Tales of Herding Gods

Translator: Ninetales Editor: Fish_Creek

It was quite difficult to walk around with pools of water and swords everywhere in the village. The corpses lying around also gave off an eerie and strange feeling.

Village Chief took a look at the situation and frowned, “Cripple, go clear the bodies and place them in the coffins. Don’t let their bodies rot in the wild and send them down the river. Also, burn the paper boats, cranes, and offerings for them.”

Cripple went forward while limping and took a glance at Blind while chuckling, “Frivolous geezer reciting his poetry yet it was a load of crap.”

Blind flew into a fury as his mustache flew upwards from his breath, “You can’t even if you want to recite. You don’t even know how to read!”

Granny Si immediately reminded Cripple, “Cripple, remember to keep the good stuff when packing their bodies. Don’t put them into the coffins as well. We still need to have something valuable so we can sell them to buy ingredients and seasonings!”

“Alrighty!”

In Great Ruins, the most valuable items were not jewelry but seasonings and fabrics instead. These items couldn’t be found in Great Ruins and could only be delivered to Border Dragon City from the outside world. After that, the residents of Great Ruins would then use treasures and beast skins to trade for them. That was why one could say salt was even valuable than gold.

Every time Granny Si had to pull a cart of treasures and a few livestock to Border Dragon City just to exchange them for a few seasonings.

Apothecary came forward and applied medicine on Qin Mu’s hands before binding up his wound. He shook his head and said, “Your vital qi isn’t strong enough to catch swords with your bare hands. Don’t try to show off next time.”

Qin Mu felt a cooling sensation on his palm and couldn’t feel the pain anymore, “My sword control techniques still aren’t there yet. I still can’t be as nimble as that person from Li Jiang Sect. I feel that there’s this power in my body which I can’t unleash.” 𝒇𝒓eewe𝒃𝑛𝒐𝘃𝒆𝚕.co𝘮

“That’s very normal. Butcher’s sword control technique is too lousy, thus he’s not suitable to teach you.”

Apothecary grinned, “There’s someone who knows profound sword control techniques but it’s a pity he doesn’t want to teach you.”

Village Chief’s face turned slightly blacker and said stiffly, “Apothecary, there’s too much water here. Send me back inside!”

Apothecary smiled, “In that case, Village Chief would have to wait a moment as I’m still bandaging Qin Mu’s hands.”

After his wounds were bandaged, Qin Mu saw Mute the Blacksmith picking up a sword on the ground and gave it a gentle shake. In that instant, thousands of swords came flying over automatically and collided with the sword in Mute’s hand. The other swords all vanished as they fused into a sword, making Qin Mu marvel at it.

Qin Mu also went forward and picked up a sword to shake it but nothing happened.

Mute gave a wide grin and made a few sounds. He then rubbed the sword in his hands and the sword actually became smaller the more he rubbed it. In a blink of an eye, the sword had become a tiny silver pellet with the size of a thumb.

Qin Mu looked at the sword in his hand and felt like rubbing it as well to see if it would become a tiny silver pellet. Apothecary seeing this, immediately warned, “Don’t rub it. I have just bandaged your wounds! Stop teasing him Mute, otherwise, I will poison you to death!”

Mute couldn’t stop laughing and grabbed the flying sword from Qin Mu’s hands before stuffing the silver pellet into his hands.

Snap.

Qin Mu heard a snap from his shoulders as he sprawled to the ground from the weight of the silver pellet. Mute jumped in shock and slapped himself on the forehead. He had forgotten that thousands of swords were fused inside this silver pellet. How heavy would the pellet be when it was the combined weight of thousands of swords?

With Qin Mu being caught unaware, the weight naturally dislocated his shoulders, causing him to sprawl to the ground.

Just as Mute was about to set Qin Mu’s shoulders back, Granny Si suddenly came over and kicked him out of the village to God-knows-where. Yells came from the sky outside the village and went further and further.

With a black face, Granny Si set Qin Mu’s shoulder back in place and grumbled angrily, “Those that can’t talk are always the most mischievous. They are always full of mischievous tricks! Mu’er, these swords are the mother and children swords. Among thousands of swords, there is a mother sword while the rest are children swords. As long as you find the mother sword, you can recall back all the children swords. However, Li River Sect’s sword pellet is extremely heavy so that it is impossible for you to lift it now.”

She picked up a sword and gave it a gentle shake like Mute. Instantly, thousands of swords came flying over and fused into the mother sword.

Granny Si smiled and continued, “To change the sword back into a sword pellet, you don’t need to rub it. Mute was only teasing you. You only have to make your vital qi compatible with the mother sword and it would shrink back into a sword pellet. Similarly, you can use this method to release the children swords in the mother sword.”

Qin Mu sized up the sword pellet in her palm and blinked his eyes in bewilderment, “Granny, it seems that you have many such silver pellets in your room!”

