Chapter 442 — The Heart Is Hell
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 1 of 4
The rain of corpses fell for the better part of an hour, and how many bodies it shed, no one could reckon—a sight to stop the heart. When the corpse rain ceased at last, Grey Immortal hurried the Deaf Elder back below ground, only to find the dozen or so stone statues standing motionless around the altar, the teleportation light already dead.
They looked toward the palace, and saw a sapphire-blue flood dragon coiled about its roof, head raised high, its long whiskers drifting faintly; Shen Mu stood upon the dragon's head, gazing at the altar in the palm of the god statue. The two of them hastened across the long floating bridge to the palace, climbed to the roof, and the Deaf Elder looked down—and gave a slight start. Below, the stone statues around the altar had not stirred, yet every one of them had lifted its head, and their stone eyes were turned this way.
"Shen'er, what has happened? " the Deaf Elder asked in alarm. "They are looking at me. " Shen Mu said softly, "Have they sensed that it was I who killed their kin?
" The Deaf Elder shook his head. "In their minds, this demon host was meant for sacrifice from the start.
Even had they not died by your hand, these demons would have been offered up in blood. You need not brood on it.
On the contrary—you stopped them from waking this god statue.
That is a great good, and it spares countless common folk of Jingping from death.
" Shen Mu looked straight at him.
"Grandpa Deaf, I have never killed so many people. Perhaps many have died because of me, but to have personally sent so many lives to their end—I am still somewhat shaken. When this demon host was teleported here, some were already dead, some still living, but once they rushed into the Gate of Heaven's Mandate, they died. I counted: more than a hundred thousand. I have never killed so many with my own hands.
. . Just now, within the Gate of Heaven's Mandate, I saw many paper boats drifting out of the darkness, with underworld couriers seated aboard, drawing away the souls of these people. It was I who buried them. . . " The Deaf Elder was silent a moment, at a loss how to comfort him. After a while he said, "In the year I was still crown prince of Tiantu, the kingdom was destroyed. I woke from my seclusion and walked alone through the palace, through the streets—bodies everywhere. Because the resistance had been so fierce, the Wolf-Rong Kingdom that attacked us suffered grievous losses.
To vent their fury, the Wolf-Rong king ordered the city put to the sword. " His eyes went distant, as though he still had not emerged from that shadow. He fell silent again, then went on: "I saw my father the emperor's head and my mother the empress's head hung upon the palace gate. I saw the heads and bodies of the consorts and the old palace women. Soldiers cut my father's head down and carried it on a spear, running about to show it off. I ran into the streets and saw Wolf-Rong soldiers plundering everywhere, hacking off heads at will, raping and looting.
I came to my own crown prince's residence: my wife and children were dead. My daughter had been trampled to death by warhorses. . . " His eyes were wide, and it seemed he still could not walk out of that shadow; deep in his eyes there still seemed to be the sight of the Tiantu capital destroyed—a hell on earth. "I was drunk on painting and calligraphy, drunk on the way of the brush, with no heart for affairs of state—and so I brought ruin on my house and my kingdom. I tore off my own ears. If I would hear nothing of the world's affairs, what use were these ears?
I used the bones of the common people as my brush, the blood running in the streets as my ink, and I turned that place into a hell. Heh heh—the armies of Wolf-Rong were all dragged down into hell. A million soldiers: it was I who buried them.
. . And what of it?