Chapter 300 — The Uncanny Thing

"From what those two white bats said, a good many Great Shamans of the Golden Palace of Loulan have come into the Nether Valley these past days. We would do well to guard against them.

" Shen Mu's face was grave.

He opened the Taotie Pouch on his back a crack, ready at any moment to summon his sword against mishap.

"Hierarch, those two fellows just now were very strong. " The Dragon Qilin walked on, skirting the great stones that floated in the air.

"Those two are no weaker than I am, and they are exceedingly ancient. " Shen Mu looked about him and said in a low voice, "They must be divine seeds, descendants of gods and demons. That they are no weaker than you is your own boasting; pick either of those two white bats at random, and ten of you together could not beat it.

Their aura is too strong. " The Dragon Qilin, thoroughly unconvinced, said sullenly, "That is because I am still young.

If I were grown, ten of them could not beat me. I am very useful! " Shen Mu paid no heed to this Dragon Qilin, who had grown round as a ball and still insisted on boasting, and mused, "Strange.

Why should there be creatures like white bats in the Wasteland?

Could they be left over from the Bat God before the Cataclysm? Did the gods and demons of the age before the disaster leave descendants that survived? " In some of the temples of the Wasteland, statues of the Bat God were enshrined.

The Bat God meant the God of Fortune, who bestowed blessings upon men. He had once seen a stone statue of the Bat God in Crimson Dragon City: a bat's head on a man's body, with fleshy wings and membranes growing from beneath its arms.

Its appearance was somewhat like these two white bats, save that these two seemed more primitive, while the Bat God, apart from its head and fleshy wings, was in all other respects more like a man.

If those two white bats were descendants of the Fortune God from before the Cataclysm, then ought there not to be descendants of gods and demons elsewhere in the Wasteland as well?

Yet Shen Mu had lived in the Wasteland for so many years—why had he never seen more descendants of gods and demons?

"Fat Dragon, where did you live before you met the Patriarch? " A thought suddenly struck Shen Mu, and he asked. "The Wasteland. " The Dragon Qilin recalled the past, full of nostalgia.

"Not long after I was born, my mother vanished. I was so hungry my head swam and my eyes blurred, and I was near death when I met the Patriarch. I saw that he was uncommonly handsome, and so I was lured away by a single spirit pill of his—one false step, and eternal regret. " Shen Mu did not know whether to laugh or cry.

"It was plainly the Patriarch who saw you starving and pitied you and gave you a spirit pill, and then you latched onto him, shamelessly following him and refusing to leave, so that he could not shake you off no matter how he tried! But come to think of it, Fat Dragon, you count as a divine seed yourself, do you not? Could it be that the divine race of the Wasteland before the Cataclysm has become the strange beasts of the Wasteland today? " His expression turned odd.

The Wasteland before must have been an age of incomparable prosperity, when gods and men dwelt together, the gods living among mortals, and the descendants of the gods living here too.

Then the great Cataclysm came, and the gods vanished from the world forever, while their descendants drifted ever further toward the forms of strange beasts. This conjecture was outrageous, but not impossible.

Ahead, dense forest grew on the cliffs to either side of the gorge; a forest growing upon sheer precipices gave one a most absurd feeling, and the stones floating in the air showed that the geomagnetic essence here was distorted. Suddenly Shen Mu felt a stirring in the Taotie Pouch.

His heart moved; he opened the pouch, and within it the Carefree Sword trembled lightly, giving out a clear, ringing sword-cry.

Shen Mu sent his essence deep into the Taotie Pouch and drew the sword out. He had originally meant to use the Carefree Sword as a mother sword and refine it into a sword pellet, and so had not fitted it with a scabbard. Now, holding the Carefree Sword in his hand, he found it somewhat inconvenient; at once he pointed a finger, and the Carefree Sword flew up and sheared through the branch of an ancient tree.

"What hard wood!

" Shen Mu cut off a length of the branch and tried to slice the wood apart with a thread of essence, but could scarcely cut it. He could not help exclaiming in wonder: the texture of this wood was a match for dark iron.

He urged the Carefree Sword to whittle it, and soon made a wooden scabbard, into which he slid the Carefree Sword. The sword still trembled faintly, but it no longer drew so much attention.

"It seems that what fell from the sky sixteen years ago was not only the broken blade of the Carefree Sword and the divine metal, but other things as well—and this thing resonates with the Carefree Sword! " he thought to himself.

The men of the Golden Palace of Loulan had already entered the Nether Valley.

Would they find that thing before he did? At last they came to the end of the gorge, and the view before them suddenly opened out. Shen Mu did not hurry into the valley; warily he looked all around.

At the end of the gorge, to either side, stood two enormous stone statues carved along the mountain ridges, as tall as the mountains themselves.

The two statues wore solemn expressions, majestic and holy, their gazes deep, each leaning upon a sword. A rushing of water came to them: waterfalls pouring from the statues' shoulders. The falls were mighty, a thousand fathoms of water plunging down, landing between the statues' hands and running down along their swords, gathering into rivers.

Two rivers flowed from the feet of the statues, forming in the forest the posture of twin dragons, then vanishing in the center of the valley. The two statues had bat heads on human bodies—they were the Bat God.

"Two Bat Gods guarding the Nether Valley?

What is the relation between these two Bat God statues and those two white bats from before?

" Shen Mu gazed into the distance, and his heart gave a start.

"Do these two rivers flow underground? Jade Heaven Eye, open!

" At once another heaven appeared in his pupils.

Shen Mu looked toward the place where the two rivers vanished, and could not help frowning: his sight seemed to be blocked by something, and he could not see clearly there. "Cinnabar Heaven Eye, open! " Shen Mu stirred his essence, and in both eyes formed the Cinnabar Heaven rune array. In his pupils appeared a ring of cinnabar-colored veins, and within that a layer of jade-green Jade Heaven Eye, and within that a layer of cyan Azure Heaven Eye, and within that a layer of white light forming the Soaring Heaven Eye, and at the center the pupil.

The Ninefold Heaven Gazing Eye Art that the Blind Elder had taught him—he had already mastered it, though by his present cultivation he could open it only as far as the Cinnabar Heaven, and it consumed a great deal; ordinarily he would not lightly use it. In general, the Azure Heaven Eye was already sufficient; there was no need to open the Jade Heaven Eye and the Cinnabar Heaven Eye.

Yet even the Cinnabar Heaven Eye could not see clearly what lay where the two rivers vanished.

"Eh.

.

. " Shen Mu's heart gave a slight shock. In the forest ahead he saw several corpses—the corpses of Great Shamans of the Golden Palace of Loulan. The corpses lay not far apart, and strangely, some were lifelike, as though they had just died, while others were rotted down to bare bone, their clothes still intact.

As his gaze went deeper into the forest, he saw more corpses. Plainly these people had met misfortune the moment they entered the forest and died violent deaths.