Chapter 363 — How Thick Is the Vault of Heaven?

But that shot of yours has led us of the Bureau to think that heaven may be limited in height and limited in thickness. The stars of the sky may not be as huge or as distant as we have imagined, and the sun, too, seems to be, seems to be. .

.

" He dared not go on. Shen Mu looked round at the others.

"What do you all think?

" They were all young people, of different origins, different traditions, different camps and convictions, but all of them were curious, and one after another they raised their heads to look at heaven.

Daoist Master Lin Xuan turned his gaze down and said, "Since Sect Master Shen's shot has shown us that heaven has height and thickness, why not take the occasion to calculate them here and now? " All nodded in agreement.

Wang Muran said, "We will need the specific displacement figures for each star before we can compute.

" The Fire-Well Commandant said, "Our Bureau keeps records of every star, the sun included.

" "Then it will be a great deal easier!

" They set to work at once, measuring and calculating; after a long while they gathered their figures together, and every face turned something grave and blank.

"I don't believe it! " A Daoist priest rose abruptly, dashed the Eight Trigrams diagram in his hand to the floor—it shattered with a crack—and roared in fury, "I don't believe it! " With that he fled. The other numerological masters kept silent; Long Yu murmured, "This is impossible; we must have computed wrong.

This simply cannot be.

.

. " A few Daoist masters, their minds giving way, laughed ruefully: "It is surely an error—heaven cannot be this thin.

. .

" "It is certainly an error!

" the Fire-Well Commandant snapped.

"Yes, it must be wrong!

" many echoed.

Xu Shenghua shook his head. "Could every one of us have gone wrong?

All of us arrived at the same figure, and so the result must be correct—heaven is exactly this high and exactly this thick.

" "Impossible! Impossible. .

. " Long Yu, utterly distraught, staggered away; he had gone a little mad.

Mu Qingdai felt her head spin, and hastily crouched down and sat on the ground. Shen Mu stared at the numbers they had produced, sunk in thought.

Heaven was a hundred thousand li high, yet its thickness was a pitiful three hundred zhang.

That is to say, within three hundred zhang of thickness were contained the sun, the moon, the Milky Way, and countless stars!

How could that be? "Heh heh heh heh. .

. " His own composure suddenly began to crumble; he laughed without stopping, laughed until tears ran down his face, laughed until he sat down slapping his knees.

"Sect Master Shen, what are you laughing at?

" Daoist Master Lin Xuan glared at him and shouted. "Forsaken. .

.

" Shen Mu laughed aloud, pointing at the tip of Lin Xuan's nose, laughing almost to tears: "You are forsaken!

You are forsaken too! And you, you, you!

All of you are forsaken!

" They looked at him coldly; Shen Mu's finger moved from face to face, and finally stopped at Xu Shenghua.

His laughter died away, and his face was terribly cold: "You are forsaken as well! " Xu Shenghua frowned.

Heaven was only this high and only this thick—not to speak of placing the sun, moon, and river of stars within it; even a great mountain could not have been put inside. And yet there were in the heavens the sun, the moon, and the river of stars. That left only one possibility.

The glittering stars, the blazing burning sun, the radiant lucent moon, the galaxy of a hundred million stars stretched out like a long river—they were all counterfeit, pasted on! This heaven was like a seal, sealing this world away, and the sun, moon, and stars, the asterisms and constellations and the river of stars that it displayed were all false.

In the Barren Wastes, encircled by the God-Sundered Mountains, the sky had never been seen by day; at night darkness swept in, and looking up one never saw the stars, never saw the moon. The people of the Barren Wastes were the gods' forsaken ones. But perhaps the living creatures of this world were the same as the forsaken of the Barren Wastes—all of them forsaken!

Daoist Master Lin Xuan suddenly flung his sleeves and said coldly, "I am no forsaken one! Disciples of the Daoist Sect, we are going—back to the mountain!

" He walked, and as he walked, tears abruptly streamed down his face. "The Dao follows nature—that is nature of a damned bogus kind!

" The young sect master strained his throat and cursed the sky at the top of his lungs: "A lifetime of striving, all laid upon a nature of damned bogus phenomena!

"