Chapter 183 — Underworld Raid

"Adept at playing at ghosts and spirits, are you?

Can you summon gods and ghosts to fight? " Shen Mu gave a slight start, and then suddenly recalled the Soul-Drawing Incantation and the Talisman Command over Ghosts and Gods — the two arts of the soul and of specters which he had found on the first floor of the Heaven Records Tower.

The Talisman Command over Ghosts and Gods belonged to the Hongshan School, while the Soul-Drawing Incantation came from the Netherworld Sect.

Both arts had been placed on the first floor of the tower because they formed a rather out-of-the-way category of the magical arts that very few ever cultivated; they were arts of the soul, yet they happened to possess barely any offensive power. Especially the Talisman Command over Ghosts and Gods — that art boasted that it could mobilize ghosts and dispatch gods, but Shen Mu had tried it several times; at most it was roughly on the level of the Five-Ghost Transport Art in the Great Nurturing Dark Demon Sutra, only considerably more convoluted.

After finding the two arts, Shen Mu had wanted Chancellor Bashan to instruct him, but Chancellor Bashan likewise considered them overly obscure, had never studied them, and thus tossed them to Shen Mu to comprehend on his own. Although the Talisman Command was on a par with the Five-Ghost Transport Art, its runes were plainly far more complex, and moreover it required the refinement of a talisman artifact.

That artifact was even more complex than the talisman artifact Shen Mu had seen in the Golden Palace of Loulan: it was an incomplete sphere with one thousand and twenty-four irregular facets, each facet bearing a complex rune. The talisman artifact in the Golden Palace of Loulan had only fourteen facets.

It was precisely because he saw how complex the Talisman Command was that Shen Mu took the art to be remarkably mighty; never had he imagined its effect would be only the equivalent of the Five-Ghost Transport Art. He suspected that the Hongshan School might have concealed something from the outside world, but that school had already disappeared from this world; it no longer existed.

As for the Soul-Drawing Incantation of the Netherworld Sect, Shen Mu had cultivated it; whether it could successfully draw the souls of the dead back from the underworld, he had never tried. Some runes in the two arts resembled one another — indeed, all soul-type arts should share some similarities.

Shen Mu bought some yellow paper and cinnabar in the city, spent two days refining the talisman artifact of the Talisman Command, and then spent another day writing out the runes of the Soul-Drawing Incantation as well, setting the two side by side for comparison.

After comparing them, Shen Mu was finally able to determine that both the Talisman Command and the Soul-Drawing Incantation in the Heaven Records Tower contained errors — certain runes had been deliberately written wrong. Unwilling to hand over their arts to the court in good faith, those sects had deliberately corrupted a few runes in the arts they handed in, so that the powers of the arts were either vastly weakened or never manifested at all.

The Talisman Command required an extremely large number of runes, and the errors in it numbered more than a dozen.

Yet precisely because the runes were so many, the correct ones likewise numbered over a thousand. This was a magnificent treasury of knowledge.

With such a foundation, Shen Mu could amend the erroneous runes in the Soul-Drawing Incantation.

The incantation called upon more than six hundred arrangements of runes; Shen Mu corrected every mistaken rune he could detect, and when he felt there ought to be no errors left, he immediately found a soldier and asked, "Are there still corpses in the city? I wish to test a spell.

" "Does Your Honor need Netherworld Sect corpses to test the spell? " asked the soldier.

"All the Netherworld Sect corpses have been buried. If they are needed, we will have to dig them up again.

" Shen Mu's expression changed slightly, and he asked with urgency, "Where were they buried? " The soldier said, "One batch was buried in the common burial ground beside Dijiang County, and another batch was buried at Lu Mountain beside Lu County.

When we were dragging the corpses out of the river a few days ago, we buried them wherever was nearest.

" Shen Mu's mind shook, and he said hastily, "Where is the Deputy Prefect?

Go quickly and inform the Deputy Prefect — have her put the entire army on alert, and send soldiers to the burial ground and to Lu Mountain to burn those corpses! " The soldier was puzzled by the order, but he still rushed out at once, saying, "The Deputy Prefect has gone to Dijiang County on the opposite shore to comfort the people. I will go and inform her immediately!

" "Sister Chuyu is at Dijiang County? That is bad!

" Shen Mu called over another soldier, bidding him alert the garrison of the city, and then swiftly assembled Shen Wanyun, Yue Qinghong, and the others.

"The Netherworld Sect may mount a comeback! " he said at top speed.

"Be on alert at once! " Shen Wanyun, Yue Qinghong, and the rest were all deeply baffled.

"The Netherworld Sect's people have been killed off almost to the point of extinction," said the monk Yun Que. "Only a few stray cats and stray dogs remain, fleeing in all directions.

Do such paltry characters really call for an alert?

" "They feigned their deaths! " Shen Mu had only just said this when, abruptly, a faint, half-tangible chant drifted over from the river's surface.

The chant was ancient and obscure, as if a deity of the netherworld were summoning the dead to return to their souls, giving one the feeling that a blurred but towering god had opened a gateway to another world and was sending the souls of the dead back from the realm of darkness! Shen Mu's countenance changed dramatically; he set off at a pace as swift as a flying bolt, and with a shrill whistle that split the air he landed upon the gate tower of the north gate.

The north gate was empty, with only a few soldiers patrolling, for after a great battle most of the troops of Lizhou Prefecture were resting and recuperating.

Shen Mu looked out at the river and saw, at the center of the Yong River, a straw-hatted Daoist standing on a mast, casting spells and chanting upon the water. Enormous runes each emitted a green glow, like countless luminous green serpents twisting and turning in the air. Yun Que and the others hastened over in alarm and stood behind Shen Mu, looking out at the river. "What has happened.

. . " Shen Wanyun began, but before his words faded his expression froze: a mass of black mist surged up from the river, its range expanding with ever-increasing breadth, and within that darkness, faintly and indistinctly, stood a gateway in the middle of the river, floating upon the water!

In the blink of an eye, the sky went dark. Shen Mu turned to the opposite shore, where he dimly discerned several tower ships of scholars sailing this way; then he saw the darkness engulf them. Another tower ship of scholars had already sailed into the sky above the Yong River and was likewise swallowed by darkness; shouts of anger and screams of terror rose one after another from within it — evidently the crew had encountered some bizarre and unforeseen disaster.

He turned his head to Lu Mountain on the left side of the county town. Lu Mountain burst apart with a sudden crack; tiny figures shot up into midair and flew over toward them.

Several soldiers who had been guarding the west gate of Lu County had not yet recovered their senses before the flying figures slapped yellow talismans onto them, fixing their bodies in place, and beheaded them on the spot! Boom! The west gate burst wide open, and "corpse" after "corpse" poured into the county town, falling upon the still-unorganized defenders and massacring them.