Tales of Herding Gods

That messy elder closed his eyes, “If you can’t find the Sacred Child of Reincarnation, you know the consequences.”

Grand Shaman bowed and retreated out of the sacred hall with Butcher’s lower body. When he walked out of the sacred hall, crunching sounds came from inside the hall as if there was something eating Shaman King Gyatso’s body.

Grand Shaman’s eyes twitched and a sharp pain came from his waist. He had roughly attached Shaman King Gyatso’s body to his and used his magic power to connect them together. However, their flesh, as well as their bones, tendons, meridians channels, essence, qi, and blood were not connected to each other.

He would have to use secret medicine to fuse them together and turned Gyatso’s body into his own body.

Ever since he attained Butcher’s body, he had thought he could finally advance one more step in his lifetime. Never would he had expected Butcher to be still alive and come look him up. Furthermore, since Grandmaster’s corporeal body had withered, he didn’t dare to engage in a life and death struggle against Butcher, making him have no choice but to give up Butcher’s lower body.

Even though Shaman King Gyatso wasn’t weak, he still couldn’t be compared to Grand Shaman’s previous body. If he wanted to cultivate back to his previous realm, he didn’t know how long he would have to spend.

Grand Shaman bore the pain and brought Butcher’s lower body down the mountain. Qin Mu had already come up the mountain along with Butcher and Blind thus they met halfway up the mountain.

Grand Shaman placed down Butcher’s lower body and greeted, “Heaven Khan.”

Butcher looked at his lower body and then looked at Grand Shaman’s waist and shook his head, “Why bother? I still have to thank you for nurturing my corporeal body for over two hundred years and not letting it die.”

The corners of Grand Shaman’s eyes twitched twice.

Qin Mu took out that golden lower body and said, “Grand Shaman, I’ll return your body to you, there’s no point in me keeping it.”

The muscles of Grand Shaman’s face twitched as he replied hoarsely, “I have no use for it.”

“You can refine it into a treasure.”

Qin Mu asked in goodwill, “I see that your body isn’t attached properly. I’m proficient in the art of healing, if Grand Shaman can trust me, I can help you attach it properly.”

“You want to take the chance to harm me?”

Grand Shaman sneered and brought his lower body to leave.

Qin Mu shook his head and sighed, “All doctors treat patients like their children. I had planned to use his body as warm up before helping Grandpa Butcher reattach his body…”

Butcher smiled, “I trust in your medical expertise. If we could go back to find Apothecary and let him do it personally, it would be even better. However, it would take too long to return to Great Ruins.”

He suddenly shouted, “Old fellow, are you still alive?” His loud voice reverberated throughout the entire mountain.

An ancient and sharp voice came from Rolan’s Golden Palace, “Don’t worry, if Heaven Khan isn’t dead yet, how would I be dead?”

“This old ghost is actually still alive.”

Butcher laughed coldly, “I’ll make you die sooner or later! Let’s go!”

Qin Mu carried Butcher’s lower body and the three of them went down the mountain.

Blind turned back to have a look at the mountain and seemed to be deep in his thoughts, “That person inside is very strong.”

Butcher let out a sigh and smiled, “I reckon I’m not his opponent without my lower body. That’s why you have to accompany me here to deal with him. This old fellow has reincarnated seventeen times and lived through eighteen lifetimes. His lifespan has probably hit ten thousand years yet he still doesn’t die. I had fought him a few times and he’s very powerful.”

Qin Mu cried out, “Lived through eighteen lifetimes? A lifespan of ten thousand years? How is this possible?”

“How is it not possible? You should have seen gods and devils who have lived much longer than ten thousand years in Great Ruins, am I right? Actually, there are many scary things in this world. However, you are still young now and can’t come into contact with these kinds of existences.”

Butcher continued, “That old thing may not be a devil or god but he isn’t far from them. He knows a lot about the past and many secrets. If he wasn’t an enemy, I wouldn’t have stood against him.”

Blind nodded his head, “There are indeed some terrifying existences. For example my eyes…”

He shook his head and didn’t say any more.

Qin Mu’s heart trembled slightly. Blind’s eyes were dug out by someone but Blind had never told people who exactly did it. What was the secret behind this?

When they left Rolan’s Golden Palace and regrouped with Ling Yuxiu, they went to a barbarian city on the prairie. Qin Mu bought a few medicinal ingredients in the city and took out a huge cauldron from his sack, “Grandpa Butcher, I would have to boil your lower body first to remove the blood of Grand Shaman and the shaman poison within it.”

He poured a huge jar of water into the cauldron and placed the medicinal ingredients into the water one by one. When the water started boiling and gave off medicinal fragrance, he then placed Butcher’s body into the water.

Hu Ling’er was worried, “Would it be cooked?”

Blind beamed and said, “When you smell the fragrance of meat, it would be cooked.”

Butcher retorted angrily, “My body can’t even die after getting severed by a god so how would it be cooked from just a pot of boiling water?”

After boiling it for some time, Qin Mu observed the color of the medicinal water and opened up a medicine goblet to pinch out a few black and red toads that were dried up. They were all the same size of a fingernail and they got scattered into the cauldron.

The toads were already dried up but when they entered the water, they were revived and darted around in the boiling water, absorbing the shaman poison.

Not long later, the few toads died from poisoning.

Qin Mu changed another cauldron of water and followed the same steps again for nine times to refine the shaman poison out completely. He saw the blood in Butcher’s lower body regaining its red color and his blood came circulated in his blood vessels automatically as though it was alive.

Qin Mu boiled another cauldron of water and changed over a dozen medicinal ingredients to excite the activity of his flesh and blood all the way until late at night.

