Tales of Herding Gods

After the long journey during the day, it was night time again, but this time, Qin Mu didn’t find a ruin to rest on the way. Instead, he had the chest carry the dragon qilin throughout the night while he walked in the darkness after it.

He saw many strange things during the night. With the appearance of the darkness, numerous cities and countless lifeforms suddenly appeared. There were large scale battles, which was something he hadn’t seen when he followed Village Chief into the darkness of Great Ruins.

Every time he got close to the light of the chest, he wouldn’t be able to see what was truly happening in the darkness. The divine light of the chest brought him back to his original world.

What was strange was that he couldn’t feel the world barrier.

This was something that was impossible.

Any two worlds would have world barriers so traveling through them would cause people to suffer from the squeezing of the two different worlds. The stronger the traveler’s strength was, the stronger the squeeze would be.

Yet there was no barrier between the dark realm and reality, which was weird.

Qin Mu walked into the light of the chest and went into a daze when he sat down on it. In a bit, his eyes lit up, and he smiled. ‘I know an expert in this field, so wouldn’t it be a good idea to call him out?’

Full of excitement, he had the chest stop. He jumped off and took out a white bone sacrificial altar from his taotie sack. On the altar, he placed a four-headed and eight-armed devil god statue.

Qin Mu took out a cinnabar brush and drew all kinds of runes on the devil god statue. He then used his vital qi to activate the runes to cast a spell, executing Ghost Transferring God Dispatching Runes Command.

After a moment, his spell was finished, but the devil god statue didn’t move at all.

It made Qin Mu suspicious. He executed the spell once more, but the devil god statue still had no reaction.

“Big Brother Dutian, little brother is summoning you in fear and trepidation, offering up meat and delicacies. May big brother grace me with your presence,” Qin Mu prayed. “If Big Brother Dutian doesn’t come, brother will pray a hundred times a day until big brother descends. Brother…”

“Shut up! Who is your big brother?”

The devil god statue suddenly opened its eyes on one face, its eyeballs rotating rapidly. Only when Dutian discovered that he hadn’t been schemed against did he send a strand of his consciousness down. The other three faces instantly woke up, and he opened his mouth to speak.

“I didn’t become sworn brothers with you, so don’t speak of us being kin. We aren’t familiar! If you prayed a hundred times a day to me, I’d be annoyed to death by you! Cult Master Qin, what have you summon me for?”

Qin Mu let out a sigh of relief and said with a smile, “I have a thing that I don’t understand.” He explained what he’d seen in the darkness and asked, “Why when two worlds overlap there’s no world barrier or rejection when passing through them?”

The wooden devil god statue stood up from the sacrificial altar and plucked a white bone to eat it as if it was sugarcane. “I thought you summoned me with some scheme in mind, but it’s just this kind of small matter.”

Qin Mu did the disciple rites and asked, “May Big Brother Dutian enlighten me?”

Dutian Devil King felt his blood run cold and immediately said, “Don’t be so polite! When you are so polite, I can’t help suspecting that you’re going to create trouble for me! What you say actually involves the energy of the world which is always fixed. The birth, cultivation, and death of a person won’t change the structure of the world’s energy. It is the most basic law!”

Qin Mu thought about it before saying, “The birth, cultivation, and death of a person won’t change the energy structure even if they became god or devil, turning into an undying being?”

“Even if one becomes a god or devil, it won’t change the fixed energy in this world. It won’t make the energy of this world become more and it won’t reduce it,” Dutian Devil King said. “The energy of a world is constant and the changes to it are limited. When a person travels to another world from this world, the world will lose the energy of a person while the other world will gain the energy of a person. This results in encountering two times of one’s own energy affecting one’s body, so traveling into another world is very hard and requires blood sacrifice.”

Qin Mu found everything suddenly made sense. “The principle of blood sacrifice is to sacrifice the lifeforms in this world to the other world, becoming the energy of the other world!”

Dutian Devil King nodded. “Meanwhile, the gods and devils who were offered the sacrifice would be the other offering, descending into the new world from their own, replacing the energy lost in the sacrifice and so preserving the balance of the energy between the two worlds. For example, this sacrificial altar of yours. The energy in the bones have been sacrificed by you and went to my Dutian World. As an exchange, I descended into this treacherous world of yours.”

Qin Mu’s eyes lit up and he said, “I see. Now, what did you mean by being able to change the limit of the energy?”

“Blood sacrifice builds a bridge that passes through both worlds. I can steal a portion of energy and import it through the bridge which won’t abide by the balance of energy.” Dutian Devil King smile. “Last time you summoned me, the sacrificial energy was insubstantial, so I had to mobilize a huge amount of energy to descend into this world. That was equivalent to forcefully squeezing myself through. However, the energy to squeeze myself in required me to withstand the pressure from the two worlds, so the energy I could squeeze in was still limited. It soon surpassed my limits. Power that is smuggled over is dependant on the offerer’s abilities.”

Enlightened, Qin Mu frowned. “However, in the darkness of Great Ruins, the world barrier doesn’t exist when the two worlds overlap. How do you explain this?”

Dutian Devil King chuckled. ” What if the energy that’s being squeezed in surpasses the limit that this world can withstand?”

