Chapter 490 — Years of Iron and Blood

Just then a faint sound came from beneath Chest. Shen Mu halted and looked beneath it, and saw a youth with both legs severed, clinging to Chest's leg.

"Great Venerable."

Shen Mu's face broke into a smile. "Have you been well?"

Ban Gongcuo's face was the color of earth. "Shen, this damned world makes sport of me. Kill me or flay me, do as you please!"

Shen Mu answered mildly, "Why would I flay you? Don't be absurd. Killing is simpler; flaying is too much trouble."

Just then, suddenly, a light shone down out of the darkness, a divine light that pierced the dark.

Shen Mu's heart jumped. He sprang up onto Chest and pressed down with all his weight, driving Chest and Ban Gongcuo beneath it down into the yellow sand.

"What are you doing?" Ban Gongcuo cried in alarm.

"Shut up. Xing An's eyes have come in too!" Shen Mu hissed.

In the dark sky a pillar of light swept across the desert; a huge eyeball shot out a beam of light, searching the sands, then flew on ahead.

Then another eyeball flew over. The two great eyes met in the air and halted, and then a spectral light came racing from afar and stopped in midair: the head of a youth.

That head held no eyeballs, and the two eyes flew into its sockets.

"You are right nearby!"

The head in the air gave a sudden cold laugh. "Divine Physician Shen, Great Venerable, you stole my chest, and now you think to shake off my pursuit? You take me for far too simple a man!"

Abruptly the yellow sand around them congealed. Startled, Shen Mu felt the sand tightening about him and knew things were bad; at once he roused the Mystic Body Three Cores Art, and yuan qi burst from his whole body, becoming splendid runes that arrayed themselves in formation within the sand underground.

Ban Gongcuo shuddered with dread. "You would use teleportation powers in a place like this? If you don't want to live, I still—"

"Here!"

Xing An's head in midair gave a shrill howl, and both eyes shot out divine light in a sweeping search!

Buzz—

The place where Shen Mu stood collapsed all at once into a great pit, and then two beams of divine light stabbed into the pit, vaporizing a vast stretch of the rolling yellow sand!

Ban Gongcuo's scalp went numb. Teleported out along with Shen Mu and the chest, he shouted, "Cult Leader Shen, your skills are wanting; you did not teleport far at all!"

"Shut up. It is Dragon Fatty who is too heavy!"

Shen Mu clenched his teeth and roused the teleportation power once more. The teleportation runes blazed, and behind them a great head came flying through the air, two beams of light dropping from the sky into the desert, and everything they passed was vaporized clean away!

He roused the teleportation power again and again, until at last his mana was spent, and he hastily pointed in one direction. "Great Venerable, that way!"

Ban Gongcuo quickly took over, drawing one small banner after another from his Taotie Pouch, each surface branded with teleportation runes. At his urging the banners flew, wrapped themselves around the two of them, and vanished before Xing An's divine eye-light could strike.

In one of his lives he had joined the Nether Demon Cult, and had nearly become its cult leader; the cult's teleportation powers were no stranger to him.

Ban Gongcuo roused the teleportation banners again and again, his mana draining swiftly, cold sweat beading on his brow. "Cult Leader Shen, I am nearly out of mana! Are we there yet?"

He spent his last mana and teleported once more. When the teleportation patterns faded, their eyes were suddenly struck by light: they stood within a walled city.

The city blazed with lantern light, hung everywhere with lanterns and colored silks. The two looked up, and were struck dumb: upon the walls and the high towers of this city that stood in the darkness there stood gods and demons a hundred zhang tall, some with four heads and eight arms, some with three heads and six arms, some with the heads of birds on human bodies, some with the heads of beasts on human bodies, and others that resembled Xuanwu divinities, Vermilion Bird divinities, White Tiger divinities, Azure Dragon divinities.

They gave off an incomparably intense divine radiance, driving back the darkness beyond the city.

Within, the city was loud and bustling, people coming and going.

These people seemed to have appeared out of nowhere, squeezing past Shen Mu and the great chest, smiles plastered on their faces.

"No. Something is wrong... this is plainly desert. How can there be a city here? And if there truly were so many people here, how could they leave the bones of those gods and demons unburied in the desert? And why would there be so many deities here?"

Shen Mu's head ached as if it would split. Suddenly he seized the hand of a young girl passing by. Seeing that he was not ill-favored, she burst out laughing. "You rascal, what are you grabbing my hand for?"

"Good sister, what year is it now?" Shen Mu asked, his face pale.

The girl laughed. "You certainly have a way with words. It is of course the twenty-four thousandth year of the Supreme Emperor, and today is the Supreme Emperor's twenty-six thousandth birthday!"

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