Chapter 638 — The Dark Earth-Core

"Teacher Woodcutter once said that some of the places on Eldest Senior Brother's maps are exceedingly perilous — places even he would not lightly set foot in. Could this divine city of Taiming Heaven be one of them? " Shen Mu's eyes flickered.

He weighed the matter this way and that, and at last decided not to enter the divine city, but to go around it. He walked along the city's edge, and all at once caught sight of a figure.

He hurriedly halted.

"King Buddha Sakra!

" Shen Mu very nearly cried out aloud. He had seen another King Buddha Sakra — or rather, the King Buddha Sakra of the Kaihuang Era!

At that time King Buddha Sakra was not yet a Buddha, but a god with the look of a handsome youth, clear-browed and fine-featured. There was no Buddha-light behind his head, nor did he wear the dharma robe he wears now; nor was he barefoot. On his feet were gilded winged cloud-treading boots; on his body, armor of dazzling gold.

In those days King Buddha Sakra was no Buddha Patriarch, but a god of lofty station and great power! Shen Mu was stunned. King Buddha Sakra was not alone; he was escorting several great personages toward the divine city.

Shen Mu's heart pounded wildly.

As though possessed, he followed after them. Those people looked right through him, and even the gods and demons standing guard throughout the city seemed unable to see him.

Doubts rose in Shen Mu's mind. Suddenly he heard footsteps and turned quickly — a crowd of skeleton monsters were creeping along behind him on tiptoe, furtive and skulking, heads drawn in. Shen Mu laughed despite himself: "These dead things, so sneaking and furtive — how absurd.

. . Hm, no.

These dead are imitating the way I walk. So then the furtive, sneaking one is. .

. " His face reddened slightly. He went on tiptoeing forward, came to King Buddha Sakra's side, and reached out to tug at his robe — and grasped only air.

His hand passed straight through the hem of King Buddha Sakra's garment without touching anything solid.

Startled, Shen Mu waved his hand again. This time his palm passed through King Buddha Sakra's body, and still touched nothing at all!

"This divine city, and all these gods and demons in it — none of them are real!

" Shen Mu's expression went blank.

Could this be an afterglow of history? But an afterglow of history is the form and voice of a powerful being imprinted upon space, revealed only when something disturbs it; the figures of the weak cannot be imprinted by time and space. Yet here was an entire divine city, with many ordinary folk in it.

Plainly this was no afterglow of history. And the fact that he could not touch the people or the gods and demons of the city showed that he had not returned to the past either!

Then what, exactly, was this divine city?

King Buddha Sakra and those few walked on, talking as they went.

From King Buddha Sakra's manner, these men must be extraordinary beings indeed, their status perhaps even above his own. Shen Mu wanted to circle around to the front and see what these men looked like. When he came before them, he could not help but start.

The faces of these men were utterly blank — no eyes, no ears, no mouth, no nose, as though a sheet of paper had been pasted over each face! The skeletons had followed him around to the front as well.

Their jaws clattered loose and dropped to the ground; plainly they too were astonished. Whoosh — King Buddha Sakra and the others passed straight through Shen Mu's body.

Shen Mu stood dumbstruck; he felt nothing at all pass through him. He reached out to grab, and caught no one.

The skeletons fell into a fluster, groping about the ground for their jaws.

When those figures passed through their bodies as well, the skeletons trembled and shook, and lay prone on the ground, not daring to move. The remnant soul within one of the skeletons must have been relatively intact, for it wailed in a tearful voice: "Ghost.

.

. " Shen Mu skirted the skeletons and caught up with those figures, thinking: "Now the skeletons aren't imitating me anymore — I wasn't frightened into lying flat on the ground. " King Buddha Sakra was saying something to those men, his voice very soft and faint, almost inaudible.

But gradually the voice grew louder and clearer. Shen Mu listened closely.

The faceless figure at the center, the one who seemed of the most honored rank, was saying: ". .

. Before our era there were several other eras.

I have gone to explore the ruins of those ages, trying to search out the origin of our enemy, to see just who our enemy truly is. I went again to Youdu and questioned Lord Earth; I went to see the Lord of Heaven, who was overseeing the motion of a billion stars. I have also paid visits to many of the innate gods and demons of the stars of the heavens. And, curiously enough, I did discover some useful things. It may be that our enemy is not as we imagine — the Heavenly Court. . . " Shen Mu leaned in to listen, and the voice dropped low again. "Think of defeat before you think of victory. Sakra, I need you to do one thing for me: gather every skilled craftsman under heaven and forge a place where we may take shelter even after defeat, preserving a portion of our strength to wait for the day we rise again. In my search for the secrets of the Heavenly Court this time, I found a wondrous place.

.

. " The voice grew fainter and fainter, until it could no longer be made out. Shen Mu followed them onward. The voice grew softer and softer, and at last he could hear nothing at all. And the further forward he went, the more indistinct the figures of King Buddha Sakra and the others became — more and more indistinct.

When they walked into a mansion and passed through its gate, the gods standing to either side closed the doors, and the figures of King Buddha Sakra and the rest vanished in an instant!

Shen Mu was dumbstruck. He had followed these figures into the mansion, and as the doors shut, King Buddha Sakra and the others disappeared before his very eyes!

"This. . . this must be.

. .

a gaze!

" Shen Mu bowed his head in thought for a moment, then suddenly raised it, his eyes bright as snow. He struck fist to palm: "A gaze! This must be the Kaihuang Era, more than twenty thousand years ago. Someone in this divine city saw this scene and turned what he saw into a memory! I am inside that person's memory! Eldest Senior Brother, like me, walked into this person's memory! A memory is what the eyes see turned into a vision in the mind. The one who saw this scene did not enter the mansion, and so when King Buddha Sakra and the others went inside, their figures vanished. .

. " He passed through the gate and came outside, his gaze searching in all directions: "He did not see the faces of those personages — which means those personages were too powerful. Their features must have been veiled by their own divine light, so that this man could not see their faces clearly; and therefore in the memory these people have no faces at all! Then where did he see this scene from. . .

" Shen Mu walked back the way he had come, his gaze like lightning, searching everywhere, thinking: "This person must have had a strange appearance. He may have been a being with many heads and many faces, able to see both ahead and behind. . .

" There were many gods and demons in the city; the streets were thronged with comers and goers, and it was hard to determine whose memory this was. This divine city must have been a place of great importance in Taiming Heaven.

The number of gods and demons was beyond belief, and many of them had cultivated to the primal spirit form, and so were fantastically varied. Primal spirit forms like the four-spirit bodies of the Wasteland could be seen everywhere here. There were gods with human heads and serpent bodies, gods with ox heads and human bodies, bird heads on human bodies, human heads on bird bodies — a thousand strange shapes; and gods and demons with several heads were not at all uncommon.