Chapter 886 — Dragon's Roar in the Azure Sea, Accompanied by Song
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 3 of 5
" The bone dragon had long since died; it was longing for its homeland that kept it singing this song of homesickness of the dragon clan, and it could not answer them.
"Could this Longbo be the very one Qu'er met in the East Sea in years past?
" Shen Mu thought for a moment, then stirred the Myriad Gods' Natural Art to enlighten the bone dragon. The dragon bones standing upon the sea suddenly clattered and shook; the waters rose to the sky, and the divine dragon's dry bones pulled themselves from the waves, stood upright, and roared, jaws wide: "Homeland! Homeland!
I cannot let my bones be buried elsewhere, I will go back to my homeland!
" Shen Mu stood below; the surging flood spread all around, held off by his vital essence.
The youth lifted his head and called out loudly, "Where is your homeland?
" Whoosh! The bone dragon suddenly soared into the air, shaking its head and swinging its tail as it flew into the distance. But it had neither flesh nor magic power left; it had flown scarcely a li before it fell from the sky, smashing the sea into flying shards of jade, its bones bursting apart and scattering in all directions.
Shen Mu used a spirit-summoning spell to rouse it, and the divine dragon's skeleton reassembled itself, soon restored to what it had been. It did not fly, but swam through the sea, yet its speed was great.
"Follow it!
" Shen Mu leaped onto Long Qilin's head, and Long Qilin hurried after. The bone dragon swam faster and faster, careering wildly across the surface, and then all at once it vanished before their eyes.
Shen Mu was taken aback. Long Qilin rushed to the spot and stealthily stretched out a claw to test it, and saw that his claw, thrust into the air ahead, vanished as well.
"It is a kind of blinding formation.
" Shen Mu stepped inside, and the sea before him receded in an instant; a vast and surging vision rushed at him. Countless divinities held down Longbo after Longbo, dragon-headed and man-bodied, at the sacrificial blade and struck off their heads. Heads beyond counting fell; blood became an ocean, and wave after wave of blood surged up into the sky.
High in the air stood an enormous altar, running with welling blood: it was a sacrifice of spectacular scale.
The shouted commands of the Feathered Forest Army's divine and demonic generals rang out without cease; the people of the Kingdom of Longbo had become the offerings of this sacrifice, their flesh and blood given up through the rite to the Heavenly Court, to be delicacies for the Heavenly Emperor and his civil and military officials. Shen Mu was stunned; he shook his head. Suddenly the illusion before his eyes vanished, and a bleak, withered reality appeared before him.
That earlier scene of sacrifice had been no more than the afterglow of history: in the Longhan era, Wei Suifeng had led the Feathered Forest Army to the Kingdom of Longbo to put down a rebellion, and had slain its people as offerings to the Heavenly Court.
What appeared before him now was the reality.
Ahead of him, countless colossal dragon bones lay every which way across a vast and boundless continent. Bones were everywhere; amid the collapsed grandeur of dragon palaces, ghost fires stirred up white bones and made these dry Longbo remains rise and walk about.
This place was like a netherworld of ghosts and demons.
In the sky, bone dragons with ghost fires floating in their eye sockets swam to and fro; in the vast city, bone dragons thronged the streets and markets, and he even saw a true ghost market. Those Longbo seemed still alive, buying and selling, trading goods within the dragon city. He could even hear the sound of haggling.