Chapter 2 — The Four Poles' Spirit Marrow Enters the Body
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 4 of 4
come to this village, scraping out the dregs of their days. They had once hated heaven, hated earth, hated every living soul, and that grudge burned too fiercely. That they had lived this long, one could not deny, owed no small debt to Shen Mu. It was this little boy, whole of limb and sound of body, whose arrival had scattered the bitterness in their hearts. Everyone had helped raise him, each treasuring the boy as their own nearest and dearest. Shen Mu was the thread that held together the fragile hearts of Hidden Remnant Village. If the villagers ever learned that Shen Mu possessed only the most ordinary constitution and could not survive the Wasteland alone, those people would almost certainly lose their minds—and who could say what they might do? The Pill Master said, without expression, "But you cannot hide it to the end of your days. Sooner or later we will all die of old age, and Shen Mu alone will be left." "So you must never tell him that the Overlord Constitution never existed. Never tell him, not ever." The Village Head spoke with weight. "Let him believe he is the one and only Overlord Constitution!" The Pill Master was stunned, and studied his face closely. In the murky lamplight, the Village Head's face wore a strange fascination. "I want to see," he said, smiling, "whether an ordinary man, armed with a conviction beyond compare, can rise above the mundane and achieve what even we Spirit Constitutions could not! Who knows—in time to come he may truly walk out a road where the mortal body is the Overlord's body!" The Pill Master was dumbfounded. "Mortal body as Overlord's body?" The Village Head nodded heavily. "Where conviction exists, the mortal body is the Overlord's body!"