Chapter 157 — The Golden Palace Drugged

Shen Mu suddenly came to his senses: this line of thinking of his was perilous in the extreme. That was how the Lame Elder had lost his leg. Though the Lame Elder showed a smiling face to the world, behind their backs he sighed all day long, forever wanting to go and reclaim that leg of his, and never daring to.

If he himself sank into that frenzy of thieving that had possessed the Lame Elder before he was crippled, then his own end could not be far from the Lame Elder's. "Sweet as this feeling is, I had best do less of it from now on.

" Shen Mu cautioned himself, then turned and looked again at the treasures strewn across the floor.

Apart from the sinister artifacts forged by Loulan's Golden Palace, he wanted to carry them all away — only, what he could carry was limited. "The Sword Pill is enshrined here by them; it must be a treasure of no small worth.

" Shen Mu picked up the Sword Pill.

It was very heavy; he guessed that a great many swords were sealed within.

His vital qi probed into it a little, and with a hum a curved saber flew out of the "Sword Pill" and slowly revolved half a turn before him. "It is no Sword Pill — it is a Saber Pill!

" Shen Mu was astonished.

He had seen such Saber Pills before, among the rebels of the Man-Di Kingdom: they had been used to batter Libationer Bashan's Precipice Heaven-Steel divine power, and in the end tens of thousands of curved sabers had all embedded themselves in the Precipice Heaven-Steel and could not be recalled — which was why Torimu had been able to slaughter the rebels so cleanly and easily. Shen Mu seized one of the curved sabers; it did not sit well in his hand, and evidently a special cultivation method was needed to wield it. Even so, this saber's quality was far above the other rebels' sabers, its temper no inferior to his own Slaughter Blade. He withdrew his vital qi, and with a ding the curved saber returned into the Saber Pill and vanished.

The Saber Pill held an enormous number of curved sabers; it was certainly a weapon of mass slaughter. Shen Mu then picked up the broken sword. He could not sense its power; it seemed to possess none at all, and it lay light as a feather in his hand.

Shen Mu opened his Soaring-Heaven Sky Eye and his Azure-Heaven Sky Eye and examined it closely, yet could make nothing of it.

Still, if Loulan's Golden Palace had hidden it so reverently in their treasure vault, it must be extraordinary; so he put it away as well.

Part of the old zither was charred. Shen Mu glanced at it: the marks of a lightning strike.

"Eh? Something is wrong here — this zither carries a killing aura and a demonic aura! " Shen Mu examined it closely, and the more he looked the stranger it seemed.

The zither bore a blood-killing aura, as though rich blood flowed within it, and the demonic aura was thick beyond measure.

This zither was not like a zither at all; it was like a monstrous demon of unspeakable terror.

"Could it be that a tree spirit cultivated into a demon and was made into a zither by someone? A fine thing — that too must be carried off.

" Shen Mu slung the zither onto his back, then picked up a hand bone.

The instant it came into his grasp, he felt as though struck by lightning; his whole body shook violently, and a voice of incomparable resonance burst thunderously in his mind.

"The Divine Tongue! " Shen Mu's face changed drastically and he flung the hand bone down at once. That voice was the Divine Tongue; holding it in his hand, he had felt as though a deity had appeared in his mind.

He had just plucked this hand bone out of the golden altar's seal and tossed it aside without a thought; only now did he realize how right he had been to throw it away.

"This hand bone is profoundly strange. Could it be the hand of a god? " He steadied himself, drew the Chubao Sword, and used it to flip the hand bone up. Then he picked a cloth bag off the floor and put the hand bone into it.

"The Buddhists' Thousand Banners Pagoda is a fine thing too — only it is too big.

" Shen Mu looked the Thousand Banners Pagoda up and down. Each banner was exquisitely wrought, only a little over three inches tall; but a thousand banners cunningly bound into the shape of a pagoda made for something very large, standing over ten feet high.

If he carried that on his back, it would draw every eye.

The sariras he did pick up and stuff into the cloth bag, and then he found several jade beads and dropped those in as well. Shen Mu tossed the Saber Pill into the bag too, and only then sensed something odd: the Saber Pill was very heavy, yet once it was in the bag he could not feel its weight at all. He lifted the bag and turned it over and over, examining it several times.

This bag too was one of the treasures sealed upon the golden altar; he did not know what material it was made of, nor what use it had. On one side of the bag was embroidered a strange beast with its great mouth open, and the beast's open mouth was positioned exactly at the bag's opening.

He opened the bag and looked inside, and saw several things the size of sesame seeds — the very treasures he had just thrown in. Shen Mu was stunned for a moment, then poured out the god's hand bone, the sariras, the Saber Pill, and the rest.

As these things slid out of the bag's mouth they were all the same size as before, unchanged. "Strange! " Shen Mu pulled the bag's mouth wide, thrust his head inside, and peered in — and got a fright. He saw a space roughly a mu across, sixty or seventy feet high.

He drew his head back, reached his hand into the bag, pushed his whole arm in, and still could not touch the bottom. Shen Mu thought it over, then put the god's hand bone, the sariras, the Saber Pill, and the rest back into the bag, stuffed the zither in as well, and crammed the Thousand Banners Pagoda in after it.

Then he heaved up that glittering golden lower half of a body and stuffed it into the bag too. Then the youth rose and began picking things up off the floor, taking whatever he saw and stuffing it into the bag; whatever was too large to fit he simply abandoned.

Before long the bag bulged slightly, and he could gradually feel a little weight to it, though it was not heavy.

Shen Mu bowed his head and went over the things he had thrown out, picking up several pill furnaces along the way. One of them was a sealed furnace, a little larger than the one in the Imperial Academy and even more precious.

Only the ritual implements that the Shaman Cult had refined from human bone remained in this treasure vault.

Shen Mu let out a breath, tied the bag at his waist, and covered it with his clothes. "I have been here long enough.

Time to go find Sister Yuxiu and the others and leave as soon as may be.

" The youth's heart pounded wildly. He steadied himself, thought things through carefully for a while, and did not put on the human skin; instead he took out his Slaughter Blade and trimmed his hair, cutting it into the style worn by Shaman Cult disciples.

Shen Mu put on Danbaro's clothes and circulated the Heaven God Art of Creation from the Great Nurturing Dark Demon Scripture.

At once the color of his skin began to alter subtly, giving off a faint golden light, so that at a glance he was a shaman-priest of Loulan's Golden Palace who had achieved some small success in his cultivation. Shen Mu opened the map of Loulan's Golden Palace, studied it for a while, then put it away.

His vital qi stirred the talisman treasure; it rose into the air, rune after rune lighting up, shining upon the seal on the treasure vault's door. "Twelve, nine, six, ten, seven, six, seven, one.

.

. " Shen Mu recited the numbers aloud, and with each number the talisman treasure turned once in the air, aiming one of its fourteen faces at the seal. When he had entered this vault, the turtle-backed guard had stirred the talisman treasure to undo the seal.