Chapter 163 — The Waters of Bangong Lake

Cold sweat broke out on the Shaman Sovereign's brow. The boat had drifted near; in a moment it would pass from the other world into the world of the living — and the old man at its prow was reaching out his hand, as if to stretch that hand out of the other world and seize the reincarnating Great Sovereign, dragging him back into that world! Suddenly the Great Sovereign's body went rigid and dropped from the air, breathless and lifeless — and Bangong Cuo opened a pair of dark, glossy eyes. The moment his eyes opened, he saw the seam between the two worlds begin to collapse.

Paper figures and paper horses burst into flame without fire and burned to ash in an instant, and the hand that had reached out of the other world slowly withdrew and was gone. In the sacred temple the lamps blazed suddenly bright; the gloom and oppression of a moment before had vanished without a trace.

Bangong Cuo let out a long breath and smiled. "At last — it is done. " "Congratulations, Great Sovereign!

" The Shaman Sovereign bowed.

Bangong Cuo waved a hand, and the Shaman Sovereign bowed and withdrew, closing the temple doors behind him, and sighed in relief.

"Had the Great Sovereign not been so old and frail, would Heaven Knife ever have come killing to his door?

Now that the Great Sovereign has reincarnated, he can live out another life at last. The kingdom of Jingping is nothing to fear now — and neither is Heaven Knife. " Inside Qingmen Pass, Shen Mu tossed Libationer Bashan two jade bottles and went off to buy spirit medicines for refining pills. He had used a great deal of dragon saliva reattaching Zai Fu's body, and five bottles remained.

Libationer Bashan had fought the strongmen of Loulan's Golden Palace in a desperate battle and was badly hurt; beyond his external wounds he needed spirit pills to heal his internal injuries and purge his hidden ailments.

"Young Master, the Patriarch is looking for you. " No sooner had Shen Mu finished preparing the medicines than the herb-garden shophand said, "We beg the Young Master to leave the pass at once and make for Yongzhou. " Shen Mu blinked, then nodded.

He returned to the inn in the pass, refined a batch of healing spirit pills for Libationer Bashan, called Xuehu'er, and without a word went out of the pass, heading for Yongzhou.

Ling Yuxiu had been bathing; when she came out, Shen Mu was nowhere to be found.

Alarmed, she hurried to ask Libationer Bashan.

He did not know when Shen Mu had left either. After a moment's thought he said, "Princess, there is no need to worry.

The fox is gone too — which means my junior brother was not carried off, but left of his own accord, with the fox. " Ling Yuxiu felt a pang of disappointment. Once again Shen Mu had slipped away without so much as a word to her. Did it have to be so mysterious?

Was there anything that could not be spoken of?

Libationer Bashan took his spirit pills and rose.

"Princess, we return to the Imperial Academy.

By my reckoning, the Grand Libationer must soon step down, and a new Grand Libationer soon take office. Let us go back early. The Grand Libationer has always looked after me kindly; I must at least see him off. " Ling Yuxiu assented.

By then Shen Mu was already far along the road with Xuehu'er, drawing nearer and nearer to Yongzhou.

Everywhere along the way was the chaos of war. From time to time a sect would proclaim the emperor benighted — that he had wrongly raised a treacherous minister to be the Imperial Preceptor of Jingping and plunged the realm into ruin — and would rise in rebellion, vowing to purge the court and set the record straight. He came to Luodu, hard by Yongzhou. Luodu too was up in arms, its people in misery; armies from every quarter marched to put down the unrest, but it was like ladling out soup to still a boiling pot — of little avail.

The fire the Imperial Preceptor of Jingping had kindled burned too hot. Many of the officials who made up the ranks of Jingping's government at every level were masters drawn from the various sects, and now that those sects had rebelled, those officials rebelled with them.

The foundations of the empire had been shaken; the upheaval would be very hard to quell. "What means does the Imperial Preceptor of Jingping have, that he can still pacify a realm in such turmoil? " Shen Mu wondered uneasily.

"If this goes on, every sect under heaven will have risen.

Even if Jingping then puts down the rebellion, it will be left gravely weakened. " That was the one thing the Imperial Preceptor of Jingping could not afford to see.

If Jingping were gravely weakened, how would he subdue the other nations round about it, how would he seize the Ruins and build achievements unmatched in the ages?

Within Luodu's borders, though Shen Mu was nothing more than a traveler passing through, he was set upon by more than a dozen bands of bandits along the way — some restless divine-power practitioners, others officials of Luodu who had taken to the greenwood and made themselves kings of the mountains. Relying on his speed, and on the Lame Elder's Heaven-Stealing Leg Art whenever he could not win, he came through the whole road unscathed.

"If the Imperial Preceptor of Jingping can put down this rebellion — root out or bring to heel every hostile power in the empire — then Jingping, united in heart from top to bottom, will be a terror indeed! "