Chapter 86 — King's Village
The Sword Questions the Heavens · Page 5 of 7
And to the west of the vast land of Shenzhou lie two great regions of peril. To the northwest stretches a desolate, empty gobi without end, called by the world "the Savage Wastes," where no rain falls for a hundred years and the climate is utterly dry. Here and there a few oases remain, but most are held by fierce beasts and monstrous things, so that for ordinary folk to enter at all is a road to certain death. And in the rumors, deep within the Savage Wastes stands a vast and magnificent holy hall—the auspicious ground of the Demonic Cult.
As for the southwest, there lies the great Death Swamp, whose very name turns the faces of the world pale. Its climate is the very opposite of the Savage Wastes of the northwest: of every ten days in the year, seven or eight bring rain, and strange plants of every kind grow thick as the hairs of an ox. Such cold, damp places have always been the abode of the world's most venomous beasts and insects, and the uniquely deadly marsh gas of this place rises steaming from the rotting mud of the swamp on every rainy day; should a man breathe it in, without the proper antidote he will die of poison at the heart within half an hour. Beyond that, the carcasses of beasts and the trees and grasses rotted by rainwater over a thousand years have turned this place into a region of lurking danger at every step: one careless misstep and a man is sucked down into the bottomless swamp, never to see the light of day again, dying a miserable death.
Such a perilous place would naturally draw no visitors in ordinary times. But not long ago rumors suddenly spread through the world that within the western Death Swamp a vast golden pillar of light had arisen, piercing straight to the heavens and lasting a full day and night without cease, so that even in the dead of night it lit that stretch of sky bright as day. Only after three days did the golden light gradually fade, and from that time on there seemed always to come from within the Death Swamp a strange, vast keening, faint and distant, filling the people who lived at its edges with dread.
Once this news spread it caused a sensation throughout the world. In the eyes of those who cultivate the Dao, spirit creatures and divine artifacts have always possessed a spiritual nature of their own, and such a vast golden light was naturally the harbinger of some rare and wondrous treasure about to emerge, summoning those fated to it. And judging by that golden pillar, the marvel of this treasure must be no small thing; in an instant the world was shaken, and masters of both the righteous and the evil paths gathered from all quarters.
Yet beneath that surface turmoil ran hidden currents, surging unseen.
Half a day's journey east of the Death Swamp lay a desolate, decayed little village called "Dawang Village," named because its villagers worshipped a mysterious deity called the "Great King." Only this deity had always been most unreliable, neither blessing the villagers with promotion and wealth nor granting them abundant harvests and freedom from want.
In truth, when you think about it, living at the edge of such a Death Swamp, where every so often some monstrous beast would come bursting out of nowhere, or some venomous insect come running forth—killing livestock was the least of it; every year no small number of people died in such ways. Those with any ability had long since left this cursed place for the Central Land, and those who remained were mostly folk with no spirit left in them.
Yet in these last few days Dawang Village had suddenly grown lively, with cultivators of the Dao coming and going. Though Dawang Village was not the only entrance into the Death Swamp, it was the nearest inhabited place to it; before entering the swamp most people came here to buy dry rations and clean water, and within a few days the villagers had actually made a bit of money and gained a little vitality.