Shen Luo did not stop, but headed straight for the east gate. He landed in front of a building on the verge of collapse, one of its pillars snapped by the wind and sand, and raised a hand to support the pillar so that the people inside could escape safely.
After rescuing them, he breathed a little easier. He was about to head to the next location when he suddenly heard a clear chime from the city gate. A blurred figure slowly walked in through the swirling yellow sand.
Shen Luo focused his gaze and saw an itinerant monk holding an alms bowl in one hand and a ringed staff in the other, dressed in tattered clothes. His skin was dark and his lips chapped, yet his expression was utterly peaceful.
He carried a battered bamboo case on his back and wore a badly worn pair of straw sandals. Walking slowly into the city, he looked up at the yellow, murky sky, his eyes filled with compassion.
"Impudent fiend! Rather than devote yourself to cultivation, you dare bring calamity upon the people?" With this thunderous shout, he raised the pitch-black alms bowl in his hand toward the sky.
An azure light shone inside the bowl, and gust after gust of whistling fresh wind poured from its mouth, sweeping furiously from the east of the city toward the west. In an instant, they swept up all the sand and dust and blew it toward the western side.
In the blink of an eye, all of Red Valley City looked as though it had been washed by a great flood. Wherever the fresh wind passed, the windblown sand receded, restoring everything to its original appearance.
As the townspeople recovered somewhat from their fright, they spotted the monk at the city gate and