Chapter 701 — Clash of Two Heroes
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 2 of 4
Lady Tianyin breathed a sigh of relief. She raised a finger, tapped the air, and the revolving Dipper gradually came to a stop. But at that very instant, the Tianyin Realm pressed down upon her once more!
"How am I to slay this gargantuan famished ghost that is the Tianyin Realm, and bring the realm back under my command?" Lady Tianyin could not help the worry that rose in her heart.
She could prevent the Netherworld Emperor from invading, yes, but the Tianyin Realm still refused to return to her sway; the one who held sway over it was still the Netherworld Emperor. Unless she could resolve the predicament of the realm, retaking it would be more difficult by the day.
And the predicament lay in this: the realm belonged to the zone that neither side governed—a land between two jurisdictions that neither the Earth Earl nor Lord Heaven could regulate. That made the Tianyin Realm independent and transcendent, yet heavy with hidden dangers. The famished ghosts, eternally ravenous, would devour every living creature. As long as the Tianyin Realm remained within the shadow of Lord Heaven, its predicament would persist: corpses of the starving would lie strewn across the land, and famished ghosts would consume everything.
"What, after all, is the key to resolving the famished ghosts?"
Seated by the sea, propping her chin on her hand out of sheer listlessness, with the pagoda towering and suppressing the realm's stirrings, Lady Tianyin mused, "If I cannot solve this problem, I will remain a sovereign all alone. Apart from me, no living being can survive in the Tianyin Realm. Only if living beings can survive here might the predicament be resolved... If only the Grand Magus were here—perhaps he might come up with an idea..."
She sank into heavy thought. The riddle of the famished ghosts was the root of the realm's predicament. Now that she was no longer a flawless heaven-born deity, she could learn other divine arts, and perhaps a solution could be found.
Until she cracked the riddle of the famished ghosts, she could only hold her ground here. If she left, she would allow the Netherworld Emperor to seize the opening, take the Tianyin Realm, and leave her without a home.
At the headwaters of the Surging River in the Wasteland, Shen Mu, in contrast, was free of Lady Tianyin's woes. The cross-world battle between Lady Tianyin and the Netherworld Emperor, and the countless overturnings of heaven and earth in the Tianyin Realm, did not affect the Wasteland. Though the Heavenly Dipper possessed the power to command the onslaught of darkness, it was daytime now in the Wasteland, and darkness could not invade while the sun ruled the sky.
"How can we tell whether Lady Tianyin has won or lost?" He Yiyi asked, somewhat worried. "If we go into the Tianyin Realm to check, it's fine if she's won—but if she's lost, we'd be walking right into the trap."
Shen Mu looked at the cliff. "We wait for nightfall. If she has won, perhaps the dark invasion of the Wasteland will cease; if she has lost, the darkness will continue."
Yan Jingjing sat down beside him, watching the cliff with him. Shen Mu went on, "Lady Tianyin's victory or defeat involves not only the Tianyin Realm and the Wasteland. I believe it bears equally upon the fate of every world and every heaven. The Tianyin Realm is overrun by soul-black sand. If the soul-black sand there cannot be thoroughly eliminated, then as the black sand of heaven and earth accumulates ever more, I fear every world will become a world ruled by famished ghosts. At that point, the Netherworld Emperor would be the ruler of all the worlds."
Yan Jingjing and He Yiyi could not help shivering.