Chapter 488 — The Gate of Beiluo

The crack was some ten feet wide. The chest carried Shen Mu and the others inside, but before they had gone two steps it wedged fast. Shen Mu hurriedly shoved the Dragon Qilin's belly deeper in, yet still the chest would not budge, and Ban Gongcuo, pinned beneath it, howled and yelped.

"Keep quiet!"

Shen Mu barked low, ordering the chest back out. Outside, one of Xing An's Holy Eyes swept past, its divine light a pillar, scanning by just this spot. Shen Mu hastily made the great chest hide behind a jutting boulder; the Holy Eye was swift, gone in a flicker.

"Thank goodness Xing An's eye isn't Blind Grandpa's Holy Eye—otherwise this boulder would never have hidden us."

He let out a breath, opened the chest, seized the soft flesh behind the Dragon Qilin's neck, and stuffed the fat fellow inside.

"Hierarch…"

Inside the chest the Dragon Qilin trembled all over: "It's all arms and legs in here—and heads! And hearts! And ever so many fingers!"

Shen Mu closed the lid and set the chest moving deeper into the crack. Without the Dragon Qilin's bulk, this time it went far more smoothly; the chest pressed on, and the light ahead grew brighter and brighter.

Shen Mu lay atop the chest, straining to look forward. What he saw through the crack on the far side was not green grassland and blue sky, but a golden desert—altogether different from the scene they had glimpsed before.

"Could the world in this crack be a different place from the world in that other crack?"

Scarcely had the thought formed when another shaft of divine light blazed up behind him. Shen Mu's heart lurched—there was nowhere to hide now—and he could only desperately urge the chest forward.

Luckily they were not far from the world beyond the crack. The chest soon crawled out, tumbled down, rolled twice across the golden sand, and stood upright again.

Shen Mu looked back. A divine light shot from the crack, flickered, and vanished; whether it had seen them, he could not tell.

Suddenly alarmed, he leaped off the chest and peered beneath it. Ban Gongcuo was indeed gone.

"That wretch—quick as a weasel!"

Shen Mu laughed despite himself. Ban Gongcuo must have slipped away the moment the chest tumbled into the golden desert, lest Shen Mu knife him in the back unawares. A moment ago they had all been in the deep night of the ruins with Xing An tracking close behind, so they had to pull together in the same chest; now that the darkness was gone from every side, Ban Gongcuo would naturally want to be off. Legless as he was, he stood no chance against Shen Mu; if he lingered, he would never get away again.

"The Great Venerable is a cunning one," Shen Mu said in admiration.

He opened the chest. The Dragon Qilin sprang out in a panic, too terrified to go anywhere near it again.

Shen Mu poked his head in for a look. It was the same as before: a frame of Taotie bone, draped in Taotie hide, all struts within—except that far fewer limbs were enshrined on those struts now.

He also saw the marks where the chest had been cut open and stitched back together: the damage wrought when the Butcher's two blades, horizontal and vertical, vast and boundless, had sliced it apart. After Xing An escaped from beneath the Butcher's blade, he must have repaired it.

"If those divine legs and divine hands and divine heads could be awakened—if these limbs could be roused—Xing An would not be beyond dealing with."

Shen Mu's eyes flickered. He closed the chest and ran deep into the golden desert, away from the crack behind him. The chest flew along at his heels, following steadily; the Dragon Qilin ran swiftly too, glancing at the chest from time to time, dread in its eyes.

After a while the Dragon Qilin mastered its dread, leaped onto the chest, and crouched there, letting it carry him racing along.

"Fat Dragon has refined laziness into an art," Shen Mu thought, glancing back at the pudgy beast.

Ahead, the desert stretched to the horizon. Shen Mu raced through it with the chest in tow, then suddenly halted. Before a dune lay a towering skeleton, half drowned in yellow sand.

He walked up to it and at once felt a divine majesty; he stopped short, and the chest behind him stopped hastily too. The Dragon Qilin, dozing atop it, was startled awake, raised its head, and cried, "Has Xing An caught up?"

"No!"

Shen Mu studied the divine bones buried in the sand. The ribs were immense, arching high, and beneath them the rib cage—a cavity in which scores of men could have stood.

He advanced warily, step by step; the chest tiptoed after him on little shuffling steps. Shen Mu reached out a hand, then abruptly thought better of it and fetched Ban Gongcuo's great cauldron, edging toward the divine bones with that instead.

Suddenly—clang! A huge report. Shen Mu grunted, the web of his thumb split open, his palm streaming blood, and one leg of Ban Gongcuo's great cauldron had been sheared clean off.

That cauldron had been forged by Ban Gongcuo in a former life, when he was a near-god powerhouse; its might was of a rank to be a sect's treasure. Even when Shen Mu had contended with him using his sword pellet, he had never managed to damage it—proof of how strong its defense was.

Yet before these divine bones the cauldron was like mud, a leg severed with ease.

Shen Mu bore the pain, sealed the wound, and picked up the fallen leg. The break was smooth, as if cut by an invisible blade; and touching it, he felt a fierce heat.

"This is… the yang force of the yin and yang forces—refined by the owner of these remains into a guardian divine essence."

Shen Mu put away the cauldron and the broken leg. The Dragon Qilin stared warily ahead and said in terror, "Hierarch, what was it that cut that pot apart?"

"The divine treasury of this god."

Shen Mu scooped up a handful of yellow sand and blew it gently; the sand flew forward and at once revealed what the eye could not see in that space. Within the vast divine bones sprawled in the sand there were, incredibly, seven complete divine treasuries!

They had been invisible to the naked eye; now, invaded by the fine dust, they gave off divine lights of every hue, illuminating the treasuries deep in that space with dazzling brilliance.

The god's corpse was colossal enough, yet the treasuries were not large. The Spirit Fetus treasury at the brow of the divine bones was only a square inch across; the Five Luminaries treasury at the heart and lungs was somewhat larger; the Six Harmonies treasury sat at the cinnabar field, and the Seven Stars treasury between the crown of the head and the heart.

The Heaven-Man treasury lay in the spine, the Life-Death treasury below the waist, and the Spirit Bridge treasury flew out from the Spirit Fetus treasury, becoming a soaring bridge that pierced beyond the crown of the head!

None of these treasuries looked large, yet—strangely—a gaze into their interiors seemed to hold hundreds of millions of miles of time and space, vast and magnificent, and one could even see withered, blighted suns and moons, ragged rivers of stars and constellations!

And at the center of the Spirit Fetus treasury was the spirit fetus of this god. That spirit fetus ought to have been part of the primordial spirit; now the soul of these bones was long gone, yet the spirit fetus had not wholly withered.

"He died of a wound to his primordial spirit."

Rings of formation patterns whirled in Shen Mu's eyes as he peered at the spirit fetus within the Spirit Fetus treasury. This god's spirit fetus had been run through from behind by a sword that emerged at his chest; the sword had even left a phantom image behind—such was the terror of that blow.

Shattered suns and moons revolved around the spirit fetus, and from them hung streams of light a myriad feet long—the yin and yang forces. The one that had sheared off the cauldron's leg was a stream of pure yang.