Chapter 226 — One Sword Slashes Forth a Surging Sea of Blood
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 1 of 4
In the main hall, Xue Hu'er lay motionless on the dragon qilin's back and stealthily opened her eyes. She saw heads come rolling down, one after another.
The sight was uncanny beyond words: there was plainly no enemy at all, yet these experts of the Heaven-Man realm had only to set foot in that courtyard to die on the instant. The others were as wary as if facing a mighty foe.
One Heaven-Man realm expert shouted aloud, his sword qi like frost, silver rime wreathing his whole body, and stepped by degrees into the courtyard, his gaze alert, sweeping all around. His swordsmanship was fierce; countless gleams of sword light swam about him like the tiniest of fish, gliding merrily round and round.
He had adopted a passive, defensive stance: thousands upon thousands of tiny sword-fish circling and swimming, pregnant with his vast and mighty cultivation, and the moment they met hostility they would strike back at once, dealing the foe a single fatal blow. He had no choice in the matter.
The enemy came without shadow and went without trace; there was no making out where the enemy truly was or how he struck, and yet so many Heaven-Man realm experts had lost their lives already. It was eerie in the extreme. He met no danger at all, and yet still he dared not slacken his vigilance.
He moved his steps by degrees toward the main hall where Shen Mu and the others slept, and then he saw the painting hanging before the hall. Shen Mu had lit a candle before that painting, and it shone upon the scroll.
Painted upon it was the back of a middle-aged man bearing a sword; the man's face was turned in profile, as though he watched the painter out of the corner of his eye. In that corner-of-the-eye glance was revealed a killing intent that could shake the heavens.
That fleeting, startled glimpse the painter had caught and made into this painting.
Though there was only this one middle-aged man upon it, one felt nonetheless that the painting held endless tidings left unpainted, tidings hidden in the blank spaces of the scroll. It was the moment just after a dreadful battle had ended: countless corpses of mighty ones lay fallen at that middle-aged man's feet; in a towering sea of blood the bodies floated up, white bones dyed red with gore, glinting with a strange and otherworldly hue; numberless ghosts unjustly slain beneath the sword were being seized by underworld runners and dragged into the gloom.
And in that dark world, a demon god with two long horns of nine coils was holding a joyous wedding feast, celebrating these wronged souls of the mighty as his own guests and his own food.
This was the message hidden in the blank spaces of the painting.
In the courtyard, the Heaven-Man realm expert saw the painting and the man within it, and suddenly he froze where he stood. He saw his own head sliding from his neck; he felt all things slow to a crawl, as though he were slowly falling into a darkness that held no gleam of light at all, sinking deeper and deeper, endlessly, never reaching the bottom of the dark.
Thud. His head struck the ground and rolled twice, his eyes still staring wide. Suddenly a great hand reached over and snatched up his head.
Outside the courtyard nine others yet remained, standing there with faces full of alarm; only that white-browed old man, Daoist Green Mountain, kept some measure of composure, and it was he who had snatched up the head of that Heaven-Man realm expert. He was also the only grand master of the Life-Death realm among them all.
Daoist Green Mountain looked into the eyes of that Heaven-Man realm expert and let out a foul breath: "A fine sword.