“Is there?” Granny blinked while squinting puzzledly.

“There is!”

Qin Mu recalled seeing such silver pellets in Granny Si’s room and there were quite a number of them. Some of them were strewn under the bed while some were hidden in unworn shoes as well as the corners of the room.

When he was young, he even used the silver pellets as marbles and flicked them around.

He even saw Granny Si using these silver pellets as chicken feed to raise the old hens!

He felt pretty scary thinking about it now. It would definitely be a gruesome sight if the silver pellets were to burst into thousands of swords inside the old hen’s stomach.

Luckily such an incident didn’t happen.

Granny Si’s gaze flickered, “If you were able to pick them when you were young, then they are naturally normal silver pellets and not sword pellets.”

Qin Mu didn’t quite believe her and continued, “I had also seen a huge chest in Grandpa Mute’s workshop. Inside the chest was filled to the brim with such silver pellets.”

Granny Si blinked her eye even more innocently than Qin Mu and grinned, “Do you think Mute is so rich?”

Qin Mu was at a loss from her words. Mute really didn’t look like a wealthy person. He was clearly someone who only knew how to do blacksmithing to make ends meets.

Granny smiled, “Don’t think too much. We are all normal people in the village. We are all so poor that we are struggling to make ends meet. In addition, we are all disabled elderly, thus everything is normal in our ordinary village. If you suspect that Mute’s chest is full of sword pellets, you might as well suspect that the water cauldron at that corner is also a treasure!”

Qin Mu looked at the water cauldron that she talked about. The cauldron was placed under the roof of the workshop to collect the rainwater, however, the weird thing was that Qin Mu had never seen the water cauldron being filled to the brim before. No matter how big the rain was, the water cauldron was always half full!

Furthermore, the water in the cauldron had never run out as well much less being completely empty. Mute used buckets and buckets of water during blacksmithing and yet the water in the cauldron remained the same!

Granny Si saw the doubt in his eyes and felt that her example was wrong, and immediately corrected herself, “You wouldn’t think that the broken pots outside Apothecary’s door are also treasures right?”

Qin Mu looked at the broken pots outside Apothecary’s door. Unknown herbs were planted in the broken pots, along with some little insects like spiders, silkworms, and centipedes.

When the village was flooded just now, some water had gotten into the pots causing a few bugs to crawl out and started fighting on the pot. Suddenly a black spider flew into a fury and its body lit up on flames. The spider then grew into a size of a table and started spewing fire at the other little bugs. Amidst the flames, a few golden silkworms grew wings and became a foot long. They then flew out of the flames and started biting the spider’s body.

Apothecary stuck out his head and chided, causing the bugs to immediately shrink back to their tiny bodies and stay well behaved in the pot.

Qin Mu suspicion grew as Granny Si gave a force smiled and mumbled, “These are all normal occurrences, and nothing unordinary about it…”

Qin Mu tried to probe further, “Granny, could the people outside also fly like Grandpa Blind?”

Granny Si nodded her head, “The people outside all can fly.”

Qin Mu asked, “Are the people outside all Spirit Bodies like the people in our village?”

“They are all Spirit Bodies!”

“Are the people outside as powerful as the people in our village?”

“Very powerful! Otherwise, granny and the rest wouldn’t have been forced to hide in Great Ruins! Don’t always think of running outside and take care not to lose your life! The people outside are much fiercer than Blind!”

…

Qin Mu was skeptical about granny’s words. If the people outside Great Ruins were as powerful as Granny Si said, wasn’t there nothing they couldn’t do?

Beside the river, Cripple cleaned up the bodies and prepared them for the coffins. Hammering the wooden wedges to secure the coffin lids, he pushed the coffins into the river, letting the river bring them downstream.

With the rapid currents and the submerged reef downstream, These coffins would have a hard time flowing into the river. In the middle of their journey, the coffins would probably have shattered, turning the corpses into fish feed.

“Li River Sect may be erased from the southern border.”

Cripple looked at the coffins floating further away and faintly said, “The sect leader is dead, and the experts in the sects are also dead. It’s hard for this sect to continue surviving.”

“What I’m thinking about now isn’t this matter.”

Old Ma shook his head as he looked into the distance, “I’m thinking about the number one man below gods. Since Mu Beifeng is the head governor of Five Sprouts Prefecture in the southern border and was recruited by the Eternal Peace Imperial Preceptor personally, would it alarm him since both he and the Li River’s Five Elders are dead?”

Cripple shook his head and affirmed his guess, “He will definitely be alarmed! But he will not dare to enter Great Ruins!”

Old Ma gave him a look, “Don’t forget, an Eternal Peace Imperial Preceptor may be unable to do anything about Great Ruins but he has the entire Eternal Peace Empire behind him! Eternal Peace Empire is a sect disguised as an empire! How could such a colossus not have their eyes on Great Ruins? This is the place where countless of treasures rest!”