Chapter 855 — The Youth Steals Peaches to Satisfy His Craving
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 1 of 4
"Young Master, the Palace Master requests your presence.
Please come with us. " The girls carried lanterns that cast a red glow; they swayed them once before Shen Mu, then dipped their bodies slightly, retreated half a step, placed their left hands in fists at their waists, pressed the lanterns over their left hands with their right, and sank down in a salute.
Shen Mu returned the salute. The lanterns swung half a circle, and the girls turned, graceful and willowy, leading the way ahead with lanterns in hand.
The red candlelight spilled over the path before them; the ground was spotless, not a single withered leaf to be seen. Shen Mu followed, studying his surroundings, trying to infer from the architectural style who the master of this place might be.
Yet the buildings bore no patterns, no carved ornaments—nothing by which he might tell their age.
Reading a building's age from its style was no difficult task for him; every era had its own architectural style, easy enough to distinguish. Even within the same era, different races built in vastly different ways. But the palace in this peach grove had no ornament whatsoever—white walls, red brick, green tiles, simple and unadorned—and yet it possessed a beauty all its own, seeming under the starlight and candle glow plain and yet otherworldly.
"Just now, the woman inside said an old acquaintance had come. When she speaks of an old acquaintance, does she mean me, or the Heaven Duke, the Earth Earl, and the others within my eyes?
Or perhaps someone the Red Sovereign knows?
" Shen Mu's divine sense rippled, transmitting a message into the Shen Continent: "Heaven Duke, I do not know who the woman in this peach grove is. Take a look for me from the heavens. " The Heaven Duke's avatar shook his head.
"I cannot see what is inside the palace. There is a strange barrier here—whenever I look, all I see is peach blossoms, swirling in a wild flurry. " Shen Mu was startled; the blind elder had once said the same, that when he looked upon the palace in the peach grove, he could see only peach blossoms.
"Heaven Duke, you said just now that you saw me in some bizarre world. What is that world like?
" The Heaven Duke's voice gradually faded: "The space of that world is twisted, forming countless folded spaces. One step you take may carry you a thousand or ten thousand li—may send you from one world into another. I have never seen such a world.
.
. " His voice vanished, as if sealed off by something.
Shen Mu tried to sense the Shen Continent, and found that it too had vanished. He tried to sense the Nether Capital, and then discovered that he could not sense it either! He steadied himself, thinking: "Since she is an old acquaintance, she should bear no ill intent. .
.
" Soon he followed the girls into the main hall.
The arrangement inside was equally simple, with few decorations—only a few luminous pearls hanging around the walls, their light spreading wide, making the hall warm as spring.
A screen stood before him, and behind it a woman could be faintly seen, seated there as though plucking a zither, though very slowly, occasionally plucking a single string.
There was no melody, yet the lingering note was long. The woman behind the screen was turned sideways to him; a luminous pearl behind her threw her graceful shadow upon the screen. The lantern-carrying girls saluted the woman behind the screen, turned, and hung their lanterns outside the door.
One girl fetched a cushion and invited Shen Mu to sit. Shen Mu sat, facing the woman behind the screen; his two eyes blinked, and the vertical eye between his brows blinked as well from time to time, but he said nothing. After a while, a zither string was plucked, its note curling faintly through the air.
"The Heaven Duke is meddlesome indeed, to have led you here without cause. " The voice of the woman behind the screen was very pleasant.