Chapter 8 — The Skin-Changing Hide Granny Left Behind
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 1 of 4
"Granny once said that if you lost your way in the Wasteland and could not return to the village before nightfall, there was no need to panic. " Shen Mu steadied himself and thought, "There are many ruins in the Wasteland, and most of them possess strange and wondrous properties. If I hide inside one, I may yet survive.
Whether a ruin can save my life depends on two things. First, whether it contains a stone statue resembling the ones in the village. Second, whether it contains a great number of strange beasts. Those beasts possess spiritual awareness. They know where one can hide from the darkness. . .
" There were no shortage of ruins in the Wasteland. During his flight just now, Shen Mu had already glimpsed the remains of cities and villages, ancient broken walls and crumbling ruins. He simply had no time to stop and see whether any stone statues remained. Half the setting sun had already sunk below the mountains when, all at once, the world fell utterly silent, so silent it was enough to drive a person mad.
Then came a rushing, flapping sound. Shen Mu looked up and saw flock after flock of enormous birds shrieking across the sky, their black forms blotting it out.
The earth began to tremble. The trees toppled. Strange beasts burst from places unknown and bolted wildly across the land. Shen Mu even saw the waters of a lake churn as several enormous scarlet fish, each several zhang long, leaped from the surface. Using their fins as legs, they sprinted across the ground!
Shen Mu was bewildered. Fish running across the earth. .
.
were they still fish? "All these strange beasts are running in the same direction.
There must be somewhere ahead where they can hide from the darkness!
" His spirits soared, and he charged forward with the beasts. The sky grew darker and darker. In the distance, the darkness came surging like a tide. It was not like the darkness of night. It was more like a great flood, spilling over mountain peaks, flooding valleys, sweeping across the wilderness, and drowning everything in its path. Though Shen Mu had seen the darkness advance before, the sight still shook him to the core.
The darkness was bearing down with overwhelming force, yet the herd continued to race straight toward it. Shen Mu hesitated. The beasts were running in the very direction from which the darkness came. Was there truly some safe haven ahead, a place where they could evade its advance?
What if there was not?
Would he not die without even a grave? "Forget it. The darkness is moving too fast.
Even if I turn back now, I will never make it.
I cannot outrun it. My only choice is to follow the herd! " He clenched his teeth and hurled himself forward. More than ten li downstream from Hidden Cripple Village, the battle between Granny Zhu and the Lanjiang Five Elders had reached its most critical moment. At first, only the four elders had surrounded Granny Zhu, but they could not overcome her despite their relentless assault. Wei Shuangling, the foremost of the Five Elders, had been watching from a cliff above.
He now joined the battle, and the five elders formed the Five-Element Demon-Sealing Array. No one had expected that Granny Zhu, who had barely managed to hold on beneath the assault of the four elders, would suddenly grow far more powerful once Wei Shuangling entered the fray. The Five-Element Demon-Sealing Array could not even restrain the old woman. Shock and fury seized the Five Elders.
Only then did they realize that the old woman had deliberately shown weakness, luring Wei Shuangling into the trap so that she could wipe them all out at once and prevent any of them from escaping. Granny Zhu tiptoed across the ground, flickering here and there like a ghost. The silver needles and silk threads in her basket seemed to come alive.