Chapter 487 — The Overlapping Realm
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 2 of 4
" Xing Han's voice came now far, now near. The night of the Wasteland was simply too dark; even with powers that reached the heavens and spanned the earth, he could not quickly find the traces Shen Mu and the box had left.
Before long, Shen Mu saw in the darkness a vast chasm loom dimly ahead of the box, and from the darkness beyond came the sound of waterfalls plunging and rushing—more than one waterfall. It was an exceedingly perilous cliff.
"Eh? This is the cliff at the source of the Surging River!
" Shen Mu urged the box to the edge of the cliff and looked down, and to his surprise saw swaths upon swaths of bright light rising from the cliff face—he could not tell what it was that gave off such a glow. His heart stirred slightly. The last time he had come here he had been escorting Xiong Xiyu and her daughter; at that time he had seen this chasm splitting the Wasteland into eastern and western halves, the cliff reaching a height of several thousand zhang!
That cliff had been formed by an earthquake of terrifying scale; the whole Wasteland had been torn apart, forming an enormous fracture that ran through from north to south.
This was also the source of the Surging River. The Surging River had its origin in the waterfalls of the cliff; the waterfalls gathered together to form a most magnificent great river, and this great river rushed on for tens of thousands of li until it came to Jingping, becoming the river with the greatest flow in all the nation of Jingping. Moreover, it was here that Shen Mu had once encountered a strange affair of mist. He and Xiong Xiyu and her daughter had come upon a fog that sealed off the river; within that fog they had encountered the Gobi desert, and gods forging palaces for deities—those were the gods of the Supreme Sovereign's era—and gods of the Supreme Sovereign's time who, at his command, had transformed the desert, turning it into an oasis.
They had even seen the ancient gods of that age carving out the Surging River. But strangest of all, they had seen the burial of the Supreme Sovereign's era, and then from the mist had come the gods of another age.
That was Emperor Kai and his ministers, patrolling here, coming upon that uncanny mist and lamenting the passing of an era!
Their experience had become the uncanny thing that Shen Mu encountered.
The deathbed flickerings of two histories overlapped at the source of the Surging River, producing an inconceivable phenomenon.
At the time, Shen Mu had speculated that an entrance to other worlds might lie here, and he had even seen five worlds' time and space overlapping! "I wonder what strange and bizarre things will happen at the source of the Surging River once night falls?
" His heart was both uneasy and somewhat expectant as he urged Xing Han's box to walk down along the cliff face.
Beneath the box, Ban Gongcuo hastily clutched one of its legs, afraid of being flung off. And at that very moment, atop the golden summit of Mount Little Sumeru of Little Thunder Sound Temple, Little Tathagata sat cross-legged in the lotus position, monks gathered all around him, their faces sorrowful. The Xuanliao Demon Ape knelt there, eyes wide, tears suddenly rolling down and striking the ground.
"I turned traitor and left Great Thunder Cry Temple because my master was unjust: he let my senior brother succeed to the Tathagata's seat and did not pass it to me. If all living beings are equal, why can the Tathagata be only a man and not a demon? If the Dharma is equal, why can the Tathagata be only a man and not a woman?