Chapter 313 — The Lord Who Guards the Stars
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 1 of 4
Shen Mu's thoughts were a tangled skein.
Qin Hanzhen.
Shen Fengqing? The genealogy he had obtained in the study recorded the figures of the Kaihuang line, and on its final page were written the words: "The hundred-and-seventh generation: the son of Hanzhen, Fengqing.
" Shen Fengqing was the son of Qin Hanzhen.
Then what, in the end, did that strange thing slithering down from the tree mean by its words?
Whom was it calling Qin Hanzhen?
And who was this Shen Fengqing it spoke of?
Shen Mu's body shook, and not a trace of blood remained in his face.
He was Shen Fengqing, and the one in the tree was Qin Hanzhen!
The last name in the genealogy of the Kaihuang Shen clan was him, and the one in the tree was his father!
Was this being, fused into one with the ancient tree, truly his father?
The kin he had longed for day and night?
His own flesh and blood! How had he come to this? Shen Mu told himself again and again to be calm.
Master Huo had once said to him that whatever he faced, he must not flinch even if the heavens fell; so long as reason remained, even in the face of world-ending calamity, even in a situation of certain death, one could still find within it a single thread of life. The Lame Old Man had also told him that he must keep smiling at all times, keep his spirits bright — not merely to numb his enemies, but to keep the light alive in his own heart. Even if a leg were hewn from him, he must still show his simplest, most artless smile; only then would he have a chance to flee.
Granny Zhu too had told him that even if darkness and devils dwelt in his heart, he must stand firm — once he lost himself, everything was finished. But the Shen Mu of this moment, though he knew full well that peril was close at hand, still could not steady himself.
His father — his own flesh and blood, a man he had never once laid eyes on — had been reduced to this, and he could not do as Master Huo, Granny Zhu, and the Lame Old Man had said.
Shen Mu strained to settle his mind, to stop thinking of the one in the tree, to stop caring about him, and forced down the trembling of his body. Suddenly he felt a stinging pain in his palms.
Unconsciously he had clenched his fists, and his nails had sunk deep into the flesh; blood was trickling down along the lines of his palms.
Shen Mu raised his head and looked toward that mysterious being slithering down from the tree. The thing descending from the tree was half serpent, half human, and vast of frame.
Its lower half was serpentine yet bore no scales; its upper half was the shape of a woman — a woman very beautiful, very bewitching — yet the voice it gave forth was a man's voice.
Wherever she slithered, slime dripped without cease, much like Shen Mu's own appearance when he was deified into the form of the Star Lord — except that her Star Lord form was more primitive. Behind her neck grew something like a membrane of flesh. When she spoke, the membrane spread open like two fans thrust into either side of her neck, rising above her head and quivering as it gave out sound.
She seemed unable to open her mouth to speak; instead she made sound by vibrating the membrane behind her neck, so that her voice came out strange and obscure. The membrane must be her vocal cords.
At its tips grew bony spines more than two feet long, like so many javelins. When it opened, two black eyeball-shaped patterns appeared upon the membrane, like two eerie eyes staring at you.
As far as Shen Mu knew, there were two kinds of Star Lord form. One was simply the Star Lord form, without the Gate of Heaven and without the scriptures in hand.
The other was his own kind: behind him the Gate of Heaven, in his hands the scriptures. But this strange creature before him — her form was more primitive still. It did not look like something attained through cultivation; it seemed as though she had been born that way.