Chapter 247 — The Twenty Heavens

Shen Mu, Lord Huo, and the rest quickened their pace, but Lord Huo had to hold Granny Zhu's mind and spirit in check, and he found it ever more taxing; in the end their speed gradually slackened. Cult Master Li grew at a furious rate, and Granny Zhu's cultivation waxed stronger and stronger, yet Lord Huo dared not strike with his full strength, fearing he might harm Granny Zhu's very soul — and so the journey was sown with no end of uncertain turns.

Granny Zhu woke less and less often, while Cult Master Li surfaced more and more; Shen Mu burned with anxiety, yet there was nothing he could do. This basin had once been ocean — the Eastern Sea, most likely, of which the Heavenly King's statue had spoken.

The terrain was unimaginably complex: chasms and natural moats plunging nearly ten thousand zhang, sheer ridges and towering peaks keen as the edges of blades. The Eastern Sea of old had become dry land; the seawater was gone, not a drop of it remaining.

Yet Shen Mu found something strange in this. The villagers here said that at night the sea floated in the sky and its waters spread everywhere, while by day no trace of it could be seen.

So where, in the end, had the seawater gone? The deeper they went, the stranger and mightier the creatures grew. Luminous jellyfish drifted to and fro through the sky, and when night fell they hid themselves in the shrines, like so many great lanterns of every hue.

They even came upon living flood dragons — some dwelling in deep ravines, some in volcanoes, each ruling its own domain.

So long as they were not provoked, the flood dragons seldom came out. A few times Shen Mu saw one fly from its lair to seize people from the villages and devour them; meeting the travelers on the road, the dragons, sensing their strength, did not dare make trouble, and simply flew past them. Once out of this basin, they would be only two days' journey from Mount Sumeru.

These past days Shen Mu and the others dared not even relax in sleep, ready at every moment to wake and subdue Cult Master Li — truly a bitter hardship.

Only the dragon qilin slept its fill and ate well, its hide and scales glossy and bright. So Shen Mu and the rest simply leaped onto the dragon qilin's back and let the vast beast carry them racing toward Mount Sumeru. Gradually the villages along the way held more and more worshippers of the Buddha; every household enshrined a Buddha image, and some even set the Buddha images alongside the village's stone statues, honoring gods and Buddhas together.

Shen Mu made inquiries, and only then learned that certain monks had come to preach the sutras and heal the villagers, and so had won their hearts.

"The Buddhist order has its eye on the Wasteland too. " The blind elder laughed. "Great Tingming Temple tends the forsaken folk of the Wasteland — there is something in it of the equality of all living beings.

Only it smacks of cleverness, of borrowing the stone statues' renown to accumulate merit.

" The nearer they came to Great Tingming Temple, the more Buddhist temples there were. Some drew a thriving incense-offering, enshrining Buddha images of every form; yet when night came, the folk of the Wasteland and the strange beasts did not hide in these temples, but still took refuge where there were stone statues and god statues.

Shen Mu thought, "The Tathagata means well, but still he cannot contend with the gods of the Wasteland.

He can cure illness, but he cannot save lives.

" Peaks grew more numerous nearby, great and small temples standing thick as a forest. Shen Mu and the others passed several, and as night was falling they decided to lodge at one of them.

The temple's incense burned thick; it held several hundred monks, who showed no fear at all when night came and went on chanting the Buddha's name and reciting sutras. "Can these monks truly possess great divine powers, to hold off the darkness of the Wasteland? " Shen Mu wondered in astonishment.

But then many of the Buddha images gave off a faint divine radiance in the dark, keeping the darkness outside. Shen Mu drew close to one and studied it, and his face darkened.

The monks of this temple had actually coated the Wasteland stone statues with a layer of clay, fired them into the shape of Buddha images, and gilded them with gold foil, dressing them up as great golden-bodied Buddhas. When night came, the stone statues sheltered the place, and it looked as though the Buddha images were displaying the Buddha's majesty to protect all living beings.

Shen Mu looked with his heavenly eye, and what he saw was god after god of the Wasteland pouring out ten-thousand-zhang divine light — not the Buddha-light of Buddha images.

There were also monstrous beasts of exceptional ferocity in the temple, which stayed there even by day and never left.

The monks seemed long accustomed to them; the beasts were not even tethered, but left to wander the temple grounds at will. Amazingly, these man-eating beasts were gentle within the temple, putting on the air of vegetarians chanting the Buddha's name, their savage nature quite transformed.

Some of the Wasteland folk lodging there said this was the power of the Dharma. Yet Shen Mu saw the monks secretly feeding the beasts great chunks of flesh and blood, and from that meat rose the smell of a numbing drug. Shen Mu was taken aback and frowned.

"Shen'er, don't meddle too much. " The blind elder said in a low voice, "Great Tingming Temple is very near.

Smashing this temple would only bring word to them and make them trip us up; it does not mean they would save Granny Zhu. " "Hypocrisy!

" Granny Zhu sneered. "This is the hypocrisy of the Buddhist order.

They have no great divine power at all, yet they take others' power for their own and boast that it is the strength of the Dharma. Blind elder, Lord Huo, you are hypocrites too — you have a favor to ask of the old Tathagata, so you dare not expose these bald donkeys' tricks!

" "Whether they have great divine power or not," said Shen Mu, "once we reach Great Tingming Temple and see the old Tathagata, won't Cult Master Li find out?

" Granny Zhu cackled, "Cult Master Shen, are you fit to be the holy cult master of my Sacred Cult?

You are the cult master of my Heavenly Sacred Cult, yet you go begging a favor of the old Tathagata of a rival sect — a disgrace to the renown of my Heavenly Sacred Cult! You have ruined the majesty of my Heavenly Sacred Cult utterly!

When I have fully recovered, I will return to the Sacred Cult and set it to rights, and show you what a holy cult master ought to do!

" Shen Mu betrayed nothing and said, "And what ought a holy cult master do? " "Tear off these old bald donkeys' mask of hypocrisy, smash these Buddha images to bits, and reveal the god statues inside! " Granny Zhu said leisurely, "Then undo the numbing drug in these beasts and let them eat men, let their true nature show, wash these bald heads in blood, devour every thieving monk in the temple to the last!

Let these foolish folk see that this so-called Buddhist Dharma is shit, that it is all useless, nothing but an empty show!

Heh heh, the so-called righteous path is nothing but dogshit — so let the dogshit show its true dogshit face, and stop gilding the outside of a clay idol! This is the doctrine of my Heavenly Sacred Cult, the true and correct understanding of following nature pure and simple! " Shen Mu thought there was much sense in what he said — only the method was somewhat extreme. He had wanted to undo the numbing drug in the beasts himself, but reflecting that once awake they would eat people, he had no choice but to let it be.

At last Great Tingming Temple came into view.

From afar they saw a towering mountain rearing up at the center of the Shenduan Mountains, while the other ranges had been sliced apart by boundless power into sheer cliffs and precipices that no bird could cross, snow-capped and white.