Chapter 89 — The Sword Sweeps Away the Demons
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 3 of 3
The child squatting before the house to eat spat out a finger gnawed down to the bone; the great fat white pig went grunting by, a livid arm clutched in its mouth; and at the village entrance an old man was smoking a pipe of human bone, blowing rings of smoke that turned into skulls, which gave shrill screams and then dispersed. Before Shen Mu and behind him more and more villagers appeared, blocking both his road forward and his road back. Behind Shen Mu the fish-dragon spat out the sword, and his left hand gripped the blade in a reversed hold.
Suddenly the qi in his body went wild and poured into the diagram the Deaf Elder had painted on him in dragon's blood; power beyond all terrible measure flooded into his four limbs and hundred bones, and Shen Mu's body filled with a dragon's strength -- and at the same time the Deaf Elder's painting made him feel that he was now a divine being!
Though he wore a skeleton's form, that was only illusion; his flesh and skin remained, merely invisible and untouchable.
When the Village Head had roused him to reopen the Nine Heavens of the Sacred Pupil, he had understood this. Now, as the Deaf Elder's drawing was roused in him, Shen Mu felt his frame filled with dread power; his qi surged madly, a mighty vital essence overflowed, and upon his body it became a great serpent coiled around him!
His aura swelled; thick water vapor rose from beneath his feet and became wave upon wave, and amid the waves the Dark Turtle showed faintly.
He was now like a god, his body filled with boundless strength!
He felt as though he had become a deity who commanded the waters, that with a lift of his hand he could shift mountains and rivers! Break out of this village!
That one thought filled Shen Mu's mind -- at any cost, break out of this village!
Sss, sss -- around him came the sound of bursting human skin; the skins on the villagers burst open on every side, and one by one enormous figures squeezed forth from the husks.
The people of this village were no people at all, but Heavenly Demon Horde!
Children, women, even that pig -- all changed form and became divine arts users of the Heavenly Demon Horde, and among them were not a few who had opened the Seven-Star Divine Treasury.
Only the old man smoking his human-bone pipe still sat at the village entrance, unchanged.
"Kill! " Shen Mu bellowed, and charged at the village entrance.
In the very instant he broke out, the horde-fiends behind him burst up and attacked.
Shen Mu crossed his hands, and boom -- a monstrous wave came surging out from between his palms.
A mighty river, like a great serpent, struck and swept up all the horde-fiends that came at him from every side; the river-serpent shook its head and lashed its tail, and house after house split apart beneath the rush of the vast water!
Shen Mu thrust out his sword-finger; the Chubao Sword plunged into the long river and stabbed like lightning at the horde-fiends caught in the flood -- the Thrust, the Lift, the Cut, the Cloud, the Cleave, the Hang, the Point, the Wipe: the most basic sword art the Village Head had taught him, and every stroke executed to utter perfection!
The river was dyed red with blood and became a crimson torrent, and upon it floated corpse after corpse, face down -- the horde-fiends he had slain.
Beneath Shen Mu's feet the water crashed up, and a Dark Turtle surfaced, bearing him as he rose and fell upon the river, carrying him toward the village entrance; and behind him the whole village was razed to the ground -- after the flood passed, a field of corpses!