Chapter 441 — Entangled in Karmic Debt

The teleportation art Shen Mu cultivated belonged to the Netherfiend Sect, and it differed greatly from the blood-sacrifice teleportation those otherworldly demon gods employed. The demon gods' blood-sacrifice teleportation was cruder, more ancient; the Netherfiend Sect's art, by contrast, was founded upon the arts of spatial calculation, and anyone with sufficiently profound mastery of those arts could bring it off. The greatest difference between the two lay here: the Netherfiend Sect's teleportation knew both the what and the why, sought to understand and so understood, whereas blood-sacrifice teleportation knew the what but not the why, seeking no understanding, only usefulness. This was what gave Shen Mu his chance to interfere with their teleportation formation.

"Grey Immortal, take me and Grandpa Deaf down underground. I need to see the runes arranged on their altar, and then I will perform the teleportation art.

Grandpa Deaf, you will draw out the runes of the teleportation art I perform.

Dragon King God, you come as well. I will need your mana. " Shen Mu spoke with great speed: "Grandpa Alchemist, the rest of you stay here and guard the bodies of Grandma Zhu and the Imperial Preceptor Jingping.

" His plan settled, Grey Immortal at once carried the three of them flying down from the Dawn Ark.

"Do not move," he said. "I will carry you through the underground. " With that he shook himself, transformed into a great rat, wrapped Shen Mu, the Deaf Elder and the Dragon King God in a gust of demon wind, and burrowed away into the earth.

Shen Mu felt himself hurtling through the ground at furious speed; before long his body came to an abrupt halt, and all at once the space before his eyes opened into vast emptiness. Looking about, he saw indeed the magnificent scene Grey Immortal had described.

A colossal divine statue bulged up out of the ground, only to be bound fast by chain after chain; where the thick, enormous chains converged, palace after palace pressed down upon them, and from beneath those palaces more chains stretched out to lock down a long saber that ran north to south. The saber blazed with a brilliance beyond compare; it was chained as though someone feared the blade might fly away. The saber was so long that Shen Mu could not imagine who could wield a weapon of such size.

That hapless divine statue, as it rose, had struck precisely upon the blade's edge, and the head of the statue, hard beyond measure, had been sliced through to the brow.

And upon the palm of the statue's raised hand, a dozen or more towering stone figures were busily at work, building an enormous altar.

Those stone figures and that altar were immense, yet beside the divine statue they seemed utterly tiny.

And Shen Mu and the Deaf Elder, of course, were more insignificant still. Shen Mu roused the Nine Heavens Gazing Art and examined the runes and sigils on the altar in fine detail, committing them to memory. Grey Immortal carried him weaving this way and that, and after a long while they had at last surveyed all the runes and sigils surrounding the altar.

"Grey Immortal, stop.

" Shen Mu mused a moment. "Let us go to one of those palaces. I will take up position there and run the calculations.

" Grey Immortal brought them to one of the palaces, which was joined to the underground cliff by a long floating bridge; it seemed people had once come here, had lived here, and kept watch over this subterranean space.

Shen Mu set his feet on solid ground and looked around, seeing that the doors of this vermilion hall were tightly locked, and viewed through the Holy Pupil they bore seal upon seal of the most intricate kind, making entry difficult.

"Here will do. " Shen Mu took out a Taotie Bag and rummaged through it, producing a vast array of calculating instruments: Wuji Disks, Taiji Disks, Five Elements Beads, Bagua Disks, and more, a dazzling profusion of them, hundreds in all.

Even two Bagua Disks of the same sort differed in construction, and their lines and trigrams could be shifted at will; different constructions demanded different instruments, and so the number of them was immense. He raised these instruments aloft with his primordial energy, and at once the countless calculating tools in the air began to divide, recombine, and reorder themselves, the complexity of the operation leaving Grey Immortal and the Deaf Elder gaping, dizzy and dazzled.

After a moment there appeared in the air an unbelievably intricate calculating instrument occupying a space more than ten zhang across.

Binary, quaternary, senary, octal, nonary, decimal, hexadecimal, base sixty-four: countless strange components revolved of themselves in the air as Shen Mu's primordial energy turned, and the click-clack of their workings never ceased. Beads of calculation floated up as well, leaping and tumbling without pause. Blocks and cubical pillars, some long, some short, evolved unendingly. "Can you follow any of it? " Grey Immortal asked the Deaf Elder in a low voice.

The Deaf Elder waved a hand. "I cannot hear you. " Grey Immortal did not know whether to laugh or to cry.

All at once Shen Mu shook the Taotie Bag, and the calculating instruments in the air swept back into it with a great clatter and vanished. "It is done. Grandpa Deaf, over to you. " Shen Mu's spirit surged; he roused his primordial energy, and at once a teleportation formation appeared in the air, its various runes kindling alight.

The Deaf Elder raised his eyes to study it, then lifted his brush and painted in the air, the brush moving like dragons and snakes, swiftly rendering a formation diagram in which every rune and sigil matched Shen Mu's teleportation art exactly.

The painting art he used was the very technique of the world within the painting that Shen Mu had once described to him.

Formerly his art had worked from the inside outward: paint wind, and wind appeared; paint thunder, and thunder appeared.

Now it worked from the outside inward, and within the painting lay hidden a world.

Shen Mu dispersed the teleportation art, roused his primordial energy again, and another kind of teleportation formation appeared in the air.

The Deaf Elder painted this second formation, and Grey Immortal leaned in to look into the painting and was struck dumb: the painting the Deaf Elder had made in the air was plainly flat, yet looking into it one saw space within the plane, in no way different from the teleportation art Shen Mu had performed.

Because of the limits of his cultivation, the art Shen Mu performed covered no great area and carried no great power; the painting the Deaf Elder produced likewise looked small, yet when one leaned in and looked into it, one got a fright, for the space within that painting was vast indeed, several li across at the least.

Shen Mu performed the teleportation art once more and had the Deaf Elder paint a third picture.

When it was done, Shen Mu told him to lay the third picture beneath his own feet. The Deaf Elder was briefly startled, puzzled as to his meaning, but did as he was told.

A beam of light shot from Shen Mu's eyes toward the air above the great saber. "Grandpa Deaf, put the first picture here. " The Deaf Elder flicked his brush upward; the first picture flew out and settled where his gaze had fallen, then slowly faded and vanished.

Shen Mu calculated in silence a moment, and again a beam shot from his eyes, falling upon the belly of the divine statue.

"Put the second picture here. " The Deaf Elder swept his great brush, and the second picture flew out, not a hairsbreadth off, and vanished. Shen Mu let out a breath and smiled.

"In this way, the demon race from beyond the realm will not be able to teleport here through the blood-sacrifice altar. " Grey Immortal frowned slightly. "That will be enough?

" Shen Mu nodded. Grey Immortal was still uneasy.

"Are you certain?