Chapter 303 — The Deep Valley and the Precipitous Chasm
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 1 of 4
"A ship? Could it be a ship from the Land of No Sorrow?"
Shen Mu's heart stirred. The other enormous ship that the village headman and his people had found had already been destroyed, leaving no way to reach the Land of No Sorrow. If this ship had come from there, could he not ride it back to his homeland?
The two white bats led the way ahead. The pair had odd temperaments and flew without the faintest sound; if Shen Mu let his attention stray even a little, he could not tell where they had gone. Yet the next moment came a rustle or two, and the two white bats would hang upside down from a tree or a cliff face, head below and feet above, then flap their wings and slip off again in silence.
The living things of this Nether Valley were utterly strange, and their ways of attack bizarre beyond measure. But the two white bats were the guardians of the place and knew every corner of it as if it were their own palm. With them leading, Shen Mu's road was free of alarms.
Now and then the two brothers would even go catch the grotesque creatures of the Nether Valley and eat them.
"Hey! When luck comes, nothing can block it -- to actually run into a mingbie!"
Shen Mu watched the two brothers fly over a stretch of lake water, plunge in, and drag out a colossal creature: a six-cornered insect whose body bore strange hexagonal patterns in orderly array, with two great pincers at its front, fierce and formidable.
But on the creature's back were white pupal eggs, each taller than a man. Some had already opened, like slender eggs with their neat lids lifted.
The mingbie's strength was terrifying. Unwilling to be taken by the two brothers, it snipped and snapped with its great pincers, and the air, thus cut, gave off thunderous cracks. Bolts of lightning were squeezed into being, and electric light hissed and crackled around the mingbie -- a fearsome sight.
The mingbie also sprayed jets of venom, which fell to the ground and dissolved everything -- soil and rock alike!
Shen Mu's heart quailed. This mingbie's strength was likely not much inferior to that of the dragon qilin, and its venom was especially dreadful, dissolving all things. The dragon qilin's powers were formidable enough, standing between the Seven Stars realm and the Heaven-Man realm, yet this mingbie's poison was likely more than even a Heaven-Man expert could withstand -- though whether the venom could actually land on a Heaven-Man expert was another question.
The two white bats were stronger still. Fu Yuqiu loosed a sonic blast from his mouth that stunned the mingbie outright; then the two brothers leaped onto its back and pried open two of the pupal eggs, as if opening the shell-lids of egg-like cabins.
The two white bats jumped inside, gave a comfortable groan, then beckoned to Shen Mu and the dragon qilin: "Come in, hurry up and come in!"
Shen Mu hesitated a moment, then leaped onto the mingbie's back with the dragon qilin.
Fu Yuchun poked his furry head out of the pupal shell, like a mouse just growing its fur, twitched his ears, and said, "Quick, find a pupa and hide inside. The mingbie is about to wake. This fellow is a master swimmer and the tyrant of the waters. It can carry us from the lake into the river, and down the river to that deep pit! Its nest is there!"
Shen Mu said doubtfully, "Can't we just stand on its back?"
Fu Yuqiu said, "This fellow is extremely alert, but it loves its children dearly. If we hide in these pupae, it won't attack us. And anything else that attacks us will be finished off by it."
Shen Mu looked at the dragon qilin and said, "Can you shrink your body?"
The dragon qilin's frame was immense -- two zhang smaller than this mingbie, but at its present size it certainly could not hide inside a pupa.
The dragon qilin snorted, shook its body, and its form gradually shrank. "Sect Master underestimates me. I was taught by the Patriarch himself, after all; I can change size at will."