Chapter 238 — A Mother's Love, Belated

"To comprehend the Taixuan Arithmetic Classic thoroughly, one needs a calculating formation — the Taiji, Four Images, and Eight Trigrams Diagram."

Shen Mu took out the Taixuan Arithmetic Classic and leafed through it; his primal qi transformed before him into yin and yang and the four images, then condensed into the runes of the eight trigrams, floating before his face.

Shen Mu reached out and pulled: with a ringing chime the Taiji, Four Images, and Eight Trigrams Diagram reproduced forty-nine copies, yin and yang revolving, the four images turning, the eight trigrams transforming.

"So this is what the Great Expansion reckoning in the Taixuan Arithmetic Classic really is..." Watching the figures and patterns shift, numbers arising of themselves in his mind, Shen Mu murmured.

"Do not lose your focus," snapped the face on the back of the Dutian Demon King's head.

Shen Mu hastily dispersed the trigram diagram. With the Dutian Demon King along, the journey had been fairly safe; the Demon King was, after all, sovereign of the Dutian World, his eyes and knowledge surpassing Shen Mu's by untold degrees, and though he had no power to break the zone's prohibitions, avoiding them was no difficulty for him.

What was more, the prohibitions along this way had already been broken once from the inside out, and the village headman and his companions had forced a breach as well, so the whole way passed without alarm or peril.

Unknowingly, they came to the first of the ruins. Shen Mu halted. It was a village — only four households in it; pots and bowls and stoves all remained, but no one lived there any longer.

Shen Mu saw eleven graves in the village, with no steles raised, small mounds of yellow earth; who lay buried there he did not know.

"It is quiet here," said the Dutian Demon King.

Shen Mu walked into the village and looked about; suddenly his heart quivered. In one of the houses he saw a cradle, and a little wooden horse, and on the bed a few infant's garments, very small.

Upon the breast of one garment the character 'Shen' was embroidered.

Shen Mu took out his jade pendant; on the pendant too was the character 'Shen'.

The youth closed his eyes; a long while passed before he opened them again. There were no tears in them, because they had already dried.

"Is this my home?"

He walked past the stove, looked at the pots hanging on the wall, the bowls covered on the stove; he wished to find more things, to gain more knowledge, yet found no further clues.

He came outside the door and suddenly froze, standing there in silence.

On the door leaf was pasted the character for 'joy'. There was no wind or rain here, but after more than ten years the writing had grown somewhat blurred.

The character for joy told that the master of this house had married — married here, within the forbidden zone.

And the little wooden horse in the yard must have been prepared by the master of the house for a child not yet born; those tiny garments must have been sewn for that child.

"Time to go," the Dutian Demon King urged. "With matters here finished, I should be going back; not another day do I want to linger in this cursed world of yours."

Shen Mu composed himself and followed him deeper into the forbidden zone. Two hours later they came to another ruin.

This was a small town, a hundred or so households in it, and outside the town rows upon rows of graves.

Shen Mu walked about and saw there was even a schoolhouse here; some youths must have studied here.

Once, this place must have been bustling, people coming and going; though it faced the incomparably perilous forbidden zone without, it still brimmed with the vitality of life.

Yet by the next village, only four households remained...

They went deeper. The third ruin was a stretch of town: enormous fragments of spirit treasures strewn every which way, flung everywhere. In the Jingping Kingdom such things would have made a man the richest under heaven, yet here they lay discarded on every side.

"We go on," Shen Mu said in a low voice.

"We are done for," Granny Zhu's voice came from afar, raging, "You pack of old wretches who will not die — even I am dragged down by you and about to be trapped here to perish."