Chapter 963 — Blood Falls Like Rain in the Cold Night
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 2 of 4
Boom—again the impact came, dull yet vast, one after another, and the mirror-smooth wall had no time to heal.
Suddenly the south gate collapsed, and the Taixu monsters outside poured into the city like a tide!
"Prepare to meet the enemy!
" someone shouted loudly. At that very moment the north gate too collapsed with a crash, then the east and west gates—all of them flattened by those Taixu monsters.
The gigantic monsters ran riot through the city that now held only them, and wherever they passed, houses fell and buildings toppled.
Myriad Taixu monsters surged in like a flood; the people stood on the high ground, their hearts frozen. On the arrow tower a woman screamed, leaped into the air, and flew skyward, trying to escape this nightmare city through the air.
But as she rose into the sky, she saw the human-faced moon above give a piercing shriek, and a white-boned, human-faced monster bird beat its wings and charged at her.
Countless more monstrous birds flew out from the human-faced moon, a black mass of them, and the moonlight too turned strange: the moon was blood-red, like a bleeding human face.
The melody the human-faced moon played turned strangely cheerful as well, even a little playful.
The music carried down from the sky, and the Taixu monsters below became feverishly excited.
Soon the woman who had flown up was torn to pieces by the flock of birds, and blood fell from above—first a thin drizzle, then a torrential downpour.
A rain of blood fell from the heavens; it was the moon bleeding, and the sky was like a painting dyed red with fresh blood, gore blanketing heaven and earth.
The monstrous birds in the sky swooped down, and the crowded horde of monsters soon reached the place where Shen Mu and the others stood and drowned them!
In that moment no one could spare a thought for old grudges, nor for obeying their master's command to slay Mu Tianzun; they had only one thought now—to survive!
Without a word Shen Mu roused the Gate of Heaven-Bearing, but to the chill of his heart it would not open.
Since these monsters were transformed from wronged souls who had died in Taixu, spells and divine powers aimed at souls would be most effective against them; but Taixu and Youdu were not in the same time and space, and so it could not be opened.
"If I could open the Gate of Heaven-Bearing, cutting my way out would be easy beyond measure.
A pity. " He roused the divine arts of Youdu, joining vital essence and divine consciousness to visualize a white banner, and as an ancient-god-shaped monster charged him he swung it with all his strength.
"But though I am not my elder brother, in all this world there are fewer than five whose mastery of Youdu's divine arts can surpass mine!
" The soul within that monster at once flew out and fell into the white banner.
The banner had been blank, empty of everything; now a man had appeared within it.
The man was dazed and muddled, his face contorted, struggling to fly out of the banner; though the banner was wrought from vital essence and divine consciousness and was very thin, it seemed to hold a space within.
The man's twisted face pushed out from the banner, bulging the space inside out of shape.
Shen Mu drove the banner hard into the ground, a low, muffled roar rising from his throat: "Where my body stands, there is Youdu!
" Boom—his vital essence burst apart and poured out as rolling Youdu demonic qi, in an instant sweeping the hundred-odd mu of land around him and turning it into a world of darkness.
Within the divine treasury of his primal fetus, his spirit-fetus primordial spirit raised a foot and stamped it down hard; at once the taiji beneath his feet churned over, heaven and earth spun, heaven below and earth above, and the ground became the world of Youdu.