Chapter 246 — Truth Hidden in the Illusion
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 2 of 4
But there's no need to worry. One night's rest and you'll be fine. " The dragon qilin was doubtful. They traveled several thousand li north, and the terrain suddenly dropped low.
The farther north they went, the lower the land became. Shen Mu looked back and saw that they had come down from several mountain ranges, and he was puzzled. Granny Zhu said, "This looks like a basin.
Great mountains ring the basin, and above the basin lies a plain. We've walked down from the plain into the basin. It's no small basin, either.
" They all looked.
Within the basin, peaks rose towering, forests grew dense, and ravines and natural chasms crisscrossed the land. The geography was very different from the rest of the Wasteland. The basin was exceedingly vast.
Sometimes, as Shen Mu and the others crossed the foot of a mountain, they would see branching red coral, lovely as rubies. Granny Zhu picked a branch of coral, meaning to make a hairpin of it, when suddenly a strange beast leaped out of a mountain hollow. It looked like a giant lobster, but it was more than a zhang long, with seven or eight legs, and it waved a claw at them.
"Lunch is settled! " the blind elder said, delighted.
At noon Shen Mu roasted the beast. The fragrance filled the air, and the lobster roe ran golden with oil, setting everyone's appetite ablaze. Lord Huo had long since broken his vegetarian vows, and he ate his fill as well.
Only a heap of shells was left on the ground. Shen Mu wondered aloud, "How can there be a beast like this here? There's no water anywhere around. " Even as he spoke, a lowing like cattle came from the distance, and the mountain forest shook.
Several fish monsters, drawn by the smell, came out of the woods.
These strange fish-beasts had the bodies of fish, six or seven zhang long, but beneath their bodies grew six thick legs and feet. Their cries were like cattle, and very loud. Shen Mu peered at them from afar. The fish monsters ran swift as the wind, charging toward them.
Their legs seemed to have been transformed from fins, and were covered in enormous scales, hard beyond measure. As they walked, the scales were like mirrors; caught in the sunlight, hundreds upon hundreds of them flashed reflections in every direction.
"We've eaten our fill, so there's no need for pointless slaughter. " Lord Huo released his aura and frightened the fish monsters away. His aura was terrifying. It drove off the fish monsters and startled the "birds" of the mountain forest into flight as well. Shen Mu looked up and saw a school of winged fish flying across the sky, fleeing into the distance.
He opened his Azure Empyrean Eye and looked. On a distant peak, dark shapes stirred: several great eight-armed octopuses, their huge heads held high, were withdrawing into their own territory, not daring to provoke them. One of the octopuses, startled, let out a puff of black smoke that shrouded a hundred mu or more, and the air turned dark and heavy. They went on their way, and came upon several fish-folk, fish-headed and human-bodied, hunting with steel tridents in hand. "A strange Wasteland," the blind elder muttered.
Shen Mu had lived here since childhood, and from youth to manhood all the creatures he had seen were odd like these. He had always assumed fish and shrimp were meant to be this way, running wild over the land, so he was only briefly surprised and gave it no further thought.
But the blind elder, Granny Zhu, and the others had not always lived here. They knew the habits of fish and shrimp in the outside world, and that was why they found it strange. Granny Zhu looked around and murmured, "This place must once have been a great sea.
The workings of creation are wondrous. The sea vanished, and the creatures that lived in it had no choice but to climb onto land and change their ways. Only, the change is so very great.
. .