Chapter 40 — The Wind's Edge First Shows, Piercing the Vast Sky
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 2 of 3
The market at Granny Zhu's Temple would not end for another two days. By evening, many people began packing up their goods and moving into the temple. This temple was vast, guarded by stone statues, and altogether extraordinary. Hidden here, the Gloom could not invade — it was a place of safety.
Shen Mu drove the ox cart into Granny Zhu's Temple and looked up. The setting sun hung on the mountain ridge, shining over this Canglang Palace.
Only after entering the temple did he understand why the Canglang Palace on the map was called Granny Zhu's Temple — for the main hall enshrined a kindly-faced old woman.
The old woman had benevolent features and kindly eyes, like a little old granny from a neighboring village, yet there was a sly glint in her eyes. She was carved with great spirit, lifelike and vivid.
Shen Mu actually thought she resembled Granny Zhu, and looked twice. But when he used the Lingxiao Heavenly Eye to observe her, he got a great fright.
This kindly old woman was suffused with a towering, sky-flooding aura. Her divine light formed an incomparably tall, incomparably colossal giant wolf, head raised to the heavens in a roar, as if it meant to devour the very sky!
Besides the main hall, there was a front hall and two side halls, and beyond these a vast garden and a pond. But the garden held no flowers or grass now, and the pond had run dry. Beneath the pond lay several skeletons.
Shen Mu went closer for a look. They should be fish bones, but very large — some six or seven zhang long. Strangely, these fish bones had skulls shaped like dragons' heads!
The alchemist called him back and brought wound medicine to dress his injuries. Meanwhile the blind elder and the mute were frying eggs. The pheasant dragon had laid an egg the size of a coconut and was clucking, "cluck-cluck-cluck."
In Granny Zhu's Temple, the other villagers also began lighting fires and cooking. The sun was sinking in the west; after supper, it would be time to sleep.
Just then, a young man came running in from outside the temple, his face full of anxiety. He cried out loudly, "A midwife! Is there a midwife here? My wife is about to give birth!"
Everyone in the temple rose and looked at him, but no one spoke.
Granny Zhu stood, trembling, and said, "This old body has delivered babies before. My hands are practiced. Can your wife wait a while? It is nearly dark. If she can hold until tomorrow, I can make the trip..."
The young man threw himself to his knees with a thud, knocking his head again and again, and cried, "She cannot wait! I beg the midwife to lend her skilled hands and save her! The child is stuck in birth, and the village midwife cannot deliver it!"
Granny Zhu glanced at the setting sun and showed a look of difficulty.
"Help! Help!"
The young man knocked his forehead until it bled and wept, "My wife has carried several children these past years, and all of them were lost at the moment of birth — born dead! If this one is lost too, my family line will end!"
Granny Zhu was startled. "All lost in childbirth?"
The young man nodded again and again. Granny Zhu said, suspicious, "If she can conceive and come to term, it is impossible that the child should die at birth. There must be something strange in this. Is your village far from here?"
"Not far! Less than twenty li from Granny Zhu's Temple!"
Granny Zhu glanced at the setting sun, let out a breath, and said, "Less than twenty li? You are from Zhang Family Stockade. Zhang Family Stockade is not far; we can make it before dark. Blind elder, Mu'er, come with me. There is something fishy in this."
Shen Mu was astonished. Granny Zhu was usually odd-tempered; he had not expected her to be such a warmhearted person.