Chapter 1696 — The Eighth Ancient Tree

A wave of incomparable violence swept out, a storm raging, whipping Shen Mu's robes where he stood beside that Dao tree, forcing him back and back!

Shen Mu retreated the whole way, resisting that savage impact, and when the storm subsided he had already been driven beyond the village.

He opened the vertical eye in his brow and looked: the Dao tree still stood there, motionless, and around it there was no one to be seen.

Startled, Shen Mu searched carefully, and saw the girl hanging in her own Dao tree, one foot sticking out, her Dao fruit still clutched in her hand, unconscious.

The woman had fallen into her own well, gripping her washing bat for dear life, the bat wedged in the mouth of the well.

Shang Jun sat sprawled beneath his own Dao tree, the web of his hand bleeding where he gripped the saber, his eyes blank, the broken saber in his hand shattered to bits, the hilt crumbled to dust.

The old woman's hairpin was stuck in her own brow, her breath faint as gossamer; the old man's water pipe was broken, and his head had struck the great stone he always sat on, splitting his scalp and drawing blood.

And Zhu Santong's tusks were all broken off; he lay unconscious, clutching his Dao tree.

Shen Mu was dumbstruck. In that single instant, six Dao-attainers had all been defeated, all wounded!

"The Eldest Young Master!"

The old man sat up trembling, his arms shaking, struggling to fill his pipe with tobacco — but the water pipe was broken, and the water ran out.

His voice was hoarse, and in his eyes were both dread and fury. "It is the Eldest Young Master's Dao tree! He has been here all along! Heh heh, that old snake in the shadows..."

Shen Mu looked around, and his gaze suddenly fell upon the sun hanging high in the vault of the sky.

That sun blazed with fire, and had burned for perhaps ten cosmic epochs — who knew how many billions of years — burning from the seventh epoch down to the present!

By all laws, the sun should long ago have gone out, died, evaporated, and become void at last; yet this sun still lived. It could not but rouse suspicion.

"The Eldest Young Master is not here."

Shen Mu said suddenly, "He has only left his eye and his Dao tree behind."

The old man struggled to his feet and gazed up at that sun in the vault of heaven, then let out a desolate sigh, his voice hoarse. "I have been imprisoned here too long; I am long since no match for him. Heh heh. In those years I was his equal in fame, and now I am not the equal of one of his eyes..."

He was very forlorn.

For the sake of a single promise, he had guarded the Paralytic for ten cosmic epochs, and in those ten epochs he had let his cultivation go to waste, falling far behind the Eldest Young Master who had once been his equal in fame. The sense of loss in his heart was easy to imagine.

In truth, Shen Mu could see it too: the old man was revered by the people here as the old monster, and he must have been a figure of great renown in his day, so that many had heard his legends.

Yet of all the people in this little village, the strongest was not him, but Shang Jun.

Though Shang Jun had only one Dao fruit and one Dao tree, his strength already stood above that of the other Dao-attainers in the village!

That too was why Shen Mu wanted to take Shang Jun away.

Shen Mu stepped forward, drew the hairpin from the old woman's brow, gave her wounds a simple treatment, and patted the old man on the shoulder.

The old man came back to himself and said bleakly, "I cannot see the young master off."

The others struggled to their feet one by one and saw Shen Mu to the village entrance.

Shang Jun forced himself to stand, was silent a moment, and said, "I no longer have my saber. I fear I cannot do much for you. And my killing nature is too heavy, my enemies too many; I will only bring disaster upon you."

Shen Mu laughed. "What a coincidence. I have many enemies too — likely far more than you."

Shang Jun hesitated. Shen Mu looked at him with a calm face. "Shang Jun, who attained the Dao through killing — you are afraid. The reason you dread the outside world is not that you lost to the Eldest Young Master. It is that you dread returning to the outside world."

Shang Jun was silent.

"Even though you attained the Dao through killing, even though you cultivated the thirty-sixth heaven of the Dao of killing, your Dao heart is still flawed."

Shen Mu's gaze was sharp. "You believe the sixteenth epoch was destroyed by your hand, and for that you feel guilt, self-reproach, and think you have no face to walk out of here. It was not the Eldest Young Master who sealed you and imprisoned you — it was you yourself who found a cage for yourself and locked yourself inside it. You are no longer the Shang Jun who attained the Dao through killing. Even if you walk out of here, you will never be able to brand the ultimate void with your Dao and become a Dao-attainer again."

Shang Jun's voice was hoarse. "Then do you still need me?"

Shen Mu walked past him and laughed. "Of course I need you. I need you to help me find Taiyi, and I need the sharpest blade in the world. You are no longer that blade — but I can grind you into one. Follow me, and I can bring you out."

Shang Jun followed at his heels, like his shadow.

Soon they entered the obelisk forest. Shang Jun hid within his shadow; the two walked in the same rhythm, lifting their feet together, setting them down together, moving to the same cadence, and gradually vanished into the forest of obelisks.

Outside the village, the others watched the two disappear. Zhu Santong said suddenly, "The Seventh Young Master of Miluo Palace is a strange man."

"He is indeed a strange man."

The old woman sighed. "He is plainly of an enemy power, and yet it is hard to hate him. Not only hard to hate — one rather wants to be his friend."

The woman laughed. "Such a strange man I have never seen before. A pity he is already married; otherwise Yaya might have found herself a good husband..."

The girl spat, her face red with shame, and hid behind a tree.

The others burst out laughing — and laughing, they began to cough violently.