Chapter 247 — The Twenty Heavens
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 1 of 4
Shen Mu, Lord Huo, and the rest quickened their pace, but Lord Huo had to hold Granny Zhu's mind and spirit in check, and he found it ever more taxing; in the end their speed gradually slackened. Cult Master Li grew at a furious rate, and Granny Zhu's cultivation waxed stronger and stronger, yet Lord Huo dared not strike with his full strength, fearing he might harm Granny Zhu's very soul — and so the journey was sown with no end of uncertain turns.
Granny Zhu woke less and less often, while Cult Master Li surfaced more and more; Shen Mu burned with anxiety, yet there was nothing he could do. This basin had once been ocean — the Eastern Sea, most likely, of which the Heavenly King's statue had spoken.
The terrain was unimaginably complex: chasms and natural moats plunging nearly ten thousand zhang, sheer ridges and towering peaks keen as the edges of blades. The Eastern Sea of old had become dry land; the seawater was gone, not a drop of it remaining.
Yet Shen Mu found something strange in this. The villagers here said that at night the sea floated in the sky and its waters spread everywhere, while by day no trace of it could be seen.
So where, in the end, had the seawater gone? The deeper they went, the stranger and mightier the creatures grew. Luminous jellyfish drifted to and fro through the sky, and when night fell they hid themselves in the shrines, like so many great lanterns of every hue.
They even came upon living flood dragons — some dwelling in deep ravines, some in volcanoes, each ruling its own domain.
So long as they were not provoked, the flood dragons seldom came out. A few times Shen Mu saw one fly from its lair to seize people from the villages and devour them; meeting the travelers on the road, the dragons, sensing their strength, did not dare make trouble, and simply flew past them. Once out of this basin, they would be only two days' journey from Mount Sumeru.
These past days Shen Mu and the others dared not even relax in sleep, ready at every moment to wake and subdue Cult Master Li — truly a bitter hardship.
Only the dragon qilin slept its fill and ate well, its hide and scales glossy and bright. So Shen Mu and the rest simply leaped onto the dragon qilin's back and let the vast beast carry them racing toward Mount Sumeru. Gradually the villages along the way held more and more worshippers of the Buddha; every household enshrined a Buddha image, and some even set the Buddha images alongside the village's stone statues, honoring gods and Buddhas together.
Shen Mu made inquiries, and only then learned that certain monks had come to preach the sutras and heal the villagers, and so had won their hearts.
"The Buddhist order has its eye on the Wasteland too. " The blind elder laughed. "Great Tingming Temple tends the forsaken folk of the Wasteland — there is something in it of the equality of all living beings.
Only it smacks of cleverness, of borrowing the stone statues' renown to accumulate merit.
" The nearer they came to Great Tingming Temple, the more Buddhist temples there were. Some drew a thriving incense-offering, enshrining Buddha images of every form; yet when night came, the folk of the Wasteland and the strange beasts did not hide in these temples, but still took refuge where there were stone statues and god statues.
Shen Mu thought, "The Tathagata means well, but still he cannot contend with the gods of the Wasteland.
He can cure illness, but he cannot save lives.
" Peaks grew more numerous nearby, great and small temples standing thick as a forest. Shen Mu and the others passed several, and as night was falling they decided to lodge at one of them.
The temple's incense burned thick; it held several hundred monks, who showed no fear at all when night came and went on chanting the Buddha's name and reciting sutras. "Can these monks truly possess great divine powers, to hold off the darkness of the Wasteland? " Shen Mu wondered in astonishment.