Chapter 34 — Worshipping the Merciful Lord in the Ancient Temple of the Wild God

les into the Wilderness Ruins to temper them. Shut up in seclusion, training madly all alone, you will never become a true master. And so..." Shen Mu's face lit with expectation. He had been waiting all this while for Old Man Ma and Grandma Zhu to let him go out hunting, and now at last the chance had come! "And so, after I discussed it with Grandma, the blind old man, and the rest, we have made a decision." Old Man Ma said with the utmost solemnity: "You may come with us to the temple fair." "To the temple fair — to market?" Shen Mu's face fell. He murmured: "Can I not go hunting?" Old Man Ma smiled, patted his little shoulder, and said: "Going to market is a trial too. Pass the trial, and then you may leave the village alone to hunt. Do well!" Shen Mu did not know whether to laugh or cry. The temple fair was the great festival of the neighboring villages; he had heard Grandma Zhu speak of it. Fair days generally fell on the first and the fifteenth of the month, when the villages for a hundred or two hundred li around would all come, bringing out the goods of each village to trade what they had for what they lacked. Whenever a fair day came, Old Man Ma, the Butcher, the blind old man, the mute, Grandma Zhu, the hard-of-hearing old man, and the Alchemist would all set off for Grandma Temple, twenty li from here. But never before had Shen Mu been allowed to go to market at Grandma Temple; each time they had made him stay behind to keep the village headman and the lame old man company. And the lame old man's lot was worse still: Grandma Zhu said he had sticky fingers, and he was strictly forbidden to attend the fair, lest he be unable to resist and steal the whole market clean. Compared with the temple fair, Shen Mu would in truth rather have gone hunting. There were still two days until the fair on the first of the month. Shen Mu kept on with his training, now and then running off to the valley of Zhenyang Palace for a bout with the Dark Ape, and in his spare time going to the Alchemist's shop to help and to learn a little about refining Condensed Essence Pills. The Alchemist kept several birds, all wreathed in firelight; when he refined medicine, the birds would come flying in through the window to lend a hand. After more than a dozen furnaces of spirit medicine had been ruined, even the Alchemist's face had gone somewhat green; luckily Shen Mu at last brought off a single furnace of spirit embryos, which smoothed the Alchemist's expression a little. At once Shen Mu took that furnace of Condensed Essence Pills — the kind that strengthens the Azure Dragon vital essence — and hurried off in high spirits to the valley of Zhenyang Palace. The Alchemist had meant to remind him to first test whether the pills might kill a man, but on second thought he swallowed the words. "Last time I refined Condensed Essence Pills for the boy, I forgot to check whether the medicine might kill a man too..." the Alchemist thought. "The Dark Ape is a big fellow, and in any case it cannot be killed... it should not be killed. Let him go. But the pills the boy refined this time are each as big as a fist — can the Dark Ape truly survive them?" ———— Readers who love Tales of Herding Gods, the fan title can now be claimed. Zhai Zhu's fan title is: Divine Dynasty! To claim it: on the Qidian client, tap Discover, then Activity Center, then the Fan Title event, search for Zhai Zhu, tap claim, and it is done. Note that a certain amount of fan points is required. The event runs until July 31.