Chapter 374 — Uncanny Craftsmanship
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 1 of 4
Mu Qingdai asked, "Has this place been invaded by the Wilderness Ruins? Otherwise, why must we leave before nightfall?"
Shen Mu shook his head and did not elaborate.
The group waited outside the hall for a while. All at once the sky darkened, and faintly they heard thunder. Shen Mu looked up. A moment before it had been a clear, bright day, and now dense black clouds had abruptly appeared out of nowhere.
It was early winter, the weather cold; thunder was rare in such a season, let alone lightning, and yet this sudden mass of dark cloud came trailing thunder behind it.
The clouds grew thicker and heavier, blotting out the sky, and then a torrential rain came crashing down from above. Everyone hurried to take shelter beneath the eaves of the hall, while the rain poured in sheets and the water ran ice-cold.
Even if rain fell in this season, it should never fall so heavily; yet now it came down in a deluge.
The dozen or so flood dragons crowded in as well, coiling themselves around the bronze pillars to escape the downpour. The dragon qilin hid in the doorway of the hall, dozing where the rain could not reach it.
Then the great deer ran over to the dragon qilin, lowered its head, and tossed it out of the hall with its antlers, before lying down itself.
The dragon qilin was furious. Soaked through by the rain, it stormed back, jaws gaping wide; the stag leaped up, shook its enormous antlers, ready to fight at any moment.
Suddenly steam rose hissing from the ground. Long Yu stretched out a hand and caught a palmful of rain, and said in astonishment, "The rain is hot!"
Something stirred in Shen Mu's heart. He reached out a hand, and the rain falling from the sky was indeed warm, scalding hot, like water just boiled!
He hurried out from under the eaves, his vital essence flaring, forcing the rain to part to either side so that none of it fell on him.
He looked up. The sky had turned very dark; within the sullen black clouds lightning rolled from time to time, and the rumbling came from a thousand li away, racing with incredible speed toward the spot above their heads, then on to the other side. In the blink of an eye it had rolled more than two thousand li!
This was not the sound a thunderclap made!
Wang Muran and the others walked out from under the eaves as well and gazed upward. In the dark clouds above there was more and more lightning, bolts crisscrossing, splitting the sullen clouds apart, a most terrifying sight.
And the rain falling from the sky grew hotter still.
"Something seems to have happened up in the sky.... Fat Dragon, put that deer down!"
Shen Mu turned and shouted. The dragon qilin opened its jaws, a stag's neck clamped between its teeth. The stag was enraged and about to lunge back, but the dragon qilin sat down on it with its rump, crushing it as though beneath a great mountain, unable to move.
The thunder in the sky grew ever denser, like a giant beating a war drum, and the lightning clumped into balls, balls of lightning rolling this way and that, lighting up the darkness.
Layer upon layer of heavens opened in Shen Mu's eyes, and he peered into the clouds. All at once he glimpsed vague figures flickering at tremendous speed, leaping and bounding above the clouds, slaying one another!
On the other side, Wang Muran, Long Yu, and Mu Qingdai, who came from Little Jade Capital, had also learned arts such as the celestial eye and the holy pupil. They urged their spells and looked up, and cries of alarm broke from them one after another.
Suddenly the dense, heavy clouds were torn open, and a tall, imposing figure appeared within the dark cloudbank, two great sabers gripped in his hands. In the instant the lightning lit his face, it looked all the more ferocious, elated, savage!
"Grandpa Tu!"