Qin Mu’s heart trembled violently. “What you mean is…”

“A large scale blood sacrifice which constructed hundreds of thousands of bridges for hundreds of thousand gods and devils to smuggle and pour their energy into that world!” Dutian Devil King gave a sinister smile. “It would burst apart the barrier of that world! Once the world barrier is gone, there will be no barrier anymore, and other worlds can launch a massacre without any obstruction anymore!”

Qin Mu’s blood ran cold, and he shuddered a few times. Disbelief colored his face, and he cried out, “What you mean is that world in the darkness of Great Ruins is a world whose barrier had been burst apart?”

“It might not be that world in the darkness that had its barrier burst open,” Dutian Devil King said while beaming at him. “Don’t you think your world could be the world without the world barrier?”

Qin Mu shook his head. “If this world was the one without it, you could have long descended. That world I saw in the darkness had a lot of space holes opened up by countless devil gods who led their people to attack. It’s clearly a world that had its world barrier burst apart.”

Dutian Devil King sat down on the chest and yawned. Swinging his legs, he said, “Your description of the world in the darkness overlapping with this treacherous world reminds me of a terrifying possibility—world sacrifice!”

Incomparably sinister smiles appeared on the four faces, and the statue almost jumped up in excitement. “World sacrifice is the sacrifice of an entire world. With this terrifying energy that crashes against another world, a million gods and devils can descend together and destroy that world! This is the grandest of plans!”

“There are going to destroy that world?” Qin Mu asked in bewilderment.

The wooden devil god statue creaked as the heads turned. All four pairs of eyes landed on the youth.

Qin Mu’s hair stood up on ends, and he cried out, “You are saying that after the hundreds of thousands of devil gods that burst apart the world barrier of that world in the darkness plan to sacrifice that world to descend here?”

Dutian Devil King’s heads rotated around their necks a few times as he clapped his hands in praise. “Smart! When Great Ruins overlaps with that world, they will sacrifice that world. The resulting energy would be so enormous that it will allow the world filled with devils to descend onto Great Ruins! When that time comes, the terrifying sight of two worlds colliding will be seen, and billions of lifeforms will perish. I’m excited just thinking about it!”

Qin Mu had a blank expression. He suddenly shook his head and said, “Impossible, that’s impossible! The darkness has existed for twenty thousand years. Doesn’t it mean that the fight in that world has already lasted for some twenty thousand years? How could a war last so long? Impossible!”

Dutian Devil King jumped down from the chest and said, “If I were you, I would have long emigrated to another world. A wise man foresees and mitigates risks. When the nest is overturned, there will be no eggs left unbroken. This world is too dangerous, so I’m going back now! Also, don’t annoy me frequently. I’m scared of you!”

Before jumping into the darkness so his soul could return to Dutian World, he shouted out, “When the world in the darkness is destroyed, it will be the day when your world will collide with the devil gods’ world, and that will be your doomsday as well!”

He then rushed into the darkness and was instantly invaded. Qin Mu hurriedly sprinted after him, but only saw the wooden statue shattering into pieces.

He frowned and returned back to the side of the chest. The energy in the white bone altar was also exhausted, so they shattered.

‘Can the words of Dutian Devil King be trusted? That guy doesn’t look trustworthy, and now he describes something that’s so terrifying…’

Qin Mu composed himself. The words of Dutian Devil King were simply too terrifying, so how much could he trust them?

However, when he thought about it, Dutian Devil King’s nature was to take joy in calamity and delight in disaster. He wished for the whole world to be in chaos, so there was no need for him to scare him.

‘Eternal Peace is too weak.’ Qin Mu let out a shaky breath and thought to himself. ‘However, the world in the darkness has already been fighting the devil race for twenty thousand years and has lasted until now. They wouldn’t just be defeated now and get sacrificed by the other party, right? That’s why Eternal Peace still has a lot of time before it’ll have to face the devil world, so there’s no need to worry too much… Hehehe, I had almost wet my pants from Dutian scaring me. Groundless fear, this must be just groundless fear!’

After a few days, Qin Mu finally walked out of Great Ruins and returned back to Eternal Peace. He immediately took a fast ship from Secret Waters Pass to head toward the capital. He wrote a memorial to the emperor and offered up the Black Tortoise Bead that Xiong Xiyu had given him as a tribute. He also talked about the matter regarding paving roads.

Emperor Yanfeng gathered all the civil and military officials to discuss, and Eternal Peace Imperial Preceptor was also among them. Many of the officials were against paving the roads, but Eternal Peace Imperial Preceptor argued with them, standing his ground against the opinions of the masses. Only when Emperor Yanfeng said he was going to execute those who were against the idea with a smile that the matter regarding paving the roads was settled.

Emperor Yanfeng then handed this matter over to the Ministry of Works and let Eternal Peace Imperial Preceptor manage it. Qin Mu found him later and said, “The divine arts of West Earth are very suitable for our cult. Heavenly King can bright a few of our elders and hall masters to recruit some talents.”

Eternal Peace Imperial Preceptor was puzzled. “Cult Master Qin, isn’t this inappropriate for me to handle?

“You are one of the four great heavenly kings of our sacred cult, so of course you will be the one in charge.”

Veins popped out on Eternal Peace Imperial Preceptor’s forehead as he said stiffly, “What about Cult Master?”

Qin Mu smiled and said, “I’m going to find friends and relatives to do business and earn more money.”