Chapter 317 — The Return of the Soul
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 3 of 4
The treasure ship sailed faster and faster, and came above another stretch of land: a world collapsing, dying, shrouded in darkness, from which paper boats drifted one after another, and on those paper boats were the souls of the dead.
Many paper boats slipped past the treasure ship, drifting toward the place of the Nine Coils; the souls aboard were ragged and tattered, one and all of the host of heavenly demons, of the heavenly demon race — yet they were not the ferocious, savage things Shen Mu had seen in the Wasteland Ruins; rather they were gaunt with grief, aged and sick and dying.
Thousands of paper boats came drifting in; plainly the number of dead heavenly demons was immense. Shen Mu frowned: under ordinary circumstances it was impossible for so many heavenly demons to die; even a war on a grand scale could not kill so many at once. "O soul, come home—" From the dark reaches of time and space came a faint tremor: a demon god crying out in shrill grief beyond the barrier of a world, chanting in the demon tongue.
Shen Mu looked toward the source of that voice, and dimly made out a demon god with eight arms and four heads standing weeping in the dark starry void, indistinct through the veil of a world, its sound indistinct. "That seems to be the weeping of the Dutian Demon King.
.
.
" He was briefly startled. The figure standing in another world in its death throes looked like the Dutian Demon King; such was his power that even the shattered Dutian World could not fetter his form or his voice.
Across the Dutian World he called to the souls of his own people, striving to summon back the souls of the dead. "O soul, return! Go not down to this Youdu.
Tubo has nine coils, and his horns are dread. His shoulders are thick, his thumbs are blood; he drives men before him in frantic haste. Three eyes and a tiger's head, his body like a bull's.
Such things all delight in men.
Come back! Lest you bring ruin on yourself. O soul, return! Pass in through the gate.
The priests and invocators call you back, walking backward before you.
. . " As the ship sailed on, the demon tongue of the Dutian Demon King grew fainter and fainter, until what he lamented could no longer be heard clearly.
The treasure ship had already gone far from that dying Dutian World; and it was precisely because the Dutian World was perishing that so many Dutian heavenly demons kept dying.
Shen Mu looked back at the countless paper boats drifting from the Dutian World into Youdu, and his heart ached with pity.
Perhaps this would be the future of the world they belonged to.
A long while passed.
They came to another landmass in the darkness: specks of divine radiance lit the gloom, hazy and blurred, and there were still living creatures of Youdu stirring in the dark.
The treasure ship gradually slowed, and at last those aboard could see what those divine lights were: they were the glow given off by the statues of village after village, and others the divine light bursting forth from ancient ruins.
They had come to the Wasteland Ruins in the darkness.
Shen Mu stirred inwardly: when night came to the Wasteland Ruins, once darkness fell, it actually bordered upon Youdu!
Part of the Wasteland Ruins overlapped with Youdu.
For the creatures of the Wasteland Ruins, it must be that two worlds were laid one upon the other; by night the creatures of Youdu came out to move about, and then the world of Youdu held the upper hand, pressing the real world down, while by day the real world covered over the world of Youdu. And in the darkness, wherever light shone was the real world; every point of light was a gateway into reality. That is to say, if they entered a ruin or a village protected by a god's statue, they could leave Youdu and return to reality!