Chapter 233 — Folding Paper into a Boat

Shen Mu cast his mind back over the Wasteland Atlas, worked out their bearings, and his eyes suddenly brightened. He ordered the Dragon Qilin ashore, and before long they came upon the ruins of a palace, where a number of strange beasts had already taken refuge.

Shen Mu stepped into the ruins of Sigua Palace and saw the skeletons of many colossal beasts lying every which way across the ground. These beasts were very calm, and did not stir even when he arrived.

Shen Mu looked up and took their measure. The giant beast skeletons in Sigua Palace were truly immense — several dozen times larger than the Dragon Qilin in its full form. Alive, they must have stood a thousand zhang tall, like mountain ranges on the march!

Before long, several Daoists came into the ruins as well — masters who had entered the Wasteland for training, by the look of them. Seeing Shen Mu, they showed surprise, but every one of them kept silent and lit his own fire to cook.

Shen Mu cooked some food too, ate his supper, and lay down to sleep beside the Dragon Qilin.

The Daoists exchanged glances, said nothing, and wrote on the ground. They were still writing when the earth suddenly shook, and from outside came wave after wave of howling; then out of the darkness came a stream of obscure and unintelligible sounds, as though demon gods were whispering among themselves.

Shen Mu sat up. In the ruins, one giant beast skeleton after another suddenly blazed with divine light; the ground shook more violently still, and then those skeletons slowly lifted their legs from the earth and walked out of the ruins, each one as though it had come to life.

From beyond the ruins came earth-shaking roars, and now and then divine light tore through the darkness. Through that light one could see that the dry bones of those giant beasts had grown flesh and blood, and become several beast gods, doing battle with monsters in the dark.

The Daoists were shaken with doubt and dread, and even the Dutian Demon King was given a fright.

Shen Mu, however, was not one to be startled by the strange. He lay back down and said softly, "Dutian, stop looking. I have seen stranger things than this."

The Dutian Demon King whispered, "Those Daoists are a little odd."

Shen Mu said carelessly, "I know. One of them, the woman Daoist, is Long Jiaonan."

After a moment his snoring sounded, and the Dutian Demon King had no choice but to hold himself still.

The fighting outside the ruins went on all night. At dawn the next day the earth shook again, and several divine beasts that held up heaven and earth came walking in out of the darkness. They crouched down inside the ruins, their flesh and blood vanished, and they became dry bones once more, half buried in the earth, as they had been before.

The darkness ebbed away like the tide. Sunlight poured down, and the other beasts in the ruins swarmed out and scattered in every direction.

Shen Mu lit a fire and cooked again, and those Daoists lit fires as well; not one word was spoken among them, and each ate his own breakfast.

The Dragon Qilin, whose hiding place for the washbasin from Yincan Village was known to no one, now carried it out again and set it down before Shen Mu, waiting to be fed.

Shen Mu poured in half a dou of Scarlet Fire Spirit Pills, then took another washbasin and poured in half a basin of Jade Dragon Lake water.

Fed and watered, the Dragon Qilin went on its way. The Daoists exchanged glances, put out their fires, and rose to follow behind Shen Mu.

Shen Mu halted and glanced back, smiling. "Is there some matter, brothers?"

One of the Daoists barked, "Is the Wasteland so big it belongs to your family? We walk our road, you walk yours — we are not in your way!"

Shen Mu smiled faintly and walked on.

They set out early that day, and at last, before sunset, they came to the end of the Yong River. Shen Mu saw a broken-down, ramshackle village beside the water, and his eyes lit up; he sent the Dragon Qilin over to it.

The Daoists followed him in. The village was utterly ruined, cobwebs hanging everywhere, and even the stone statues in the village were battered and broken.

Strangely, every other ruin had beasts that came in to shelter from the darkness, yet in this village there was not a single demon beast.

The Daoists were full of doubt and alarm. Long Jiaonan, who now wore the shape of a handsome young woman Daoist, whispered, "There is something strange about this place..."

Even as she spoke, darkness descended, and the air turned suddenly and bitterly cold. A lone boat came drifting slowly in from another world, a lantern hung at its prow, and beneath the lantern sat an old man, tying paper figures, paper horses, and paper boats.

The old man came into the village, stepped straight ashore, and everyone shuddered several times over, feeling as though their very souls might freeze stiff.

The old man set down a paper boat. The paper boat floated up, and one of the Daoists suddenly discovered that at some unknowable moment he had come to be sitting inside that paper boat, drifting away into the darkness.

Astonished, he looked around in alarm, and saw that another version of himself was still sitting in the village.

That was his husk.

"Brother Daoist."

Shen Mu brought forth the Zhenxing Dihou True Art, took on the form of a man's head upon a serpent's body, and behind him rose the Gate of Receiving Heaven. He saluted the old man, spoke a sentence in the Youdu tongue, took out the portraits of the headman, the pill master, and the rest, and asked, "May I make so bold as to ask, brother Daoist, whether you have seen these people?"

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