Chapter 309 — Pulling Each Other Down
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 1 of 4
Ban Gongcuo, furious and frantic, stammered, "Sect Master Shen, don't you joke with me — my surname isn't Shen, I'm of the barbarian tribes..."
Shen Mu, in a towering rage, shouted, "Shen Gongcuo, will you not even acknowledge your own Shen ancestors? You once said you came from Carefree Village..."
"Shut your mouth, you little wretch!"
Ban Gongcuo, his fury reaching the heavens, pounced to kill; Shen Mu at once fended him off. One of them wielded the Sorcerer Venerable's Loura Sutra and transformed into a monstrous being with a bird's head and a man's body; the other wielded the Nine Dragons Emperor Art and became like a majestic emperor. Dragons roared, birds cried; the dragon-form divine ability and the bird-wing feather swords clashed again and again.
The two of them looked very young, yet both were ruthless and vicious, every move aimed at taking the other's life. In sheer refinement of technique, one could scarcely find among the divine-power practitioners of the Six Harmonies realm anyone to match them.
It was only that the battle just now had drained them so heavily that their vital essence was no longer as vigorous as before; even so, the might of their moves was still nothing to scoff at.
Fierce as their fighting was, each seeming to wish the other dead, their feet were nonetheless edging toward the cabin door.
The two were of one mind; fighting as they went, they drew near the cabin door, and it looked as though they might break free and flee — when suddenly the treasure ship shook violently. The owner of those two eyes beyond the bridge had grown somewhat angry and was rocking the treasure ship; the whole vessel shuddered and quaked without cease.
Suddenly an invisible force came, wrapping them up tight and dragging them before the porthole. The two hastily stopped, not daring to resist.
The strength of this mysterious being was truly unfathomable; even Ban Gongcuo felt his scalp go numb, knowing that even at the full height of his former life he might not have been its match.
Beyond the bridge, those two enormous vertical eyes brimmed with wrath, and the voice came again from below, so grim and chilling that it made the blood run cold: "Which of you is surnamed Shen?"
Shen Mu and Ban Gongcuo raised their hands as one, pointing at each other: "Him!"
The voice came again: "You are both surnamed Shen?"
Ban Gongcuo shuddered and hastily cried out, "I'm not surnamed Shen — I am a Grand Venerable of the Golden Palace of Loulan. Senior, you may go and make inquiries..."
The voice was most uncanny, as though it grazed across their very souls, piercingly harsh, jarring their spirits into a numb tingle: "Not surnamed Shen — then there is no need for you to live."
"Since it has come to this, it seems I cannot hide it from you, Senior."
Ban Gongcuo said with a solemn face, "That's right, I am Shen Gongcuo! And this fellow beside me is a Grand Venerable of the Golden Palace of Loulan, reincarnated and possessing another's body, named Ban Mu. I beg you, Senior, to act — you may rid the world of this useless creature at once!"
Shen Mu sneered, "Just now you called me Sect Master Shen — or is your word so much wind from your backside?"
The two glared at each other, gnashing their teeth, each longing to drive a fist into the other's heart and tear out that black heart to gnaw on.
The voice was silent a moment, then said, "Which of you is sixteen?"
Ban Gongcuo and Shen Mu exchanged a glance; Shen Mu hastily said, "I am sixteen!"
Ban Gongcuo just as hastily said, "It happens that I am sixteen as well!"
Though Shen Mu was nominally fifteen, that age was reckoned from the time Granny Zhu picked him up; the villagers had always argued over it — some held he was fifteen, some that he was sixteen — and just how old he truly was, Shen Mu himself did not know.