Chapter 423 — The Last Echo in the Darkness
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 1 of 4
The Wasteland in the dark was both still and clamorous: still, for those who lacked the strength to hide themselves among its villages and ruins; but for anyone whose power was great enough, the Wasteland's night was clamorous beyond all measure. To walk the dark Wasteland was to see every manner of grotesque and uncanny sight, to meet with countless things strange and unfathomable, and, if fate allowed, to enter one wondrous world after another — though whether one could return alive was a question no one could answer. That night the Wasteland was especially beguiling.
The blizzard had just ceased; wherever there was light, thick clumps of snow could still be seen clinging to branch and leaf, a world clad in silver and wrapped in white. Then all at once the sky turned dazzlingly bright. Countless creatures of the Wasteland lifted their heads and looked up; the dark heavens had abruptly taken on many brilliant hues.
These were no ordinary radiance, but the light bursting forth from magnificent divine powers, cluster upon cluster, illuminating the dark. The darkness was as though it had substance: though pressed back by these lights, each time it retreated it surged forward again, filling in the blank spaces.
The lights shifted and changed, growing ever more bizarre; the creatures of the Wasteland saw stars racing, contending against one another in the sky, battling one another. The stars moved in a most peculiar fashion — eighteen stars in front, two behind.
The ones in front advanced, and the two behind harried them. Whenever those eighteen stars halted, ready to close in and crush them, the two would bolt west.
When the eighteen gave no chase, the two came back to harry them again. When the eighteen gave chase, the two fled with all their strength.
So it went, again and again; the eighteen were held up, unable to truly stretch out to full speed. Below, beside the campfire in the ruins, the Protector Elder looked up at this scene and felt a thread of hope rise in his heart once more.
The purpose of the Dark Demon Patriarch and Daoist Lingjing in doing this was to hold the gods of the High Heavens back, never to clash with them head-on; and if they played it that way, there might yet be hope of survival. Then, all at once, one star after another in the sky dimmed and vanished from the vault of heaven.
The Protector Elder's heart sank. That meant the gods of the High Heavens had hidden their traces, luring the Dark Demon Patriarch and Daoist Lingjing to come seeking them; the moment they came, they would fall into an encirclement. "Don't go.
.
. " Panic kindled in the Protector Elder's heart. He clutched his own collar as though he were gripping his own heart, staring fixedly at the two moving stars in the sky. "Don't go near them, don't go near!
Run—" The two stars moved, seeming to hesitate a little; then suddenly they too dimmed, giving off not the faintest light.
The sky turned dark again. They had all concealed their traces.
The corner of the Protector Elder's eye twitched; his heart pounded, each beat fiercer than the last, and his panic mounted.
Everyone was hiding their traces now, groping and searching in the dark, and this was the most perilous moment of all. The Dark Demon Patriarch and Daoist Lingjing had patience, but surely not as much as their opponents.
The other side could wait, and could leave; the Dark Demon Patriarch and Daoist Lingjing absolutely could not wait too long — they had to be certain whether the enemy had gone.
At last a point of starlight kindled — a single star alone gave off light. The next instant the sky boiled.
Divine powers of every strange and outlandish kind erupted in a flash and drowned that star: flying dragons and flying phoenixes, bell towers and cauldrons and pagodas, shapes of every wonder, blindingly bright.