Chapter 530 — Descending from Heaven
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 1 of 4
Long Qilin was stunned for a moment, then it came to him: Shen Mu was using the rite of sacrifice, making himself the offering. While sending himself into the other world, he had swapped the demon general of that other world into this one, preserving the balance of energy between the two worlds! "The Sect Master's calculations have reached such a level?
How did he work it out?
" Long Qilin's eyes went wide. He had followed the young Founding Patriarch in cultivation for many years and had attained no small mastery in the art of calculation himself; had he not been so lazy, he would have ranked among the very finest calculators of the age. And yet this calculation of Shen Mu's was beyond even his comprehension.
He understood the principle, but as to how it was actually done, of that he knew nothing.
The rite of sacrifice merely turned flesh and blood into energy and sent it to the other world, bringing back a living being from that world in exchange; but Shen Mu had not turned himself into energy.
He had sent himself to the other world whole and entire. The learning bound up in that was vast beyond measure, beyond Long Qilin's vision and experience. Shen Mu had employed not only calculation, but the Dutian Demon King's rite of sacrifice, the art of measuring space, and the art of teleportation. So many disciplines were involved that any one of them could occupy a cultivator of divine abilities for a lifetime.
"The Sect Master has sent himself to the other world as an offering. Then how will he come back? " Long Qilin seized on the crucial point, and looked at the demon general on the altar, who was still utterly at a loss.
In alarm he said, "You stay right there!
Do not move! " The demon general remained entirely bewildered.
He had been in the thick of battle; how had he suddenly arrived here? He looked down and saw, below the altar, a frantic creature covered in scales and mane, neither pig nor dragon, and beside it an even stranger great box. It had been that absurdly fat monster that had spoken just now. The demon general glanced about him.
All around was a dense, overpowering darkness. He muttered, "Yege ha'ei (Where is this)?
" Long Qilin lifted the box and hurled it at the demon general. The demon general gave a cold snort and reached up to catch it.
Of a sudden the box flew open and, with a gulp, swallowed him whole!
Bang. The box crashed down upon the altar.
Within it the demon general raged like a churning sea, battering the box so that it rocked this way and that, bouncing and banging without cease. The instant Long Qilin threw the box he leapt into the air; the moment the box landed, he landed atop it and pressed it down. The demon general inside was possessed of immense strength, and the blows nearly flung him off. He cried out hurriedly, "We cannot let him out! Absolutely not! We must keep him, so that when the Sect Master wishes to return, we can sacrifice him back!
The pills the Sect Master left me will not hold out much longer.
.
. Wait, my spirit pills are all in the box! " Astride the box, Long Qilin let out a wail of misery.
.
. .
The horn blasts grew louder and louder, until they seemed to explode right beside Shen Mu's ears, nearly deafening him. He looked back: a wild torrent of air came surging in, sound waves riding upon the wind, rippling the skin of his face into wave after wave. Behind him were long tusks, over ten zhang long, wrapped all over in steel blades.
Three giant elephants, their bodies covered in strange demon runes, were drawing a cloud chariot at full gallop behind him; the elephants' tusks swung this way and that, skewering a dozen demons upon the steel blades and flinging them about, limbs flailing. Upon the cloud chariot was mounted the horn of some unknown beast, longer even than the tusks.