Chapter 1 — Dusk Seals the Village, Enter Not the Wild Night
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 4 of 4
Granny Zhu glanced at him. "That woman was the wife of the lord of Crimson Dragon City, a thousand li from here. The lord of Crimson Dragon City is lustful, and she is jealous. He likes to philander and seize respectable women by force. Every time he defiled a woman, this lady would have her beaten to death. I infiltrated Crimson Dragon City, originally intending to kill her, but I saw she had just given birth—the child was only three months old—and I thought of how you had no milk to drink, and she had milk. So I turned her into a cow and brought her back to nurse you. I never expected her to break free of the seal and speak. She nearly did you harm."
Shen Mu was dumbstruck. "Granny, how can a person be turned into a cow?"
Granny Zhu chuckled, revealing her half-mouth of scattered teeth. "You want to learn? I'll teach you... Lame Sou is back!"
Shen Mu looked. Lame Sou was limping toward them, one hand on a crutch, the other gripping the game on his back. The Gloom surged toward the village like a tide. Granny Zhu cried out urgently, "Lame fool, hurry, hurry!"
"What's the rush?"
Lame Sou continued toward the village, unhurried. The moment he stepped inside, the thick Gloom swallowed the village whole. The game on his back was a striped tiger, still alive. Its tail had been grazed by the Gloom. Suddenly the tiger let out a mournful roar. Shen Mu looked quickly and saw that the tiger's tail was nothing but segments of bone—hide, flesh, and blood all gone, as if gnawed away by something. He looked curiously at the Gloom outside the village. It was a murky expanse—nothing to be seen.
"What exactly is in the Gloom?" he wondered.