Chapter 684 — The Fall of Taihuang Heaven
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 1 of 4
Shen Mu and the others stepped onto the bridge woven of willow branches and walked on. The bridge wound through a thousand turns, and beyond it drifted chaotic fragments of space, refracting light like mirrors without thickness, through which the strangest and most varied vistas could be glimpsed. The fragments of space were exceedingly perilous, drifting without the least pattern, yet this bridge alone had found a path of life through them. Those who stood upon it and looked down saw only more fragments of space, and nothing else besides.
"Do not look around. Plant every step firmly!
" The voice of True God Pang Yu came from ahead. "Fall, and there will be no place to bury you, no finding of your corpse at all!
" They walked a long while, until at last they saw the end.
Shen Mu set foot on solid ground, glanced about him, and smiled. This was Taiming Heaven itself, the very place through which he and the Emperor Shakra Heavenly King Buddha had returned to the Wilderness Ruins while fleeing the pursuit of the Scarlet Emperor of the Southern Heaven, Qi Xiayu.
And more than that, when the Wilderness Ruins fell from the Celestial Court and smashed through Taiming Heaven, that broken space had been left not far away!
They stood upon the soil of Taiming Heaven and looked about. As far as the eye could reach there was only black, sunken earth and raging winds, and dry bones in thronging crowds driven by the wind, gathering into great balls of white bone that rolled along with it. Clack, clack, clack, clack, the sight of those bone balls rolling through the wind had become a spectacle peculiar to Taiming Heaven.
The wind stopped, the bone balls burst apart and clattered down into heaps across the ground, and then countless skeletons clambered up and searched for their own bones, some of them seizing a thigh bone and squabbling over it.
All at once the skeletons noticed them and turned their heads to look. The hearts of the company tightened, and they were about to take guard when Shen Mu said hurriedly, "There is no need for alarm. They have simply never seen humans and are a little curious about us.
They are quite endearing, really.
They pose no threat. " A few bold skeletons came forward and touched the garments of these fugitive divine power practitioners; one with more daring still pinched a girl's cheek. Shen Mu took several sets of clothes from his Taotie Pouch and gave them to a few of the skeletons.
Those skeletons put them on and capered about in wild delight, running to and fro, while the other skeletons, green with envy, chased after them.
"There is not a speck of nourishment in this soil," said Granny Zhu. She tried to plant medicinal herbs in the earth, but saw them wither swiftly, and could only shake her head. The Venerable God Sangye sniffed the air and said, "There is no spirit breath or spirit power in the air either.
This place is unfit for any living being to dwell in. Perhaps only these skeletons can survive here.
" "Taihuang Heaven is falling! " someone suddenly cried in alarm. Shen Mu and the others were shaken to the core and hurriedly turned to look back the way they had come.
Across layer upon layer of space fragments, which shifted without the slightest order, they could at times see firelight coming from some unknowable distance on the far side, and dimly make out Taihuang Heaven. For Taiming Heaven was a world already sunk in dead silence, dark and unclear, so that from Taihuang Heaven nothing on this side could be seen.
But Taihuang Heaven was a sea of magma, dazzling bright, and so from Taiming Heaven, Taihuang Heaven could be seen. Taihuang Heaven was tilting, and the angle of its tilt was steadily growing.
This Taihuang Heaven looked as though it were about to plunge into the Broken Cliff!
"What lies below the Broken Cliff? " asked True God Pang Yu. "Jingping," Shen Mu said softly. "No.