Chapter 240 — A Brand-New Dawn

The Dutian Demon King, head high and chest out, led the old, the weak, the sick, and the maimed of Hidden Maim Village onward.

"Many of the people in this village have sound limbs. Why, then, is it called Hidden Maim Village?" the Dutian Demon King wondered.

By now Hidden Maim Village could no longer truly be called Hidden Maim Village; there were Granny Zhu and Shen Mu among its young folk, so the word "old" was a questionable fit.

Elder Huo, the Butcher, and the Lame Elder now had whole limbs; and though Granny Zhu's heart of the Dao was crippled, her body was sound.

Of all in Hidden Maim Village, only the Blind Elder, the Pill Master, the Village Head, the Mute Craftsman, and the Deaf Elder were unsound of body.

But the Dutian Demon King did not know that to the people of Hidden Maim Village, a maiming of the body was no maiming at all; it was the maiming of the heart that was their true crippling.

The Village Head, trapped by his own ideals, by duties he could not fulfill, was heartsick and spirit-broken; sound of limb though he was, he would never walk out of the Desolate Ruins.

The Pill Master, hounded by too many debts of feeling, had been driven to slice off his own face; even were the glory-day features of his youth restored, he would not dare go out and let himself be seen.

The Blind Elder's ruin came not from his blind eyes alone; Elder Huo, even with both hands restored to him, would sink into the deaths of wife and child and never pull free, could never forgive himself.

Granny Zhu's inner demon, the Lame Elder's past, the Deaf Elder's lost country, the Mute Craftsman's mysterious history, the reason the Butcher had swung his blade at the heavens — all these were the shackles that bound them fast.

The maiming within their hearts was the true maiming; that each of them shut himself away in the history that broke his heart, unable to struggle free — that was why Hidden Maim Village existed.

Had the child they had raised not run off, the folk of Hidden Maim Village would only have stayed quietly in the village, quietly waiting to die of old age there, and then dug a pit and buried themselves.

Shen Mu's coming had gradually brought their hearts back to life, but Shen Mu himself could not make them walk out of the past that had made cripples of them.

A crippled body, a ruined heart — that is what it means to be crippled.

To walk out, they could rely on themselves alone.

The Dutian Demon King was worthy of his name — a demon king of another world; he understood far too much. Even the Blind Elder marveled at the depths of his knowledge, and in the arts of divination especially, the Dutian Demon King had utterly won him over.

They had reached the edge of the forest, about to come to its end; only two li or so of road remained behind them, and yet those two and a bit li had cost the Dutian Demon King the better part of a day to traverse.

"New Year's Eve has come," Granny Zhu said abruptly.

Elder Huo shook his head. "The village's people are not all gathered. Then it is not the New Year."

The Butcher's voice boomed like a great bell: "We must find the Village Head, the Mute Craftsman, and the Pill Master! Alive, we see their faces; dead, we see their bodies! Even if they are dead, we drag them back to see in the New Year!"

Ahead there was no road any longer, only Wuyou Township in its state of collapse.

There was no ground here; the end of the forest was a clean cross-section, and Shen Mu, standing at the cliff's edge and looking down, saw another forest.

He could not help but stare a moment.

"Another forest?"

Shen Mu said in astonishment, "This forest grows on a cliff face. How can the trees stand perpendicular to the ground?"

The Dutian Demon King leapt down from the cliff — with a thud, he landed steady on the sheer rock wall, his body perpendicular to Shen Mu's, and walked to and fro upon it, saying, "The seals here are more complex than I imagined. They are formed of cubes, sealing Wuyou Township within, and controlling the geomagnetic prime force of this place. Walk over and see for yourselves."

Shen Mu cautiously put out a foot, and suddenly felt a pulling force rise from beneath his sole. He set that foot down, lifted the other, and found that he too was standing on the rock wall, feeling no discomfort at all.

Not only that: in his own sight he seemed to be standing at the edge of the cliff, while Granny Zhu, Elder Huo, and the rest stood perpendicular on the wall, and he and the Dutian Demon King stood on level ground.

He looked in all directions, and his heart quivered. On the opposite side he saw another forest, perpendicular to the ground.

Besides that, in the skies of every other direction hung vast tracts of forest.

It was as though blocks of land had enclosed Wuyou Township, fitting together into an enormous hollow sphere.

Yet geographically it did not seem to be a simple hollow sphere either; rather, it looked as though a thousand cubes of differing heights had been assembled into a huge hollow sphere, and at the center of that sphere lay Wuyou Township.

Each cube was a forest-space folded out of a thousand and more li, and every face of each cube was a front.

Such divine power was already at a height he could not imagine; even a being like the Imperial Preceptor Jingping, he feared, could not conceive that such a power existed in the world.

"The geomagnetic prime force here has been altered."

The Blind Elder had come over too. Sensing the pull, he said, "This great divine power is no small matter; it shrouds the whole of Wuyou Township. The only exit, I fear, is the road by which we came."

"Countless seals, all for the sake of keeping the people of Wuyou Township from walking out."

Granny Zhu had come over as well. Raising her head to gaze upward, at shattered Wuyou Township floating silently still a great distance away, she said, "The Village Head and the Patriarch have vast power. They must have entered that place, no?"

The Dutian Demon King looked up, then walked back along the road they had come, and shook his head. "There are no few prohibitions in the air; it would be very hard to fly past the divine prohibitions in avoidance. I need to calculate for a time before I can work out a living path. Roughly three to five decades, perhaps. If my true body were here, it could be faster — but even then it would take a year or two. The god-demon who left these seals behind is too strong; it is not something you could handle. If they tried to fly into Wuyou Township, then in all likelihood they are already dead..."

He muttered to himself, "The whole Desolate Ruins is a cursed land; strange rules shroud it, and living in such a world is truly hard. Sect Master Shen, you asked me to come to this world — I will not come again. This world is too perverse!"

The Blind Elder murmured, "The Village Head is sure to survive. That old fellow never takes anything seriously, but once he does take something seriously, he is certain to accomplish it... Wait — look at the shape of Wuyou Township. Doesn't it look like a ship?"

One after another they raised their heads to look. Wuyou Township was immense beyond measure; shattered though it was, the splendor and grandeur of its former days could still be made out, and a sun on the verge of sinking into darkness hung there.

Yet if those shattered mountain peaks, those enormous machines, and that ruined city were fitted together, the shape did truly resemble an inconceivably vast and magnificent ship!

Beside it, the Sun Boat and the Soul Boat amounted to nothing at all.

"Wuyou Township is a ship?"

Shen Mu's brain could barely keep up. The sun in the sky was an artificial sun, to be sure, but it too was immense; and Wuyou Township's cities and mountains joined together were vaster still, surpassing the Sun Boat and the Soul Boat a thousand times over.

Was there such an immense ship in all the world?

"What sharp eyes the Blind Elder has!"