Chapter 307 — A Trap Laid in Secret
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 2 of 4
The most dreadful thing on the battlefield before Qingmen Pass was not the blades of the Man-Di Kingdom's soldiers but the Great Shamans of the Golden Palace of Loulan. Their methods of attack were truly uncanny, and hard to guard against.
The countless wandering souls flew from the gourd, wailing like ghosts and howling like demons, and rushed at Shen Mu. Behind Shen Mu the Heaven-Bearing Gate suddenly gaped open; a cold wind shrieked, and with a single swish it swept every wandering soul away!
Any soul of the dead can scarcely escape the dominion of the Nether Capital. The Golden Palace of Loulan had secret arts to hold souls back and to cultivate with the souls of others, and in the way of souls it stood at a height other holy lands and sects could not reach -- but before the Heaven-Bearing Gate it had met its nemesis!
The Heaven-Bearing Gate swallowed all the wandering souls and slammed shut; at once the ghastly wailing in the bridge fell silent.
The Great Shaman was shaken. The gourd at his back dropped with a crack and shattered into pieces. His four arms whirled up and down, and the vajra maces in his hands became four vajra pagodas, their force a thousand jun, crashing down at Shen Mu.
Shen Mu did not meet them head-on. He flashed backward, and the No Sorrow Sword flew from its sheath at his back. The Great Shaman sneered; a beam of light shone from the vajra pagodas and fixed the No Sorrow Sword, drawing the blade into the pagoda.
His four vajra maces looked like maces, but in truth his primal weapon was four pagodas refined to shrink and grow at will, reduced to the utmost until they resembled maces that he could hold in his hand day to day.
In battle, though, he could crush an enemy with the pagodas' dreadful power, smashing him to pulp with one invincible blow!
The pagodas were also a strange treasure that could take in an opponent's primal weapon. If one were the least bit careless and one's primal weapon was drawn into the pagoda, then as one side waned the other waxed; stripped of his primal weapon, the opponent had only death before him!
He had just taken Shen Mu's No Sorrow Sword into the pagoda when suddenly sword after sword flew from behind Shen Mu, and with a ringing clang-clang-clang they planted themselves in that pagoda.
He stared blankly. Before he could react, a flood of sword light surged into his face and drowned him, and in an instant the pagoda was bristling with swords on every side!
The Great Shaman's arms gave way first. For all that he had become a one-eyed giant of immense strength, he could not bear up such a mass of solid weight; his arm bones snapped with a crack.
Swish, swish, swish -- thousands upon thousands of swords planted themselves in perfect order around the pagoda, forming a sword core of inconceivable size, several zhang across, and the Great Shaman was nowhere to be seen.
Shen Mu walked on toward the helm on the bridge, and beneath that vast sword core the Great Shaman lay impaled within it, one foot still sticking out from the swords.
Shen Mu came to the helm. This treasure ship's helm differed from the helm of the Jingping Kingdom's tower ships, chiefly in its construction. A Jingping tower ship had only one helm, used to change direction of advance and to rise or descend; this treasure ship had, besides the helm, other strange and curious components, and beside them lay a silver helmet with a red tassel.
Shen Mu frowned and looked around. He could not understand what these components did. He hesitated, then picked up the silver tasseled helmet and put it on his head.
Hummm --
Suddenly his eyes blazed with light. A vast space swelled and unfolded before him at furious speed; in an instant heaven and earth were transformed, and there appeared before him the Desolate Ruins and the boundless geographies of Jingping, the grasslands, and the ice and snow of the north!