Chapter 353 — Soft-Hearted
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 4 of 4
"Let him spit in my face and I will let it dry."
The Dragon Qilin, evidently long since enlightened, said, "Let him be as overbearing as he likes — the clear wind sweeps the mountain ridge."
The party left Little Jade Capital. Qingyou looked back once and was moved. He said to the headman, "Many years ago, when I left this place following you, my heart was full of grand ambition, wholly bent on achieving some deed that would shake heaven and earth. When I came back, my will was broken, and all that ambition had been ground away to nothing. I thought I would never leave again — and now your disciple has talked me out of Little Jade Capital. Fate does play tricks on a man."
"It was not Shen'er who drew you out; it was your own heart that stirred."
The headman said, with meaning, "Is it the wind that moves, or the banner? The benevolent man's heart moves, that is all."
Qingyou laughed heartily. "You are wrong. My worldly heart is dead and will never come back to life!"
The headman shook his head and laughed. "A knife for a mouth and tofu for a heart. Shen'er, pay no mind to the way this old fellow always snarls at you — he is in truth the most fragile of men. If you break his heart, that tofu heart of his will shatter all over the ground, and no amount of pasting will put it back together!"
Qingyou sneered, "My heart shattered beyond pasting? You were the one lying on the ground weeping just now!"
The headman was furious. "When the immortal maiden Xueqi left you all those years ago, who was it that lay on the ground weeping like a figure of tears?"
"You cried so piteously just now that the Human Sovereign had to hold you."
"When you shamelessly wept and begged her to take you back, did you ever think I would be throwing it in your face today?"
"And you wiped your snot on the Human Sovereign's chest!"
...
Shen Mu's eyes went wide. The two old men's ages together must come to sixteen hundred years at least, and here they were quarreling without pause, dragging up each other's failings and digging out every shameful story.
"The longer they live, the younger they get. A pair of old children."
Shen Mu shook his head and thought, "Where has Cripple Grandpa gone? If the Daoist expert did not catch up with him, he has likely entered Little Jade Capital already. I have been delayed here two or three days; in that time Cripple Grandpa could have turned Little Jade Capital upside down several times over. And I wonder how the fighting on the grasslands goes — has the Imperial Preceptor of Jingping reached the Golden Palace of Loulan?"
At the Great Snow Mountain, outside the Golden Palace of Loulan, all was grim and still.
The Imperial Preceptor of Jingping stood with his hands clasped behind his back, his face expressionless, his gaze resting upon the towering, glittering palace. Behind him the tens of thousands of the Jingping army stood in perfect ranks and made no sound; even the strange beasts in their ranks were silent.
"Imperial Preceptor of Jingping, Khagan Luandi has come to surrender!" A general stepped forward and bowed.