Chapter 232 — The Old Man's Clay Jar
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 2 of 4
Every New Year they would wrangle over this matter, and this year, he supposed, they would wrangle again. Even as he was thinking this, Shen Mu suddenly heard a humming sound; he looked up and saw several golden insects flying in from the woods outside the village.
Shen Mu blinked, and the golden insects suddenly hummed away and vanished into the woods. Then more insects came flying, circled the village once, and bored back into the woods.
"That woman from the Three Marvels Fortress has arrived!
" Shen Mu's eyes flickered.
The woman from the Three Marvels Fortress was far stronger than Halfwit Monk; she commanded a tide of insects, gu worms tempered until they were like steel and iron, able to gnaw even Yuan Soldiers down to nothing. The woman controlled thousands upon thousands of insects.
There were too many of them; if they came surging at once, Shen Mu would certainly be no match, and in an instant he would be eaten down to not a scrap left.
"Rather than let her kill her way into the village, I may as well settle with her outside it!
" Shen Mu looked all around, went to the apothecary's shop, and carefully lifted up a broken clay jar.
Inside it several scorpions were wrestling with their pincers and flinging their hooked tails forward, fighting over the spirit pills Shen Mu had fed them. Holding the broken clay jar, Shen Mu walked out of the village. The Dragon Qilin glanced at him and said in a muffled voice, "Cult Master, what are you going to do?
" "Fight! " Shen Mu said viciously.
"Fighting again.
. . " The Dragon Qilin was utterly uninterested.
"Don't come back all beaten and wounded again. " Carrying the jar, Shen Mu came to the riverside.
A few insects hung behind him the whole way, lurking in the grass and among the leaves.
Shen Mu stood still and waited a while, and saw more and more insects all around, spreading over the river's surface until the river seemed to be covered with a layer of gold.
These insects drew the great fish from the Yong River.
Several fish monsters leapt joyfully from beneath the water, wanting to eat the gu worms; but when the great fish two or three zhang long leapt into the air and opened their hideous jaws, they found the insects squealing and shrieking, each one growing to more than a zhang in length, pouncing onto the great fish and crunching away at them; soon those few great fish had been eaten down to nothing but fish-dragons that dropped back into the water. Shen Mu's eyelids twitched.
The fish monsters of the Yong River were no small matter either, comparable in strength to martial artists of the Spirit Embryo realm and the Five Luminaries realm, yet before the gu worms raised by the woman of the Three Marvels Fortress they were utterly helpless. "Cult Master of the Nether Demon.
" A voice came from beneath the river. Shen Mu looked toward it and saw the woman from the Three Marvels Fortress treading upon the golden insect tide, flying toward this side over the river's surface from downstream. She was not flying; the insects were — countless golden insects flying round and about her, and among them a golden queen insect much larger than the rest, upon whose back the woman stood. Shen Mu smiled sweetly. "What should I call you, sister of the Three Marvels Fortress?
" Qiu Yue halted the swarm a hundred and more zhang from Shen Mu, somewhat curious. "The Cult Master of the Nether Demon holds high station and great authority, supreme beneath all heaven. Why are you so courteous to an enemy, and call me sister?
" The Three Marvels Fortress had three marvels: insects, poison, and beautiful women.
This woman possessed a beauty that made the heart pound. At first sight of her, one would forget the scalp-numbing gu worms, and instead the heart would suddenly throb hard twice, as though struck deep in the soul by her beauty.