Chapter 309 — Pulling Each Other Down

Ban Gongcuo, furious and frantic, stammered, "Sect Master Shen, don't you joke with me — my surname isn't Shen, I'm of the barbarian tribes..."

Shen Mu, in a towering rage, shouted, "Shen Gongcuo, will you not even acknowledge your own Shen ancestors? You once said you came from Carefree Village..."

"Shut your mouth, you little wretch!"

Ban Gongcuo, his fury reaching the heavens, pounced to kill; Shen Mu at once fended him off. One of them wielded the Sorcerer Venerable's Loura Sutra and transformed into a monstrous being with a bird's head and a man's body; the other wielded the Nine Dragons Emperor Art and became like a majestic emperor. Dragons roared, birds cried; the dragon-form divine ability and the bird-wing feather swords clashed again and again.

The two of them looked very young, yet both were ruthless and vicious, every move aimed at taking the other's life. In sheer refinement of technique, one could scarcely find among the divine-power practitioners of the Six Harmonies realm anyone to match them.

It was only that the battle just now had drained them so heavily that their vital essence was no longer as vigorous as before; even so, the might of their moves was still nothing to scoff at.

Fierce as their fighting was, each seeming to wish the other dead, their feet were nonetheless edging toward the cabin door.

The two were of one mind; fighting as they went, they drew near the cabin door, and it looked as though they might break free and flee — when suddenly the treasure ship shook violently. The owner of those two eyes beyond the bridge had grown somewhat angry and was rocking the treasure ship; the whole vessel shuddered and quaked without cease.

Suddenly an invisible force came, wrapping them up tight and dragging them before the porthole. The two hastily stopped, not daring to resist.

The strength of this mysterious being was truly unfathomable; even Ban Gongcuo felt his scalp go numb, knowing that even at the full height of his former life he might not have been its match.

Beyond the bridge, those two enormous vertical eyes brimmed with wrath, and the voice came again from below, so grim and chilling that it made the blood run cold: "Which of you is surnamed Shen?"

Shen Mu and Ban Gongcuo raised their hands as one, pointing at each other: "Him!"

The voice came again: "You are both surnamed Shen?"

Ban Gongcuo shuddered and hastily cried out, "I'm not surnamed Shen — I am a Grand Venerable of the Golden Palace of Loulan. Senior, you may go and make inquiries..."

The voice was most uncanny, as though it grazed across their very souls, piercingly harsh, jarring their spirits into a numb tingle: "Not surnamed Shen — then there is no need for you to live."

"Since it has come to this, it seems I cannot hide it from you, Senior."

Ban Gongcuo said with a solemn face, "That's right, I am Shen Gongcuo! And this fellow beside me is a Grand Venerable of the Golden Palace of Loulan, reincarnated and possessing another's body, named Ban Mu. I beg you, Senior, to act — you may rid the world of this useless creature at once!"

Shen Mu sneered, "Just now you called me Sect Master Shen — or is your word so much wind from your backside?"

The two glared at each other, gnashing their teeth, each longing to drive a fist into the other's heart and tear out that black heart to gnaw on.

The voice was silent a moment, then said, "Which of you is sixteen?"

Ban Gongcuo and Shen Mu exchanged a glance; Shen Mu hastily said, "I am sixteen!"

Ban Gongcuo just as hastily said, "It happens that I am sixteen as well!"

Though Shen Mu was nominally fifteen, that age was reckoned from the time Granny Zhu picked him up; the villagers had always argued over it — some held he was fifteen, some that he was sixteen — and just how old he truly was, Shen Mu himself did not know.

Ban Gongcuo, for his part, was only thirteen; because he was a man of the grasslands, weathered by wind and sun, he looked rather mature for his years. Both of them appeared to be fifteen or sixteen.

Those inverted pupils showed a look of bewilderment; faced with the present situation, the being too seemed at a loss.

The present state of things differed from what he had surmised. He had guessed that either someone would come from Carefree Village, or that a sixteen-year-old youth surnamed Shen would come here, take the treasure ship, and return to Carefree Village. Yet now two youths of about the same age had come together — and both, astonishingly, were surnamed Shen!

Which was real and which false, none could tell.

"Drive this ship and set course for Carefree Village!"

The voice went on, "Whichever of you is surnamed Shen, so long as you can drive this treasure ship to Carefree Village, you may all live."

Shen Mu hastily pulled the silver helmet from his head and stuffed it into Ban Gongcuo's hands, saying with the utmost sincerity, "Shen Gongcuo, haven't you always wanted this helmet? Now you may take it."

Ban Gongcuo held the helmet, his head swelling as big as a bushel; he wanted to decline, but Shen Mu would insist on forcing it on him. Inwardly he cursed Shen Mu over and over, heaven knows how many times, yet he steeled himself and put the helmet on.

His eyes flickered. For all that he had lived ten thousand years, witnessed countless great events in history, seen much and known much, and was privy to no end of hidden secrets, of Carefree Village he knew but little — and as to where Carefree Village lay, he was utterly in the dark.

He had learned only from the records of the Daoist sects, the Great Thunderclap Temple, and Little Jade Capital that it was a place where one could become a god, that deities moved about there, and that it was a remnant of the Kaihuang Era.

His coming this time had likewise been in the hope of relying on this ship to reach that mysterious place and thereby become a god.

Now he had obtained the helmet he had dreamed of, the key to steering the treasure ship — but how was he to get to this so-called Carefree Village?

He put on the helmet and felt as though his head inside it had swelled several sizes larger; he could not help but grunt.

What a swindle.

Swindled by one surnamed Shen.

No wonder this fellow had called him Shen Gongcuo the moment they met — he had been lying in wait for him here all along!

"But if you think you can make me perish here, you underestimate me far too much! Over ten thousand years, countless heaven-favored prodigies have died and their dao dissolved with them — Dao Lords, Tathagatas, immortals, what of them? The moment their allotted span ran out, they breathed their last all the same. In all these ten thousand years, I alone have survived — and not by my talent or my comprehension, but by my extraordinary abilities! That I have lived until now is no unearned reputation!"

Ban Gongcuo's eyes flickered; he quickly worked out how to operate the silver helmet and tried tapping the map upon it. The treasure ship shuddered once, but still could not sail out of the honeycomb seal.

"Senior."

Ban Gongcuo said hastily, "This ship is stuck fast and cannot move."

Suddenly the treasure ship shook violently, jarring loose the honeycomb seal all around it — plainly the fearsome being outside had acted to shake the treasure ship free of the seal.

The honeycomb seal was shaken loose; many honeycomb-shaped seals showed crack after crack, then collapsed and crumbled like glass. The demonic qi of Youdu surged abruptly, rushing into the Wild Ruins.

At the same time, in the Nether Valley, those two white-bat statues, vast as mountain ranges, rumbled and shook; rocks and stones rattled and slid, falling ceaselessly from the statues a thousand zhang tall.

Where the rock fell away, those two white-bat statues revealed the hue of flesh and blood; faintly one could see blood coursing beneath the skin.

Thump!

From within the two sculptures a heartbeat suddenly sounded, deafening.