best not, I think..."
Pfft.
The Lame Old Man had at some point come up behind Senior Sister Liu; he raised a hand and ran the girl clean through, the heart pierced through and through, the simple, honest smile still hanging on his face: "Then we kill her."
Shen Mu's eyes bulged and his tongue stuck fast; he stammered out: "Grandpa Lame, why did you kill her?"
"You said you didn't want her. So of course we kill her." The Lame Old Man drew the blade out, his smile growing only more guileless, as though he were puzzled.
Shen Mu sulked. He had never had the least notion of making babies with Senior Sister Liu. It was only that he was, after all, a boy of eleven or twelve, and in his daily life all he ever saw were old monsters like Lord Huo and Granny Zhu; the folk of the neighboring villages were cutthroats and ogres all, and there was scarcely a boy or girl of his own age to be found anywhere near.
No playmates — yet his heart was still the heart of a boy.
"Let's go back," said the Village Head, and he turned his head to look at the ruins in the gorge.
The Alchemist said to Shen Mu with a smile: "We're all short an arm or a leg among us, and no one's going to carry you; so you'll have to walk back on your own two feet. Oh, yes — there's still Four Symbols Blood here. You didn't come home last night, so we laid it out for you all the same."
Shen Mu nodded, took the four white porcelain cups, drank down the Four Symbols Blood, and struggled forward one step at a time. Driving the Mystic Body Three Elixirs Art to break down the power of the blood, he began telling them of the strange things he had met with in the Hidden Valley ruins.
Granny Zhu's expression stirred faintly. "Gods and demons? A great dark face, a skeleton girl? Interesting..."
The other villagers found it interesting too, but had no further thoughts on the matter.
Shen Mu could not hold back: "Granny, aren't you even curious about the story inside these Hidden Valley ruins?"
The Alchemist sighed. "The Divine Kingdom that once flourished so brightly, and is now scattered to ash and smoke; the divine bones, hard and stark, dancing in the night — is it that their hearts will not yield?"
The Deaf Elder stared hard at his lips and said: "Yield or not, they're dead. What good is any of it? So curiosity about the story here is mostly good for nothing either."
"Deaf Elder, are you really the Deaf Elder?" The Alchemist studied his ears — a pair of iron ears, forged of snow-white iron, plugging even the ear holes — and asked, curious.
The Deaf Elder pulled the two iron ears out of his head, revealing the iron pegs, three inches long, by which the ears hung in the holes, and said coldly: "Let me fit these two ears into your ear holes, and then you'll know whether I'm the Deaf Elder or not!"
The Alchemist smiled faintly and said no more.
With another pfft, the Deaf Elder jabbed the two iron ears back into his ear holes and said to the Silent Smith: "These two ears have been bothering me lately. Rework them for me."
The Silent Smith nodded.
Shen Mu was quite speechless at these relatives of his. That the Alchemist and the rest should take more interest in the Deaf Elder's ear holes than in the ruins left him thoroughly bewildered.