Chapter 843 — One Sword Breaks the Heavenly Dipper

Many old Daoists poured out of the Daoist palace and stood around; hearing these words, they all frowned deeply.

The Qingyun Sect Master was seeking instruction from the Dao Ancestor, yet Shen Mu, Xiao Chunfeng and the others were preparing to kill!

"Should we stop them?"

An old Daoist with a head as big as a bushel muttered, "The question is how. They are envoys of the Heavenly Court. That the Ancient Star God's disciple died in Qingyun Heaven is already a crime on our Qingyun Sect's head; if we then block the Heavenly Court's envoys from taking revenge, our crime becomes unpardonable. And on the other side stands the Overlord Body, whom even the Dao Ancestor dares not receive in a bow — one can neither strike him, nor scold him, nor even touch him. How are we to stop them?"

The other Daoists were sick with worry; with the Qingyun Sect Master absent, they had no idea what to do at all.

Suddenly Yuchenzi said in a low voice, "Jingping's Shen the Overlord Body and the Heavenly Court's Xiao Chunfeng are each looking out for their own lives. While the Sect Master is consulting the Dao Ancestor, they mean to cook the rice before anyone can stop them."

Several old Daoists turned to him in alarm and asked, "What do you mean?"

Yuchenzi said, "Uncles and elders, consider this: if Shen the Overlord Body wipes out the Heavenly Court's envoys first, where does that leave our Qingyun Heaven?"

"Kill that bastard Overlord Body and send his head to the Heavenly Court!" one hot-tempered Daoist snarled.

Yuchenzi did not know whether to laugh or cry. "Three or four hundred Heavenly Court envoys and disciples of the Ancient Star God died in our Qingyun Heaven — how great a crime is that? It is enough to have our clan, our sect and our nation wiped from the earth! At that point our best course would be to join hands with Jingping and rebel together!"

The Daoists understood.

"And Xiao Chunfeng's aim is the same. Kill Shen the Overlord Body, leave the Dao Ancestor no choice, bind the Daoist school and Qingyun Heaven firmly together, and leave us no chance to rebel. For if the Dao Ancestor chose Shen the Overlord Body, he would surely kill Xiao Chunfeng and his people to consecrate the banners."

Yuchenzi said, "Both want the timber shaped into a boat before the Dao Ancestor makes his decision, so that he has no choice left! Shen Mu, Shen the Overlord Body, sent the Sect Master away to ask the Dao Ancestor precisely so that, with the Sect Master gone, he can cook the rice. Brother Xiao Chunfeng's aim is the same. This is how clever men act — they do not leave their lives and their futures in another's hands."

The Daoists looked at him with new eyes. One old Daoist asked, "Then what should we do?"

Yuchenzi pondered, then said decisively, "If we stop them, we make the choice for the Dao Ancestor, and whatever we do will be wrong. The only thing we can do now is prepare to clean up afterwards."

The Daoists all frowned and asked, "What do you mean?"

"If Jingping's Shen the Overlord Body wins and kills the Heavenly Court's envoys, then we must be ready beforehand to destroy the corpses and erase every trace, pinning the blame on the Earth Mother Yuanjun and clearing Qingyun Heaven of all involvement. When the Heavenly Court investigates and the trail leads to the Earth Mother Yuanjun, our punishment will be the lightest; afterwards we can plot in secret with Jingping, build our strength slowly, and wait for our moment."

Yuchenzi spoke rapidly: "If instead the Heavenly Court's envoys kill Shen the Overlord Body, we must prepare treasures of every kind to bribe the envoys, so that they will plead for us in the Heavenly Court and reduce our punishment to the barest minimum. We need only do these two things. Whichever way the victory falls between Shen the Overlord Body and Xiao Chunfeng, and whatever the Dao Ancestor decides, we can meet it with composure."

"Good!"

The Daoists praised him one after another, then set about their preparations.

Before the Daoist palace, Shen Mu, Lin Xuan and Xiao Chunfeng noticed that the old Daoists looked straight through them and hurried off; each of them silently approved: "There are men of insight in the Qingyun Sect. They have seen the situation clearly."

Their thoughts were exactly as Yuchenzi had guessed: they would not leave their lives and interests to the Dao Ancestor's judgment. They would finish off their opponent first and force the Dao Ancestor to choose in their favor!

"The skies here are truly a shifting storm."

Shen Mu looked up. The wind rolled and the clouds surged, veiling the artificial sun and moon and letting the artificial rivers of stars and constellations emerge — a sight of extraordinary beauty. He could not help praising it: "The Daoist school's arts of calculation and divine power are no small matter. They can evolve every Daoist art in the world."

Xiao Chunfeng also looked up and said in praise, "Shen the Overlord Body truly has uncommon vision. The reason the Heavenly Court values the Daoist school is precisely that its mastery of the arts of calculation is unmatched under heaven, the finest of all ages. The Heavenly Court's armies of gods and demons, including the Ten Guards, all have their weapons and their formations designed by the Daoist school."

"So if one would contend with the Heavenly Court for the world, one must have the Daoist school's support," Shen Mu said.

Suddenly a youth behind him gave a roar, shot into the air and leaped into the sky, crying loudly, "You there, surnamed Shen! Let me see for myself what an Overlord Body is!"

The youth stood in the air and suddenly shook his body. Behind him his primordial spirit appeared, tortoise and serpent entwined: the tortoise with a dragon's head and a tortoise's shell, the serpent bearing a thousand pairs of cicada wings that beat with a rustling clatter, its bloody maw gaping wide.

It was Xuanwu, the Black Tortoise.

As the Xuanwu primordial spirit appeared, a mighty river came into being beneath its feet, surging across the sky, the long river crashing against the void with a vast, resonant roar.

Shen Mu looked at Lin Xuan and smiled. "Dao Master Lin, a disciple of the Northern Emperor Xuanwu — are you sure of yourself?"

Lin Xuan did not look at the Northern Emperor's disciple in the sky. He smiled and said, "Sect Master Shen, your head is built differently from other men's. You are always having strange and wonderful ideas, and then you do not carry them out yourself but hand them to us. And you are forever running off in all directions, often gone a year or two at a stretch. This time, back in Jingping, you have been rushing about as well; I daresay you have not yet learned how far the Daoist arts and divine powers of Jingping's Daoist school have advanced in these few years?"

Shen Mu was slightly taken aback. Dao Master Lin Xuan, long sword on his back, took a step and rose higher with each stride, walking toward the Northern Emperor Xuanwu's disciple. He said with a smile, "Xu Shenghua once said that of the two lines of research you gave us, the Taiwei Calculation Canon and geomagnetic force, geomagnetic force is the easiest to yield results, but it is the Taiwei Calculation Canon that has brought the greatest upheaval to our methods. Geomagnetic force merely adds one more system of divine powers to the world, whereas the Taiwei Calculation Canon can transform every Daoist art and divine power under heaven — even the very structure of divine weapons and of formations! These past years, everyone in our Daoist school has devoted themselves to the Taiwei Calculation Canon! The canon you gave me contained only the general framework; in these years our Daoist school has refined it, extending it into ever finer methods of calculation, and thereby improved our divine powers!"