Chapter 264 — We Shall Take Your Head

They swept clean the last remnants of the Dao Lord's and the Tathagata's divine powers, and Shen Mu now had a means to go on treating Emperor Yanfeng. He reckoned to himself: "With those remnants gone, his soul can be steadied. The emperor's divine treasury is shattered, but if enough spirit medicines can be found, I might use the Shadow-Transforming Demon Art and the Dharma-Heaven Mustard-Seed Art to enter the treasury and refine pills there—perhaps then the wounds to his treasury can be mended. Only. . . " He had never treated a wound of this kind, and whether he could cure it he had not the least confidence.

Had it been merely a crack in the divine treasury, he could have treated it. But Emperor Yanfeng's treasury was destroyed.

The pharmacology his alchemist grandfather had passed down to him was vast, yet in it there was no method for a wound such as this. There were, to be sure, certain medicinal ingredients that could heal injuries to a divine treasury, and in the Great Nurturing Nether Demon Scripture there were arts that could strengthen one; Shen Mu thought he might work both at once. The two of them left Emperor Yanfeng's divine treasury.

Day had broken. Granny Zhu came to her senses, while Fan Xuanshu sank into a deep sleep. Shen Mu released the Creation Heaven-Demon Art from Emperor Yanfeng's body and said, "Your Majesty, I am going out to buy medicine; it may take three to five days.

In that time, do not step outside this room. Someone will bring you food and leave it at your door.

When night falls, no matter what sounds you hear, you must not set half a step outside the door; and if someone bids you look out, you must not look. " Emperor Yanfeng said weakly, "Shen, my dear minister, where on earth have you brought Us? So mysterious a place? " Shen Mu's face was grave: "Your Majesty, this is where my granny and Cult Master Li dwell. You need only know this: whoever comes for you at night will certainly be Cult Master Li.

If you look out, you die. And it will not be you alone who dies—all of Jingping will die with you!

Moreover, if you step through that door, you will die beyond any doubt! " Seeing how gravely he spoke, Emperor Yanfeng laughed. "Set your mind at ease, I understand. We are not so curious a man. " Shen Mu left the door ajar, took up a brush, dipped it in ink, and with a shake of his body assumed the form of the Star-Suppressing Lord—a man's head upon a serpent's body.

Circulating his power, he painted a gateway upon the door and wrote above it the Gate of Heaven's Mandate, in the tongue of the Nether Capital. Then he returned to his own form, wrote a line upon the ground, and said, "This is a gateway conjured by the true art of the Star-Suppressing Lord and the Earth Marquis from the Great Nurturing Nether Demon Scripture.

Read it aloud and you may enter; fail to read it and you stay outside. " Shen Mu put away brush and ink and said to Granny Zhu, "Granny, whatever you do, do not touch this gateway. When you bring the emperor his meals, pass them to him on a bamboo pole.

On no account step inside the door. " Granny Zhu studied the writing on the door and blinked. "This gateway?

" Shen Mu blinked too, and said nothing. Granny Zhu understood. "I will never go in.

" Shen Mu walked out of the courtyard, leapt onto the dragon-qilin's back, and looked back at the room where Emperor Yanfeng lodged, thinking: "If Fan Xuanshu knows the tongue of the Nether Capital, well and good.

But if she does not, and forces her way in, she will be dragged down into the Nether Capital, and her soul will belong to Tubo!

Then Granny will be free of her.

" Emperor Yanfeng's body had improved greatly; he could just manage to walk about. But he kept strictly to Shen Mu's words and never once left the room. At noon Granny Zhu carried a basket to the door on a bamboo pole. Emperor Yanfeng crouched, opened the gateway a little, drew the basket inside, and when he had eaten his fill set it back at the door, never going out himself. Since becoming emperor, this was the first time he had been so pent up.

After supper, suddenly there came a peal of giggling—sweet and pleasing, a sound that seemed to bore straight into the brain, lovely beyond words, so that Emperor Yanfeng was spellbound; he felt that among three thousand beauties there was not one whose voice could stir the heart so. "Since Cult Master Shen is away, I think I shall come and play with the emperor. If he amuses me well, I shall flay him and make his skin into a garment, and go to the capital to be empress. " Emperor Yanfeng heard it with both dread and delight; the voice was truly lovely, and it left his heart in a tangle. He wanted to open the door and see what the woman looked like, then remembered Shen Mu's words and thought: "This is Fan Xuanshu, Cult Master Li, luring me out with a demonic voice!

The old devil actually mimics a woman's voice—shameless beyond measure.

" He stopped his ears, but the alluring voice seemed already to have burrowed into his brain, unforgettable. "Hmph, the wretch means to test me! He truly does not know the height of heaven and the depth of earth. .

. These few characters I truly do not know.

I cultivate the true art of the Star-Suppressing Lord and the Earth Marquis, and so does he; I refuse to believe I am his inferior! " . . . The woman outside tried to unravel the mystery of the writing on the door, rehearsing the Earth Marquis true art again and again, and always failing.

Unwittingly she spent more than half the night, and Emperor Yanfeng, his heart in his throat, worried for more than half the night, and at last fell asleep. The next day was the same as the one before.

When night came the woman again came out to try to solve the meaning of the writing on the door. Emperor Yanfeng was nearly driven to an inner demon by her voice; he kept feeling that somewhere in his heart a sweet, bewitching voice was calling him to open the door and look. On the third night, the woman said angrily, "I cannot master it, I cannot solve it! Enough—I will simply break in, kill the emperor, flay his skin.

What need have I to solve riddles?

" Emperor Yanfeng's heart lurched, and he heard the woman say again: "No, no. . .

When Cult Master Shen used this art, a third eye appeared, and the room suddenly went dark, the lamplight turned green, and it was no longer like the world of men. . . There is something strange about this gateway.

Enter it and one may step into another world. The wretch is cunning; most likely he means to ambush me. .

. " Emperor Yanfeng was astonished: "How clever this woman is. . . No, rather, how sly and treacherous Cult Master Li is! But is not Cult Master Li an old man?

Why does he feign a woman's voice, and so seductively at that? " He could not resist wanting one look, thinking: "One look only—surely that can do no great harm? " He was just about to press his eye to a crack in the window when suddenly a dragon's cry came from outside, and Shen Mu strode in, so that he hastily abandoned the thought of looking.

"Cult Master Li did not enter? Can it be she does not know the writing on the door?

Do you admit that you have practiced the Great Nurturing Nether Demon Scripture wrongly? " "Mind your own business.

" "The characters on the door mean the Gate of Heaven's Mandate; it is the tongue of the Nether Capital. I shall teach you.

" With that, Shen Mu taught Fan Xuanshu the phrase in the Nether Capital tongue, and said, "Cult Master Li, now that you have learned it, you may enter.

" Fan Xuanshu giggled.

"I have learned this phrase of the Nether Capital tongue, I understand the meaning of the writing on the door, and then I may enter in safety? Cult Master Shen, I too am a Cult Master and Holy Preceptor, a creature sly as a ghost.