Chapter 258 — How Could Anyone Blame You?
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 1 of 4
As Shen Mu traveled on, he looked about him and saw devastation everywhere: starving refugees fleeing this way and that, disasters breaking out on every side, plague running wild; set beside the still passably peaceful domains of Great Thunderclap Temple, this place was simply hell. Luckily, many great-academy scholars and lesser-academy scholars went everywhere practicing medicine and holding the plague in check; otherwise the calamity would have been far heavier.
The Imperial Preceptor of Jingping had built a great many lesser academies and great academies to replace the old private schools, and now they proved their worth.
Each of these scholars was very weak on his own, but joined together they were fearsome indeed, each of them like a small sect unto himself. Shen Mu saw soldiers and officers clearing out the demon-spirits and monsters that took advantage of the chaos; saw county magistrates personally guarding the farmland, protecting the seedlings, urging the refugees to return to their villages; and the relief grain the Emperor had sent would soon be carted here. He also saw Daoist disciples and Buddhist disciples taking part in the relief; only, they were somewhat free-spirited, their power limited compared with the strength of the state, saving wherever they happened to go.
And some, taking advantage of the nation's calamity to preach, had spawned many a heretical sect, but none of them amounted to anything. "Such a heavenly disaster cannot wipe out a nation like this," Shen Mu thought to himself.
New crops had already been sown; once the harvest season came, the common folk could be settled again. The timing of the State of Jingping's disaster was exceedingly strange: it had come right after a great upheaval that swept the whole nation, for years of constant war had consumed grain and fodder enormously, and on top of that this snow disaster, enough to break its very bones. "I wonder whether the Imperial Preceptor of Jingping has returned to court, and whether the Emperor is still distributing relief.
And where did this heavenly disaster come from?
This is not a disaster that holy lands like the Daoist sects or Great Thunderclap Temple could have created; it can only be a god. " He lifted his head and looked at the sky, doubt in his heart. Why? Why should Heaven send disaster upon Jingping?
For the sake of the gods' orthodoxy in the mortal world? Before Jingping, it was sect after sect that ruled the world, forming kingdoms great and small; some sects had ancient lineages, and legend said there were sects the gods had left behind. Was it, then, that the gods' orthodoxy in the mortal world had been destroyed by the State of Jingping, and the gods were angered, and so sent down this heavenly disaster?
Or was there something still deeper in it?
"The Emperor was enraged and killed a batch of them; then he uncovered many officials who took bribes and perverted the law, who embezzled the relief money, and killed a batch; and more who traded in offices and titles, and killed a batch.
" A disciple of the Dark Demon Cult who had followed the Emperor's relief efforts and seen a good deal of the world said, his face alight with excitement, "The Emperor has also been assassinated again and again, mostly by Hierarch-level beings; fortunately the civil and military ministers of the court went with him, and the Emperor fought with his own hands; he is truly ferocious to the extreme.
It is a great pity that our Hierarch did not go. " Shen Mu asked, "Just which experts were it that assassinated the Emperor? " "I hear it was the Poor Master, Perfected Lord Tian, and people of that sort, and some experts from beyond the frontier as well.
" Shen Mu's expression shifted slightly.
"They have joined hands with Hierarch-level experts from beyond the frontier? Has the Imperial Preceptor of Jingping returned?