Chapter Forty-Seven: Spreading the Faith on the Grasslands (VII)
The moonlight remained unchanged, yet the hills beneath it were now ravaged and full of scars. One after another, Dust’s divine thunder of the five elements fell, blasting the small hill until it was riddled with craters.
While Dust and the Blood Sea Demon Lord were locked in fierce combat, the shaman realized that if Dust emerged victorious, his own fate would be eternal damnation. Seeing his blood-sacrificed god gradually losing to Dust, his heart seized with fear and desperation. Yet, with the deities battling above, he had no way to intervene directly. His eyes flickered with cunning as he beckoned a guard over and whispered instructions. The guard immediately sprang into action but had barely taken a few steps when a bolt of thunder and fire crashed down from the sky, reducing him to a pile of charred remains. Dust’s message was clear: anyone who dared return to the tribe to use his disciple as leverage against him would die without mercy.
The shaman was aghast. That Daoist, even as he fought fiercely, still kept a vigilant watch over the situation—did he still have power to spare? The more the shaman considered this, the heavier his unease grew. At last, gritting his teeth, he drew from his bosom a tiny skull, no larger than a fist. The guard beside him recoiled in terror at the sight.
The grasslands had never been a place of kindness; endless warfare and bloodshed had endured for thousands of years. For those born here, every day was a confrontation with killing or being killed. Compared to the hypocrisy behind the Great Wall, the lands beyond were a naked, lawless world of bandits. There was never any shortage of madmen and tyrants here—some made drinking cups from the skulls of their enemies, others polished human kneecaps to play with, and there were those who boiled people alive. Yet, none were as depraved as to fashion a ritual tool from the skull of an unformed infant. How tiny must the child have been, for its skull to be so small?
The shaman no longer cared about the horrified stares of his own guards. Lifting the skull-shaped ritual tool, he chanted a series of strange, guttural syllables. From within the skull, a thick black smoke surged forth, rushing toward the surrounding guards. The guards, seeing the black smoke approach, did not know what it was—but instinctively knew it could not bode well, and scrambled to retreat. Yet no one could outrun the smoke. In an instant, the slowest guard was engulfed, his despairing screams echoing as he writhed on the grass. In moments, all was still. The smoke surged again, leaving behind a gleaming skeleton before leaping upon the next guard. The guards, terrified beyond measure, fled for their lives, but one by one, the black smoke consumed them utterly. At last, when the final skeleton lay on the grass, the smoke grew denser, then drifted back into the infant skull. The shaman smiled in satisfaction—a smile more chilling than any scream.
By now, the Blood Sea Demon Lord’s protective aura of blood had been worn nearly to nothing by Dust. Without its shield, the Demon Lord was as helpless as a toothless tiger, at Dust’s mercy. The shaman could wait no longer. Clutching the infant skull, he spat out another incantation at breakneck speed. Red light flared from the empty sockets of the skull, as if it had come alive. Finishing the chant, the shaman flung the skull outward. Dust, meanwhile, was preparing his killing blow, ready to finish the Demon Lord in one strike. Yet he had not expected the shaman, desperate and unwilling to concede, to attempt another trick. Infuriated, Dust unleashed a bolt of lightning, shattering the skull to ashes. At that very moment, a sudden sense of alarm gripped him—he tried to withdraw his power, but it was already too late. The skull disintegrated in the fivefold elemental flames.
Suddenly, in the darkness of night, the cries of infants filled the air—haunting and unearthly. Fury surged within Dust. Channeling his power, he swung his sword, and the already-defeated Blood Sea Demon Lord was instantly transformed into a blazing pyre. The Demon Lord was vanquished. Only then did Dust turn to the shaman and say, “A clever scheme. Are you not afraid of Heaven’s wrath?”
The shaman sneered, “You’re the one who destroys souls—Heaven’s punishment will find you, not me! I have no path of return left. Dead or alive, I’ll make sure you suffer too.” His eyes burned with venomous hatred as he glared at Dust. “Why did you come here? The grasslands have never been your domain. Day by day, I watched the gods I worshipped wither and fade. Do you know what that feels like? You and those cursed monks—why must you invade even the last patch of earth my gods could call their own?” With that, he burst into wild laughter, which soon turned to wailing sobs.
Dust had no reply. After a long silence, he ground out, “I cannot answer for the wars of the gods. But you performed blood sacrifices to the Demon Lord, harming countless innocent Han lives. Worse, you used the skulls of unborn infants as ritual tools, imprisoning their souls for evil magic. Your crimes are unforgivable!” With that, he pointed at the shaman and intoned, “Exorcise evil!” In the sky, the peachwood sword spun, transforming into a streak of light that shot toward the shaman. In an instant, the shaman was cleaved in two, his entrails spilling across the ground, his eyes fixed on Dust, seething with undying hatred. Dust spoke softly, “Stare at me no longer. You will have no next life. Your sins are beyond redemption. Go and repent in Hell.”
He sighed. Murmuring an incantation, he waited until the sound of clashing iron chains echoed through the night. Two underworld emissaries appeared before him. Dust pointed at the shaman’s not-yet-dead body and said, “Take him away.” The emissaries acknowledged the command, raised their chains, and struck the shaman’s head, instantly extracting his soul—none other than the shaman himself. Dust looked one last time at the shaman’s numb, hollow expression. “Take him below,” he ordered. The emissaries bowed, dragged the soul away, and vanished into the darkness.
The enemy was destroyed, but Dust could not yet rest. The faint cries of infants in the night must be silenced—unless he could retrieve their souls, help them find peace, and guide them into the cycle of reincarnation, he feared that even greater trouble awaited him.