Chapter 520 — A Forceful Coercion
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 1 of 4
"This is Xing An. He was the sage before the Imperial Preceptor of Jingping."
Shen Mu gave the company a rough introduction to Xing An. Around the campfire, faces turned anxious — especially the girls: Si Yunxiang, Xue Hu'er, and Ling Yuxiu. They had all seen Xing An before, and knew well how powerful and how terrible the man was.
Whether it was at the Heavenly Sage Academy or at Granny Zhu's mountain manor — at the battle of the Heavenly Sage Academy, nearly half the masters of the world had been wounded by Xing An's hand, Emperor Yanfeng among them!
That battle had left those masters utterly convinced. Even with so many of them, they had been unable to do anything about Xing An; in the end it was only a dose of Shen Mu's tonic that forced him to withdraw.
And now this killer was sitting right beside them. Not to be alarmed was impossible. Though the Grand Academy now gathered the most formidable beings of the Jingping court — among the first-rank ministers there were one or two who had completed their Spirit Bridges and leapt up to the Heavenly Court to become deities, and the emperor himself had become a god — Xing An was still the mightiest existence in the world today!
If Xing An wished to kill them, no one in the Grand Academy, not even a deity, could stop him!
Shen Mu laughed. "As a sage who appears once in five hundred years, Xing An is our senior. It is a good thing that he wishes to understand our Heaven Alliance. There is no need for anyone to be alarmed."
So he said, yet Shen Mu's face was pale; plainly he himself was exceedingly alarmed.
Xing An's target this time was clearly him. As the strongest of the previous age, Xing An had his own style and dignity; he would not raise a hand against his juniors — and even when he did, he waited until a junior had grown up and reached the divine realm in some aspect before he struck to cut away a piece of their body.
Shen Mu, however, was an exception.
Shen Mu had offended him far too deeply.
At the battle of the Heavenly Sage Academy, Shen Mu had used a tonic to give him a taste of fleeing in defeat; hunted the whole way by the Butcher, he had fled in panic and hidden himself in the Desolate Ruins, spending a long time healing his wounds.
Many of his collections had also been plundered by Shen Mu — and that was the deadliest part of it.
Then came the battle at Little Thunderclap Temple, where Shen Mu had actually stolen his chest and cleaned out his entire hoard!
Not content with stealing his chest, Shen Mu had dragged him to Fengdu; there, under the influence of the Realm of the Living Dead, Xing An had lost every shred of face and had nearly failed to return alive to the world of the living. That debt, too, was to be laid at Shen Mu's door!
That Xing An had not simply killed Shen Mu outright was already beyond expectation.
That he could keep his composure upon meeting Shen Mu compelled admiration for the attainments of his mind. Of course, the journey to Fengdu had shattered his Dao heart; his present state of mind was still exceedingly fragile — yet even fragile, it far surpassed everyone present.
Shen Mu, Wang Muran, Xu Shenghua, and Dao Lord Lin Xuan traded words back and forth, recounting how they had divined the heavens and calculated how high and how thick the sky was. Silence fell around the campfire; even Xing An sat wordless before the flames.
The red dragon carp sizzled over the fire, fish oil dripping bead by bead into the flames with a hiss, and the fragrance of fish drifted out, enough to make the mouth water.
"Shen, my dear minister, did you not come to punish them severely? Why are you instead eating here? You have committed the crime of deceiving your sovereign — I shall have you killed..."
Emperor Yanfeng came over reeking of drink, a wine jar in hand, his voice thick with wine. Then the emperor caught sight of Xing An across from Shen Mu, and in an instant his drunkenness vanished; he turned to leave!