Chapter 665 — A Myriad Hearts as One
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 1 of 5
The Divine Son Chiming looked at the divine-power wielder of the Void Realm who had landed before him. His gaze rose slowly to Shen Mu's face, then passed beyond Shen Mu and reached into the distance, where he saw the plaza pocked everywhere with great pits, and in each pit was planted a divine-power wielder of the Void Realm. There were many who had not been planted in the pits, but most of them had been gravely wounded by Shen Mu — a few broken bones, or a snapped arm or leg.
Some had suffered no grave injury at all; they had merely been transformed by the art of Creation into sheep, and were now blundering about the plaza, bleating without rhyme or reason. If this had been a battlefield, the younger generation of the Void Realm would already have been slaughtered to the last man.
A civilization that had endured for ages would have been struck through in a single blow, leaving a gap in its line! The Divine Son Chiming rose, walked past Shen Mu, and came to the edge of the steps.
He paid Shen Mu no heed at all, but looked down below. "The Chiming Divine Dynasty has passed through two reigns.
Emperor Chi rose from the wilds, building his empire from nothing; Emperor Ming received his mandate amid chaos and peril, and saved the dynasty from ruin.
The people of my Chiming age strove with the ardor of a hundred generations, fighting valiantly, and opened up a radiant age! " His voice did not sound loud, yet it was deep and solid, piercing into every ear: "Yet ever since we hid ourselves away in this Void Realm, everything has changed. The people who took refuge here have day by day forgotten the foreign enemy who destroyed our homes, our nation, our kin; day by day forgotten the valiant, striving spirit of the two Chiming Emperors; forgotten that they were once gods of war; forgotten that their race is the race of the God of War!
To hide away in a little tower and make yourself a whole kingdom, and let winter, summer, spring, and autumn do as they please — wrong! You hid, and so you deserved this defeat! You deserved this humiliation! " His voice grew louder and louder. Below, on the plaza, the crowd was overcome with shame, not daring to raise their heads to look at him; even the gods of the Chiming age, Chixi among them, bowed their heads in shame. "It is precisely through this outsider's hand that I mean to humiliate you, to humble you, to beat you awake!
" There was anger in the Divine Son Chiming's voice: "It is through his hand that I mean to warn you, to tell you that you have forgotten your tradition, forgotten your hatred, forgotten the spirit of the Chiming age! Without that essence, spirit, and vitality, the Chiming age is truly dead!
Not dead at the hands of the Heavenly Court, not dead at the hands of the gods and demons who died fighting for you, but dead at your hands — the hands of you survivors!
" His voice slowed again, and in its solid depth there was a note of sorrow: "Do you know why I dare call myself only Divine Son? Do you know why I insisted on sending men out of the Void Realm to seek news of the outside? Do you know why, three thousand years ago, I insisted on reaching out to Kaihuang, even at the price of acknowledging him as sovereign? It is because I cannot bear. .
. " "Cannot bear to see you sink further into decay, cannot bear to see the Chiming age utterly destroyed in your hands, cannot bear to see you become sinners. . .
" "I want to bring you back into the true world. I want you to revive the essence, spirit, and vitality of the Chiming age, to recover your fighting spirit, to rally your banners once more — not to watch you sink day by day.
" He paced slowly before the steps: "I dare not claim the title of emperor; I dare call myself only Divine Son, only Your Highness — not because I am inferior to the emperor of some small state like Jingping, but because my subjects are unworthy of it! You are unworthy, and so am I!