Chapter 575 — The One Who Holds the Heavenly Emperor's Jade Register
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 3 of 4
He gave a cold snort and turned to stride out of the hall. "Don't smile at me. I'll come looking for you again. You've created many things—the Eighteen Sword Forms, the Primordial Spirit Guidance—and they've stirred in me a fondness for talent. But when your fleshly body reaches a degree worth looking at, I will come for you. I want to possess an Overlord Body.
" Shen Mu was left staring, speechless, watching him go into the distance.
Xing An walked to the great cauldron. His gaze flickered; he was just about to take the cauldron away as well when the star sand within it suddenly stirred, slowly heaping up and taking shape, becoming a sand sculpture of a young man. Xing An was startled. He flashed away, speeding through the ten-li gorge. He was afraid after all, fearful that the Ten-Mile Star Sand Tribulation Formation might erupt once more.
Shen Mu led Jiang Miao out of the hall, and saw a sand figure standing in the great cauldron, star sand flowing ceaselessly over its surface.
"Eldest Senior Brother? " Shen Mu ventured, "Founding Patriarch of the Heaven Sage Sect, I am the sect master of this generation. Not long ago I met the Woodcutter Sage.
Eldest Senior Brother, are you still alive?
" The sand figure opened its mouth but could produce no words.
Suddenly it collapsed, and the star sand flowed across the ground, forming a pattern. Shen Mu hurried to look.
The pattern on the ground was a map, the run of mountains and rivers clear before his eyes.
The mountains and rivers in the map kept changing. Shen Mu hastily committed them to memory.
The star sand shifted more than ten times, then flowed back into the great cauldron. Shen Mu frowned slightly: apart from the first map, the maps the star sand formed stirred no recollection in him at all.
Surveying the mountains and rivers of the Wilderness Ruins, not one place matched the geography in those maps. The geography in the first map was somewhere in the Wilderness Ruins, but not one of the other thirteen maps showed the geography of Jingping or the Western Lands, nor did they match the terrain of Taihuang Heaven.
"What is Eldest Senior Brother trying to say? " Shen Mu narrowed his eyes. The founding patriarch of the Heaven Sage Sect must have sensed that the divine dragon was dead and that his own undertaking had met with some success, and so had stirred the star sand avatar to come and observe the situation here. But he was surely not in the Wilderness Ruins or Jingping; he must be in another world, one from which his voice could not carry. That he used the star sand to lay out maps must be to guide Shen Mu to seek him out.
"These fourteen maps are immensely complex. Where am I to look for him? " Shen Mu suddenly understood, thinking, "My knowledge is shallow, but the Woodcutter Sage has seen much and knows much; he is sure to recognize these maps!
Still, the first map may yield some clue.
I may as well go and take a look there first. " At this thought a stone lifted from his heart, and he smiled. "Jiang Miao, let's go! " Jiang Miao answered in assent.
Shen Mu suddenly turned back, threw his arms around the great cauldron, and strained to lift it.
Jiang Miao scratched his head; Shen Mu barked, "Aren't you going to help?
" Jiang Miao hurried forward. The two of them went red in the face, spent every ounce of their strength, and could not raise the cauldron a hair. Jiang Miao caught his breath and ventured, "Sect Master, I think we'd better let it be? Your eldest senior brother's abilities are too high—even Xing An didn't dare carry this cauldron off.
We certainly can't haul it away.
.
. " Shen Mu had no choice but to give up.
Then he caught sight of the dragon-binding chains, and his eyes lit up. He hurried over. "Taking a few chains away wouldn't be bad either! These chains could bind a divine dragon—the material must be of the very highest grade! Even melted down to forge a treasure, they'd be the finest of the finest!