荒墟牧神 - 荒城集市風雲起 - 雲海書庫

he tree on the nether ape's head, peeled it, and ate it. It was sweet and moist, with a faint medicinal fragrance. The nether ape sat up and pulled the tree off its own head. The roots had crawled all over its face. The ape stripped off a handful of leaves and fruit and chewed them slowly. Shen Mu handed it the remaining pills and instructed, "Only one at a time. Never more than one. And if you want to fight, go out and find other strange beasts to fight. You are not to tear down Zhenyang Palace." The nether ape's eyes lit up. It hastily put the pills away and nodded again and again. The Essence-Condensing Pills Shen Mu refined were too large. A pill master's pills were only the size of a little finger's tip, while his, made with unskilled technique, were the size of an ordinary man's fist. So a batch yielded few pills, only some twenty-odd. Shen Mu left with an easy mind. As soon as he was far off, the nether ape took out one absurdly large pill and hurried off, eager, to settle a score in the nearest strange beast's territory. The strange beast next door was its enemy, often invading its territory, plundering beasts to fill its belly, and had beaten it soundly several times. Shen Mu's palm print was on the cliff wall, and the beast knew a new master had come, so it had not trespassed for some time. The nether ape arrived at its enemy's home, swallowed the pill in one gulp, roared, and charged into the enemy's territory. Two days later, the day of the temple fair finally came. Granny Zhu brought cloth; Old Man Ma brought some furniture he had newly made; the pill master carried his medicine basket on his back; the butcher loaded onto the cart a strange beast the lame old man had caught the day before, evidently meaning to slaughter and sell the meat at the fair, the butcher selling and the lame man taking a share, a clear division of labor between them. The mute brought his furnace and his blacksmith's tools; the hard-of-hearing old man brought brush, ink, paper, and inkstone; they called Shen Mu, hitched up the ox cart, and set off for Granny Temple. The cart was packed to the brim, and it rolled rumbling toward Granny Temple. Shen Mu drove, without much enthusiasm. A country fair would once have held some attraction for him as a boy, but his horizons were far wider now, and a fair was no longer so interesting. Yet when they reached Granny Temple, Shen Mu was still startled. The fair was bigger and noisier than he had imagined: around the ruins of Granny Temple stretched a market ten li long, stalls everywhere, crowds coming and going, a bustling, clamorous throng. These were not the people of ten li around, but villagers from every village within a hundred or two hundred li, most of them gathered here! "On the map of Zhenyang Palace, this place is not called Granny Temple but Azure Wolf Palace," Shen Mu marveled, wondering why it had been renamed Granny Temple. The ox cart drove into the market, and Shen Mu saw all manner of strange and unheard-of things laid out on tiny stalls: sugar-figure makers, cooks and food sellers, jugglers, fire-spitters, sellers of strange beasts, of ores, of jewels, of daughters, a little of everything, nothing missing. "This humble father and daughter are from Ox Family Village, passing through your honorable parts. We seek neither fame nor profit, only that my daughter has come of age and has no husband yet; therefore we hold a contest of arms to choose a bridegroom, hoping to find a hero of surpassing skill..." Shen Mu saw a great commotion ahead, stopped the cart, and craned his neck to look. It was a marriage-by-combat contest at Granny Temple, men and women fighting fiercely on the platform. He watched a few moments, lost interest, and went on, only to find that Granny Temple had several such platforms. These platforms were built on earthen mounds, and on them were young men and women from the various villages, many of them young martial artists in their prime; and of course there were also