Chapter 290 — It Dwells in a Single Thought

Shen Mu nodded and called Long Jiaonan forward. Enduring her pain, she hobbled up to him.

Shen Mu asked, "Will you still be my enemy?"

Long Jiaonan said, "My Dragon-Riding Sect was annihilated, root and branch, because of you. I have no choice but to be your enemy."

"With me or without me, your Dragon-Riding Sect was doomed to be destroyed; such is the tide of the times. Even had I not been in Tianbo City, you would have met the same end."

Shen Mu said, "I merely happened to be there. It is only natural that you hate me. But if you come to kill me again, I will show no mercy."

Long Jiaonan said through gritted teeth, "And I will show none either!"

Shen Mu shook his head. "You no longer have the chance. Stop shedding your skin; shed any more and you will grow old. Go with the Dao Lord."

Standing at the Dao Lord's side, Long Jiaonan felt utterly lost. Every time she met Shen Mu she found him grown considerably stronger than before. If they met again, could she still be his match?

Did she still have any chance at all?

But her mind was soon drowned in hatred, and she cast such confusion from her thoughts.

The old Dao Lord clasped his fist—the outer fist forming the Taiji diagram, the inner hand locked in the Ziwu mudra—and said, "I take my leave."

Shen Mu returned the salute and rose. "I will see the Dao Lord off."

The old Dao Lord led Long Jiaonan and Lin Xuan the Daoist Heir out of the island; then a cloud rose beneath his feet, carrying the two away.

Shen Mu glanced at the Nether Demon Cult followers around him and waved. "Disperse. All of you, disperse."

Each of them made a salute; the great banners rolled up, and they vanished without a trace. But the Jade Heavenly King and the Master Heavenly King stayed behind, plainly uneasy about Shen Mu's safety.

Shen Mu smiled. "There is no need to be so anxious on my account. Go, both of you."

The two Heavenly Kings exchanged a glance; each drew his robes about him and vanished.

"I do not think they have gone far," Si Yunxiang said.

Shen Mu nodded. Ling Yuxiu, however, was fretting. "Great Cult Master, you were so busy putting on airs before your subordinates and sent them off—how are we to leave?"

Shen Mu hesitated. He had indeed been putting on airs; the elders of the village had taught him since childhood that one may lose the man but never the formation, that one must never lose one's momentum. So he had not let the Nether Demon Cult's followers carry their Holy Cult Master out of the Eastern Sea, lest he lose face before his subordinates.

"Do you think Fan Yunxiao will come back to fetch us?" he ventured.

The two women laughed coldly and said in one voice, "He wept so bitterly when he left—he will never come back!"

Shen Mu said awkwardly, "Then perhaps we had best walk back across the sea..."

"It seems we must."

Si Yunxiang turned to look at the spirit spring, reluctant to go. "Tell me—when those Solomon's seal wake, will they still know us?"

"I do not know."

Shen Mu looked back; the banks of the spirit spring were lush with green. He shook his head. "They died once. If they had souls to begin with, those souls ought to have fallen into the dark underworld. Yet they came back to life, against all expectation. Whether their souls are the souls they had, whether their memories are their own, or whether a new soul was born in their bodies with memory a blank sheet—that is more than we can know."

A little melancholy, Si Yunxiang saw that Shen Mu and Ling Yuxiu were already walking on the sea and hurried after them. Beneath Shen Mu's feet a wave rose like a dragon's head, surging ever forward, carrying them west.

Elsewhere, the Shaman Venerable of Loulan's Golden Palace received Ban Gongcuo's message and straightway left the Golden Palace, heading west.

He traveled far, skirting the vast Wasteland, crossing the snow mountains and the plateau, entering the Flame Desert, until he came to the Western Lands and climbed the highest peak of the West.

On the golden summit of this holy mountain there was nothing but an altar. The Shaman Venerable took three sticks of incense and lit them; the smoke curled upward, straight to the heavens.

Where the smoke vanished, a green-blue face faintly surfaced in the air, seeming to melt into the blue sky.

"A new Human Emperor has appeared," the Shaman Venerable said, burning incense and bowing low.

So, you wish to cultivate immortality? How is your mathematics? How is your chemistry (the alchemist Tao Hongjing)? How is your medicine (the physician-Daoists Ge Hong and Sun Simiao)? How is your philosophy (Laozi, Zhuangzi)? How are you at governing a state (Wei Zheng, Li Bi)? Economics (Fan Li), the art of war (Zhang Liang), calligraphy and painting (Wang Xizhi, Wu Daozi), astronomy (too many to name), poetry (Li Bai)?

Study hard, and ascend to immortality soon!