Ling Yuxiu and the little fox had already fallen asleep. The green bull had also gone to sleep while Blind was sitting on the floor, snoozing as he leaned on his bamboo cane. Only Qin Mu and Butcher were still guarding beside the cauldron.

Qin Mu pulled out his Junior Protector Sword and passed it to Butcher, “Grandpa Butcher, I am unable to cut your body so you would have to do it yourself. You have to cut away the flesh membrane which has grown over your upper body.”

“There’s no need to use your sword, I will use my knife.”

Butcher pulled out his Pig Slaughtering Knife and gritted his teeth as he gave a slice and sliced off the flesh membrane which had grown over his wounds. His cultivation was strong, therefore, he was able to use his vital qi immediately to seal his wounds and not let them bleed.

Qin Mu pulled out the lower body from the cauldron. The wound on the lower body was still fresh so he had no need to slice it. Qin Mu took out jade bottles and carefully smeared the dragon’s saliva on the cross-sections of the upper and lower body.

The moment he smeared the dragon’s saliva, he could see flesh sprouting out rapidly as though they were small red worms wiggling non-stop.

He didn’t connect the two sections of the body immediately and had instead refined his vital qi into threads to pick out all the tendons and nerves to reconnect them first.

The vital qi threads on his palm increased in number as they connected every flesh, every membrane, the intestines, the spines and gradually fused the body together. However, the skin at the waist had yet to grow out.

Qin Mu finally applied some dragon’s saliva on his wound and the skin also grew back naturally, closing up the wound.

He raised his spirits and carried Butcher up and placed him in the medicinal cauldron. He placed the last packet of medicinal ingredients into the cauldron and brought the water to a simmer.

In the cauldron, Butcher leaned his arms by the side and suddenly said, “Mu’er, Thanks for all the hard work.”

Qin Mu shook his head and smiled, “I had learned the art of healing from Grandpa Apothecary for so many years and all my skills are taught by Grandpa Apothecary. It can’t be considered hard.”

“I hope you won’t have a messy reputation like Apothecary did.”

The water slowly came to a boil and Butcher let out a mouthful of white mist, “That’s right. I kept seeing you take things out from that little cloth sack. Even this cauldron was taken out from the sack. There’s something weird with your sack. Let me have a look.”

Qin Mu handed over that sack and said, “I picked up this sack in Rolan’s Golden Palace. I don’t know how but there’s an area of one acre in the sack, so I have used it to store items.”

Butcher opened the sack and took a look inside before giving a weird expression, “Mu’er, it seems like you have picked up quite a lot of items from the treasury of Rolan’s Golden Palace.”

Qin Mu’s face turned slightly red.”

“You can learn from Cripple but you cannot be addicted.”

Butcher sighed, “Actually we all have our own bad habits in the village. Cripple likes to steal, Apothecary frequently poisons people and flirts everywhere. As for me, I was too arrogant in the past and raised my knives against the heavens. Blind is supercilious and frivolous, Deaf is too proud, Mute has his own way of thinking and tells no one about it. Don’t talk about Village Chief, acting like he’s a profound mystery and granny is a troublemaker. I’m scared that you learned all our bad points.”

Qin Mu said solemnly, “Don’t worry, Grandpa Butcher. Ever since I was out from the village, I have yet created trouble. Patriarch is very pleased with me!”

“In that case, that’s good. You can create trouble, but you will need to be able to settle it.”

Butcher shook the sack and smiled, “I have seen this sack before and it’s called Taotie Sack and it’s made out of taotie’s skin. There should be a pureblood taotie in Great Ruins and if our villagers take it on together, we might be able to defeat it. The skin used to make this taotie sack isn’t from a pureblood taotie but its lineage could be considered extremely high. The taotie sack I saw in the past has only ten feet in diameter and not many things can be put inside. It should have been made out of the skin of a strange beast who has the taotie’s bloodline.

“So I see.”

Qin Mu was astonished and immediately asked, “I have seen some houses that don’t look big from the outside yet have an enormous space inside, how did this happen?”

“That’s simple. By grinding the bones of strange beasts that have the taotie’s bloodline and mix it into the cement, mixing it into the paint is fine as well. In this way, the internal space would become bigger.”

Butcher said, “Taotie is a divine beast, a kind of dragon. This divine beast only eat and don’t shit therefore the space in its stomach is very wide. Its skin would be used to create taotie sack while its bones would be used to build the house. There are many ways to use it, however, there are too little pureblood ones.”

Qin Mu stayed at his side and they both chit chat until Qin Mu felt asleep without knowing.

When he woke up, he realized that the fire under the cauldron had extinguished. He was about to rekindle the fire when Butcher’s voice sounded out from the side, “Mu’er, there’s no need for that. I feel that there are no major problems with my body now.”

Qin Mu immediately looked back and saw Butcher had already dressed up. He wore a new pant which was the one Qin Mu had made earlier after buying some fabric while he was getting the medicinal ingredients.

This elder wore a loose chinese gown on his upper body and the messy beard stubbles were all cleanly shaved, making him look refresh.

Butcher looked at him up and down and nodded his head repeatedly, “You have already grown up. We helped you in the past and now you can already help us. That’s good, that’s good…”

Blind’s voice came from outside, “The one that slaughters pigs, if you continue talking, you won’t be able to leave. Your disciple has already caught up.”

Butcher walked out and said, “There’s a hand bone of a god in your taotie sack which I will be keeping for you. You can’t bring this thing around with you, that god is still alive. If you take it with you, it will just bring you disaster.”

Qin Mu was shocked, “The owner of the hand bone is still alive?”