Chapter 573 — Elder Brother Makes His Move and Binds the Flood Dragon
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 2 of 4
Jiang Miao followed at his heels, circling the dragon twice, and mused, "So when you said that to act as one's nature dictates, purely following what is natural, and that it mattered not to you whether one be god or demon, those words were not spoken to me, nor were they any insight of your own?"
"Those words I read from the divine writing and demon script my senior brother left behind. What I spoke of was the cultivation of his state of mind."
Shen Mu came around to the dragon's front, halted, and explained, "My eldest senior brother is the founding ancestor of the Heaven Sage Sect. His cultivation of the mind has reached a very high attainment. The Heaven Sage Sect holds that there are three establishments by which one becomes a sage: establishing the teaching, establishing words, establishing merit. My senior brother has established the teaching and established words, but he has not achieved merit, and so he cannot become a sage; he has not cultivated to the realm of the Woodcutter Sage. Yet among the sect masters of every generation, not one besides him has managed even two establishments. That is why the one who could suppress the divine dragon could only be him, and no other sect master."
"Then why did your senior brother suppress the divine dragon?" Jiang Miao, too, came to a stop, greatly bewildered, and asked.
"That is a question for this senior divine dragon."
Shen Mu raised his head and looked up at the divine dragon. The dragon was so immense that even bound in chains, with all its divine transformations fettered, its colossal body coiled upon itself was still enough to make them crane their necks.
Its whiskers hung down like strands of rosy cloud drifting to and fro, full of life. In a being so divinely martial and extraordinary, no trace of evil could be seen.
Shen Mu asked, head tilted back, "My senior brother chained you to establish merit and become a sage. So what evil did you do, that he should pen you in this place and chain you here? I beg you, senior, to enlighten me!"
The divine dragon had watched with cold eyes as he circled round and round. Suddenly the corners of its mouth drew back, baring keen teeth, and it laughed: "Such a clever child, and why must he be the one to die? You are so clever; do you not know that sometimes to be a little foolish is to live a little longer? To see through a thing and not say it, to hold understanding in your heart and feign ignorance, that is how a man lives long."
Jiang Miao shuddered and lifted his head. "Then to what end has senior been calling to me all this while?"
The dragon's enormous body twisted; its neck swept through a bizarre arc, and the chains were drawn taut as bowstrings. It fixed its blazing eyes on Jiang Miao, its long muzzle coming near enough almost to touch Shen Mu and Jiang Miao both, yet held by the chains it could not quite reach them.
Shen Mu had led Jiang Miao in circles around it at a distance exquisitely calculated, just beyond the reach of its attack.
The breath the dragon exhaled rippled the skin of both their faces into folds. "Naturally, to call you here to free me, son of the Surging River Dragon Emperor..."
Jiang Miao blinked, dumbfounded. "You know me?"
"Of course I know you."
The dragon stretched its body, as if to unfurl itself from its coil; but the chains ran through its flesh and it could not uncoil. Even so, it set the whole palace shaking and quaking without cease.
"Come to think of it, you are my nephew. When you were newly born I held you in my arms; you pissed on me, and I flicked your little pecker with one finger."
Jiang Miao's face flushed crimson. He glanced back at Shen Mu, looking miserable, and said in a low voice, "Sect Master, please do not tell anyone about this..."