Chapter 529 — The Dark Otherworld
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 4 of 4
The Dragon Qilin hesitated, lowered his head to look at the brimming basin of spirit pills, and suddenly burst into loud wailing, eating the pills all the while he wept.
Shen Mu was baffled. "What are you crying for?"
"Better to die a stuffed ghost than a starving one!"
The Dragon Qilin wiped his tears and choked out, "At least I will go to my death well fed. Sect Master, make it quick when the time comes!"
Shen Mu shook his head. "You have gone hungry these days, so I mean to make it up to you. I am not going to kill you for meat."
The Dragon Qilin was overjoyed and hastily devoured the pills in the basin.
When Shen Mu passed through towns, he stopped to buy medicinal ingredients. He went through several cities in succession and refined a great many crimson fire spirit pills and fire-element divine essence pills, stuffing them all into Chest. The Dragon Qilin was moved beyond measure: "The Sect Master is truly good to me!"
Shen Mu also bought dark iron and dark gold, and on the road refined a number of strange, outlandish essence weapons.
The Dragon Qilin could make neither head nor tail of them, and did not understand what he meant to do. He saw only that among the essence weapons Shen Mu refined were banners, altars, and things like the Eight Trigrams, the Taiji, abacuses, and five-phase talismans — tools of calculation.
Several days later they came to Crimson Dragon City, yet did not enter it.
Shen Mu set many Eight Trigrams platforms, Taiji diagrams, and other calculating tools to work, computing without cease. Then he looked all about, seeking out the lay of the mountains and rivers, measuring them with a folding rule, and recording string after string of symbols on paper. The Dragon Qilin leaned in close and could make nothing of it at all.
He calculated for a long time. The sky darkened by degrees, and darkness was about to fall.
At last Shen Mu finished his calculations. Swift as flight, he laid out an altar and planted banners all around it. He stood upon the altar; the Dragon Qilin and Chest tried to climb up and were driven off.
"Sect Master, what are you doing?" the Dragon Qilin asked, keeping close to Chest's side.
Shen Mu worked the banners one by one, gazing at the darkness all around. Within that darkness another world emerged, overlapping the Desolate Ruins. In that world, countless demon race figures, black smoke-like, surged and poured out from one vast spatial rift after another.
In Shen Mu's eyes, the people of that other world were holding off the demon race's assault. Before him lay a battlefield of immense scale.
"Dragon Fatty, I have already refined enough spirit pills to last you a very long time. Follow Chest these days. I mean to..."
Shen Mu's gaze locked hard onto a demon general sprinting across the battlefield. Upon the altar, countless runes lit up, and the teleportation banners too clattered and snapped, spinning around the altar: "Go to another world!"
Boom —
A great quake rolled out. The teleportation banners and Shen Mu vanished in an instant, and upon that altar a burly, towering demon general suddenly appeared, staring about him in bewilderment.
"Doo-doo —"
The horn sounded long and deep. Countless banners flapped and whirled, forming a great circle, and Shen Mu abruptly appeared upon a vast and boundless battlefield, surrounded by numberless surging demon armies that swept him up and bore him madly forward!
And ahead lay a city of incomparable splendor, great ships crossing the sky, gods and demons standing tall, divine weapons in hand, sweeping away thousands upon thousands of troops!
By the rites of sacrifice and the arrays of teleportation, he had come to the world where the Dark Maiden dwelt!