Chapter 488 — The Gate of Beiluo
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 1 of 4
The crack was some ten feet wide. The chest carried Shen Mu and the others inside, but before they had gone two steps it wedged fast. Shen Mu hurriedly shoved the Dragon Qilin's belly deeper in, yet still the chest would not budge, and Ban Gongcuo, pinned beneath it, howled and yelped.
"Keep quiet!"
Shen Mu barked low, ordering the chest back out. Outside, one of Xing An's Holy Eyes swept past, its divine light a pillar, scanning by just this spot. Shen Mu hastily made the great chest hide behind a jutting boulder; the Holy Eye was swift, gone in a flicker.
"Thank goodness Xing An's eye isn't Blind Grandpa's Holy Eye—otherwise this boulder would never have hidden us."
He let out a breath, opened the chest, seized the soft flesh behind the Dragon Qilin's neck, and stuffed the fat fellow inside.
"Hierarch…"
Inside the chest the Dragon Qilin trembled all over: "It's all arms and legs in here—and heads! And hearts! And ever so many fingers!"
Shen Mu closed the lid and set the chest moving deeper into the crack. Without the Dragon Qilin's bulk, this time it went far more smoothly; the chest pressed on, and the light ahead grew brighter and brighter.
Shen Mu lay atop the chest, straining to look forward. What he saw through the crack on the far side was not green grassland and blue sky, but a golden desert—altogether different from the scene they had glimpsed before.
"Could the world in this crack be a different place from the world in that other crack?"
Scarcely had the thought formed when another shaft of divine light blazed up behind him. Shen Mu's heart lurched—there was nowhere to hide now—and he could only desperately urge the chest forward.
Luckily they were not far from the world beyond the crack. The chest soon crawled out, tumbled down, rolled twice across the golden sand, and stood upright again.
Shen Mu looked back. A divine light shot from the crack, flickered, and vanished; whether it had seen them, he could not tell.
Suddenly alarmed, he leaped off the chest and peered beneath it. Ban Gongcuo was indeed gone.
"That wretch—quick as a weasel!"
Shen Mu laughed despite himself. Ban Gongcuo must have slipped away the moment the chest tumbled into the golden desert, lest Shen Mu knife him in the back unawares. A moment ago they had all been in the deep night of the ruins with Xing An tracking close behind, so they had to pull together in the same chest; now that the darkness was gone from every side, Ban Gongcuo would naturally want to be off. Legless as he was, he stood no chance against Shen Mu; if he lingered, he would never get away again.
"The Great Venerable is a cunning one," Shen Mu said in admiration.
He opened the chest. The Dragon Qilin sprang out in a panic, too terrified to go anywhere near it again.
Shen Mu poked his head in for a look. It was the same as before: a frame of Taotie bone, draped in Taotie hide, all struts within—except that far fewer limbs were enshrined on those struts now.
He also saw the marks where the chest had been cut open and stitched back together: the damage wrought when the Butcher's two blades, horizontal and vertical, vast and boundless, had sliced it apart. After Xing An escaped from beneath the Butcher's blade, he must have repaired it.
"If those divine legs and divine hands and divine heads could be awakened—if these limbs could be roused—Xing An would not be beyond dealing with."
Shen Mu's eyes flickered. He closed the chest and ran deep into the golden desert, away from the crack behind him. The chest flew along at his heels, following steadily; the Dragon Qilin ran swiftly too, glancing at the chest from time to time, dread in its eyes.
After a while the Dragon Qilin mastered its dread, leaped onto the chest, and crouched there, letting it carry him racing along.
"Fat Dragon has refined laziness into an art," Shen Mu thought, glancing back at the pudgy beast.