Chapter 620 — The Sagely Way Handed Down Twenty Thousand Years
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 2 of 4
. He spoke in fine detail, and without his noticing had walked more than half the way around the mountain's foot. Shen Mu listened and engraved it all in his heart. When the Woodcutter Sage finished setting out his ideals, Shen Mu suddenly said, "Sage Master, these requirements for a sage are too high.
Thinking back carefully over everyone I have met and everyone I have heard tell of, not one can meet them.
Can you yourself do all of this?
" The Woodcutter Sage halted. Halfway up in the air, stone melted and was taking shape as a pillar.
The Woodcutter Sage did not move, and the patterns on the pillar stopped evolving too.
Shen Mu's heart quailed, and he somewhat reproached himself for speaking out of turn. He quietly raised his head, and saw that the middle-aged man in woodcutter's garb had, without his noticing, begun weeping, tears running down his face. "I once thought I could. " The Woodcutter Sage's voice was a little hoarse, and bleak. "I thought I could become a sage, and others called me one as well. I thought I could establish edification, reform the law and seek strength, make the Kaihuang Kingdom great, change the weakness of the people, give the people vast divine powers, change the weakness of the army, give the army the might to stand upon the four frontiers and overawe the barbarians. I thought I could keep the ruler from being muddled and Heaven from being without the Way, and I thought I could establish merit and overcome decay.
.
. The last three — I failed. " Thud.
The pillar, not yet fully refined, dropped to the ground and stuck in the soil. The Woodcutter Sage rested his right arm on the pillar and buried his head in the crook of his elbow, tears coursing freely, refusing to let Shen Mu see his loss of composure. "I failed. I could not stop Kaihuang from going to Carefree Land; I let the ruler grow muddled.
I failed. I thought I could reform the law and change the Way, and so change the Way of Heaven, yet Heaven destroyed the Kaihuang Kingdom and buried the Kaihuang era.
I failed.
And in that last battle I could not establish merit either.
. . " "I failed.
. . Shen Mu, I am not the sage you are searching for, and I cannot teach you either. I am only a failure. . . " .
.
.
Shen Mu stared at him, and a kind of shared feeling welled up in his chest. When the Woodcutter's reforms were at their fiercest, a blaze like fire, Kaihuang suddenly drew back and founded Carefree Land, without staking everything on one last battle, and so the Woodcutter's will sank. He had watched Kaihuang retreat; watched the painstakingly built Kaihuang era scattered to ashes; watched his comrades fight and die for one and the same ideal; watched their heads struck from their bodies, hot blood spraying over the land they knew; watched the comrades who had raised their heads in hope, waiting for Kaihuang to return and lead them once more into battle, grow old one by one and die; watched the common folk of that era pass away generation after generation, new faces replacing the familiar ones.
The frustration and pain in his heart were beyond what any other could imagine.
Shen Mu suddenly cried out, "Sage Master, will you pass your Way of the Sage on to me? " The Woodcutter Sage wiped away his old man's tears with the sleeve at his elbow and turned to look at him. Shen Mu said, stirred to the depths, "I want to inherit your mantle and walk on, and keep on changing things — if the ruler is muddled, make war upon the ruler; if Heaven is without the Way, make war upon Heaven!