Chapter 1098: The Promise of Thunder

Because of their trust, Pan Yun generously held a ritual for them: first, to deliver the souls who had died in this incident; second, to pray for blessings upon the grassland, hoping that this year would bring favorable weather and lush, abundant pastures.

All the Buddhist disciples who came stayed to take part in the ritual.

The short-sighted herders were seeing, for the first time, followers of two faiths getting along so harmoniously: the Daoist priests played wind and string instruments and sang, forming their own circle; the monks and nuns chanted sutras and struck wooden fish, forming their own circle as well.

The circles even overlapped with one another—you walk the Northern Dipper Mysterious Pivot Gang step, and I step aside to yield; the Daoist and Buddhist robes swept through the air, and if they so much as brushed against each other, the ones who touched would lose!

The herders watched, dumbstruck, and grew ever more devout.

One man knelt, and countless others knelt behind him, prostrating themselves fully, listening as Buddhist and Daoist scriptures collided in their ears; they felt purified from soul to body.

The Eternal Sky must have forgiven their recklessness.

Sure enough, three days later when the ritual ended, Pan Yun, as National Preceptor, took the stage to close it out, her sword in hand finally pointing to the heavens with a stern flourish, drawing rolling thunder.

With a sudden crack of thunder, half the grassland trembled, yet the herders were wild with excitement, tears streaming down their faces: "Spring thunder! It's spring thunder!"

"Spring has finally arrived!"

The herders knelt and lay flat on the ground, only daring to lift their heads to gaze up at Pan Yun on the high platform; they saw her standing beneath rolling thunder with a treasured sword in hand, the wind fierce, banners snapping, her Daoist robe billowing, the whole of her seeming as though she might ride the wind away.

Not only the ordinary herders—even those captured nobles who had not yet been dealt with: their eyes went from numbness to shock, then to fanaticism, and when their gaze finally settled, there was only heartfelt submission in their eyes.

No one knew how panicked Pan Yun was at that moment.

This thunder…

She had calculated that the spring thunder would come, the temperature would rise, and spring rain would fall, but she had not expected the thunder to be this fierce.

She was now standing high with a treasured sword in hand, and—courting death—holding it raised high; she was practically a living target for the lightning.

At her level of cultivation, a single strike wouldn't kill her, but it would be an utterly undignified sight before so many eyes.

Pan Yun quickly finished her lines, her face solemn, and told everyone present that the great calamity of the grassland had passed, and that for the coming year the grassland would enjoy favorable weather.

She also told them that there were two reasons the grassland had suffered the blizzard.

The first was that the way of heaven maintains balance; the seasons, like the moon, have their waxing and waning.

"Favorable weather is like the full moon—the full moon is not constant, but the waning is, so the seasons always have their shortcomings. In a single month, the full moon lasts only two or three days, while the new moon lasts only one. We were simply unlucky, running into a great calamity from last year into this year, but we are also extremely fortunate: from this year onward, for three years, the grassland can be called blessed with gentle winds and rain!"

It was not because they had submitted to the Central Plains, and the Eternal Sky was punishing them!

Everyone present instantly believed Pan Yun; casting sidelong glances at those eminent Daoists, eminent monks, and eminent nuns, they saw them showing approval and nodding slightly, and were even more convinced.

"That is the first—what is the second?" One captive noble's son straightened his upper body, his gaze fixed intently on Pan Yun.

Pan Yun tilted her head slightly to look up at the heavy dark clouds, watching the lightning within the layers; her voice was low, yet it reached every ear with perfect clarity: "The second is a man-made disaster. The Eternal Sky is not the sole possession of humanity. Heaven and earth are unfeeling, treating all things as straw dogs. In the eyes of the Eternal Sky, we are no different from the grass, the trees, the wolves, the rabbits upon this grassland—there is no high or low, no noble or mean."

"Therefore, killing beyond what is needed for survival brings calamity; the heavens see it all, and when enough accumulates, divine punishment is sent down."

The noble's son murmured: "Could it be because in the previous years, going south, we killed too many people?"

The herders, meanwhile, muttered among themselves: "Could it be because our cattle and sheep gnawed the Great Bend pasture to ruin?"

Still others said: "Is it because last winter we killed too many wolves, and the Eternal Sky grew angry?"