荒墟牧神 - 第13章 木棍百擊斷生機 - 錦書坊

Senior Brother Chu was at last seized with terror: "He means to beat me to death with that little wooden stick—to keep beating me until I die!" He truly wished that what the other held were a blade; even a blunt blade would have done. The little stick was of course no great weapon, but by now the swelling on his head and face had festered into blood-clotted abscesses, and the swelling had left him nothing but two slits for eyes, his sight blurring more and more. The skin over his body had been beaten black and blue; several muscles had been pounded into paste; and it was the joints that had received Shen Mu's particular attention. What Shen Mu struck was not the bone of those joints but the ligaments and fascia: the ligaments and fascia of every joint in Senior Brother Chu's body had been shattered by that little wooden stick, so that the slightest movement brought a tearing, lancing agony. To be beaten to death by a wooden stick, little by little—there is nothing more appalling; agony and horror were stretched out countless times over, and yet death would not come soon, not for a long while. By now the herd of beasts that had been galloping overhead was gone: the two of them had fought their way out through the ruin's gateway, and the herd had scattered. Shen Mu's strength was ebbing as well; by this point he had cut heaven knows how many strokes in unbroken succession, and he too could hold out no longer. He and Senior Brother Chu had run and fought beneath the belly of the giant beast, dodging not only the other's sword but the hooves and claws of the monsters, and the ceaseless shifting of his footwork had left both his legs aching and swollen. When he had trained under the Butcher, mad as the man often was, he still knew the measure of training and would not work him to exhaustion. Now he had no strength left to keep cutting; only his will had carried him this far. He knew that if he stopped, and Senior Brother Chu still had even a thread of primal qi, still could so much as stir, his own head would part from his body. He could only keep beating, on until Senior Brother Chu was beaten dead. Thud. Senior Brother Chu could hold out no longer and pitched forward onto the ground; his sword fell with a clang. Shen Mu flung the stick away and seized the sword, but he could not lift it—his arms had not the last of their strength left. Shen Mu raised a foot and kicked at the hilt, bit by bit, turning the point toward Senior Brother Chu. Senior Brother Chu could just barely see it; he squirmed and struggled with all he had, trying to avoid the point, but his bones and sinews were all but wholly destroyed, and he could not shift a muscle by a hair. He could not move, and could only watch as Shen Mu, laboring, adjusted the angle of the point little by little, then kicked the sword bit by bit, letting the edge pierce his throat a little at a time. At last the sword ran through his throat; a gurgling rose in his windpipe, bubbles swam through the blood, and before long he gave up the ghost. Shen Mu's heart eased and he collapsed limp to the ground. It had been too hard—never in his life had he been so hard-pressed. A corpse lay right beside him, and the feeling was truly hard to bear. Shen Mu tried to shift his body; he truly could not move, and so gave up the thought. It was not the first time he had seen a corpse: the woman who had crawled out of the cowhide by the riverside, and Senior Brother Chu's two junior brothers, had all become corpses. Once Granny Zhu had taken him to a neighboring village to deliver a woman's child—besides cutting and sewing clothes, Granny Zhu was in ordinary days a midwife as well, delivering the women of the villages round about. When they arrived, every soul in that village was already dead—men and women, old and young, including the woman who had been waiting to give birth. At the time Shen Mu's mind had gone utterly blank; he felt himself drift free of his body into the air, floating weightless above