Chapter 501 — Chixiu Was a God All Along
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 2 of 4
Now those people had come back to life out of death, and he was the one who was dead.
They were splitting apart the true-god body he had refined with such bitter effort; they were trying to tear him asunder! Once again he felt that great dread, the great terror of life and death!
The bird-headed god shifted his feet slightly, found a comfortable posture, and settled back down on the mountain top with his head drawn in. "Xing'an, your crimes have come due as well.
But this time what the King of Hell means to investigate is not you, but the remnants of the Heavenly Court inside you.
" "Heh heh heh. .
.
" A sinister, uncanny voice suddenly issued from within Xing'an's body: "What sort of damned King of Hell is that? Nothing but a leftover from an old age! It's me you're looking for, isn't it? " "Kuiwu Shen!
" Shen Mu's heart lurched.
He saw the primordial spirit of Kuiwu Shen suddenly swell out from within Xing'an's branching, forking body, transforming into a colossal thing a thousand zhang tall, savage and terrifying, taller than the mountain peak, more imposing still, his eyes like the craters of two volcanoes, brimming with raging flame, and around the flame a darkness dense beyond measure. He looked down from his height upon the bird-headed god on the mountain below and sneered: "You too are a leftover of the old age.
I have seen you—a Night Wanderer of the Kaihuang era.
You were originally a chiuxiu of the Kaihuang era, a warden of the souls of prisoners, a deity able to fly freely between Youdu and the world of the living, and you named yourself Chixiu! Chixiu, receive my bow! " He bowed his head and made obeisance. The bird-headed god still stood steady on the mountain top, not stirring in the slightest. Kuiwu Shen was startled, and bowed his head again.
The bird-headed god lifted one leg and scratched at the corner of his beak. Kuiwu Shen was greatly shaken. He turned at once and fled, racing madly out of the Realm of the Living Dead. He was not yet dead; his fleshly body was still suppressed beneath Yang Mountain in the Wasteland. Here he had not recovered his body, and only his primordial spirit remained.
The speed of a primordial spirit is unmatched in all the world, faster than the running of any divine leg in the world.
The moment he moved, he crossed the sea of mist in an instant and was about to burst out beyond the bounds of Fengdu's shroud. Just then, the bird-headed god Chixiu spread his wings and flew up, and a great wind howled past Shen Mu and the others!
Shen Mu looked up, and saw in the sky a bird with a human face, its wings spread immeasurably wide, blotting out the sky and hiding the sun.
It reached out its talons and seized Kuiwu Shen's towering primordial spirit! The next moment, the bird-headed god beat his wings and returned, slamming Kuiwu Shen to the ground, then settled back on the mountain top, quietly preening his feathers. Shen Mu shuddered, and the bones in his body knocked together with a clatter.
At such speed, not to mention him—even if Old Cripple were here, he could not have escaped!
The form of this bird-headed god Chixiu was exceedingly strange. In that instant when he flew out, he had shifted directly from fleshly form into pure primordial-spirit form, and that was why his speed could be so great, greater even than Kuiwu Shen's primordial spirit, and why he could so easily overtake Kuiwu Shen and capture him.
And now, flying back, he shifted again from primordial-spirit form into fleshly form. This art of freely turning ethereal and solid at will was profoundly uncanny.
"No wonder Kuiwu Shen said he could freely travel between Youdu and the world of the living. It seems he spoke the truth," Shen Mu thought.
At this moment, chains were coiled around Kuiwu Shen's body, and he struggled without cease, but could never break free of the chains' hold.
For all that this fierce god was unspeakably evil, he was helpless now.