荒墟牧神 - 第8章 婆婆留下的換形皮 - 雲海書庫

"Granny once said that if you lose your way among the Ruins and cannot get back to the village before dark, you must not panic." Shen Mu steadied himself and thought: "There are many relics in the Ruins, and most of them are places of strange power. Hiding in a relic might well save my life. Whether a relic can save you depends on two things. First, whether it holds stone statues like the ones in the village. Second, whether it holds a great host of strange beasts. Those beasts have spirit-knowledge; they know where the Gloom can be escaped..." There was no lack of relics in the Ruins. On his mad flight just now Shen Mu had glimpsed the ruins of walled towns and villages, broken walls and toppled pillars, very ancient; only he had no leisure to stop and see whether any of them held stone statues. The setting sun was already half-sunk behind the mountains when all at once a hush fell between heaven and earth, a hush so absolute it drove men mad. Then came a whirring roar. Shen Mu looked up and saw great birds tearing across the sky in shrieking flocks, a black mass blotting out the heavens. Then the earth shook, the woods toppled, and strange beasts came burrowing up out of nowhere, sprinting away on frantic legs. He even saw the waters of a lake stir, and several great crimson fish, zhang upon zhang in length, leap clean out of the surface and run on fins used as legs, racing over dry land! Shen Mu was somewhat bewildered. Fish running over the land — were they still fish? "These beasts are all running the same way. There must be shelter there, somewhere the Gloom cannot reach!" His spirits blazed. He rushed forward alongside the beasts. The sky grew darker and darker, and far off the Gloom came surging in like a tide. That Gloom was not the same as night; it was like a great flood, pouring over the peaks, over the valleys, over the wildlands, drowning everything. Though this was not the first time Shen Mu had seen the Gloom invade, he still felt utterly shaken. The Gloom came on ferocious, and the herd still ran to meet it. Shen Mu hesitated: the direction the beasts were running was the very direction from which the Gloom came. Was there really safe ground ahead, a place to hide from the Gloom's assault? If there was not, would he not be dying with no grave to bury him? "Never mind! The Gloom comes too fast — even if I turned back it would be too late, I could never outrun it. There is nothing for it now but to run with the herd!" He clenched his teeth and charged madly forward. More than ten li downriver from Yincan Village, the battle between Granny Zhu and the Five Elders of the Lan River had reached its most critical moment. At first only four of the Lan River elders had been attacking Granny Zhu, but they could not overcome her, and so Qi Yanbing, chief of the Five Elders, who had been watching from the cliff, joined the fight. With five elders besieging her, they laid down the Five Elements Demon-Refining Formation. Yet, unexpectedly, Granny Zhu had barely held her own under the assault of four; when Qi Yanbing entered the field her strength surged instead. The Five Elements Demon-Refining Formation of the five elders could not even trap the old woman. The five were shocked and furious. Only then did they realize that the old hag had feigned weakness in order to take them all in one net, luring Qi Yanbing in so that he could not escape. Granny Zhu teetered on her small bound feet, flickering to and fro like a ghost. The silver needles and silk threads in her basket seemed to come alive, and in an instant they had covered the Five Elders of the Lan River in wounds, and thread after thread strung the five old men together, pinning soul and body alike so that they could not move. The little old woman, her face heaped with smiles, came forward with her scissors raised: "Granny hasn't refined human skin in a long while. I wonder if my hand has gone clumsy..." She came before Qi Yanbing, and suddenly he opened his mouth and