Firing the Sun-Shooting Divine Cannon required the jade plate in Qin Mu's hands. The cannon was enormous, and moving or controlling it was no easy task, so Qin Mu had refined a separate jade plate to resonate with the cannon. Through the plate he could command the colossal weapon, striking whatever it was pointed at.
The jade plate was the brain of the Sun-Shooting Divine Cannon.
Qin Mu taught Emperor Yanfeng how to operate the plate. It was simple to learn and even simpler to use. As a master forger, Qin Mu could reduce the most troublesome of tasks to the simplest of forms—by that alone, he surpassed other master forgers beyond measure.
Emperor Yanfeng put the disk away, took it out again a moment later to toy with it, put it away once more, and after a while took it out to fiddle with it again.
Qin Mu said kindly, "You could always fire a shot and try it, Your Majesty."
Emperor Yanfeng shot him a fierce glare and snapped, "One blast of that cannon and the imperial treasury is empty! I'm not like you, throwing money around without a care."
Qin Mu said, "Didn't the Crown Prince come back from the snowy plains? He should have brought back quite a lot of wealth."
"That's still no reason to fire at will! The money in the treasury can't be touched lightly. The whole nation is in ruins and waiting to be rebuilt—what part of it doesn't need money?"
Emperor Yanfeng put the jade plate away again, and a moment later Qin Mu saw the emperor sneak it back out. He couldn't help shaking his head. The emperor had never fired a shot himself; he was sure to eat without relish and sleep without rest, with nothing but the thought of firing that one satisfying shot haunting his heart and his dreams.
Of course, his reason would tell him he couldn't just fire the Sun-Shooting Divine Cannon on a whim, and then the emperor would go right back to agonizing over it.
"Let him be," Qin Mu thought to himself.
Suddenly, several officials of the Heaven Observation Bureau came forward carrying thick bundles of files. At their head was the Fire Mountain Officer, who bowed to Qin Mu and said, "Supervisor Qin, that shot you just fired into the sky—when our observation platform examined the heavens, something strange showed up. There are many masters of divinatory calculation here with you, Supervisor, so we hoped you could help us work out the calculations."
Qin Mu asked in surprise, "What kind of strangeness?"
"When the sky broke, the celestial signs changed."
The Fire Well Officer of the bureau said from the side, "When the sky split open, the celestial signs above shifted; only after it closed again did they return to normal. We have recorded the angles of the shift, but our attainments in divinatory calculation are not high, and it is difficult to work out what happened at that moment. Lord Qin, please look—these are the star charts of past generations."
He opened the star charts and turned the pages one by one while Qin Mu watched. The bureau had kept records of the sky's celestial signs; every year's chart followed a regular pattern, with only the subtlest of changes.
"And this is the star chart from after your shot, Lord Qin."
The Fire Well Officer turned to the last page and pointed at the chart. "After that shot, the sky went dark for an instant, and the armillary sphere on the observation platform recorded the stars and signs of the heavens. The Sun Star shifted by an inch and seven-tenths; once the crack healed, it slid back into place. The other stars that appeared during the darkness had shifted too, by greater or lesser degrees. But where the crack was—not a single star. That is absolutely abnormal. In that crack, there should have been one hundred and seven stars!"
Qin Mu was still puzzled. "Could it be that the cannon's power was so great that it tore space, warping the line of sight and producing an apparent shift?"
"That is possible."
The Fire Well Officer said, "However, when our bureau monitors the heavens, we use the armillary sphere. That spirit weapon is also a heavy-grade numinous treasure. The sight of us divine-ability cultivators may warp, but the armillary sphere's will not. The stars and signs on the sphere move in accordance with the stars and signs in the sky; if the sphere's stars moved, then the stars in the sky truly moved. And most crucial of all—why were there no stars where the crack was?"
Qin Mu's heart stirred slightly, and he probed, "What exactly are you implying?"
The officials of the bureau exchanged glances, and the Fire Mountain Officer coughed. "Until the calculations yield a result, the Heaven Observation Bureau makes no conjectures, nor do we take responsibility for anyone else's conjectures. We beg your understanding, Lord Qin."
These fellows are so secretive.
Qin Mu frowned and said, "Most of the experts I have here are masters of divinatory calculation from the Dao Sect and Little Yujing. They are just now planning to leave and return to the sect and the mountain, and I can't promise they'll agree to help."
Xu Shenghua stepped forward, eager to have a go. "I have some attainments in divinatory calculation as well."
Qin Mu smiled. "If Brother Xu is willing to help, that would be wonderful. I'll go invite Dao Master Lin Xuan and Wang Muran and the others."
Jing Yan hurriedly said, "If my young master helps, then the thousand coins he owes—"
Without so much as turning his head, Qin Mu said, "Even without your help, I have plenty of masters of calculation here!"
Jing Yan's face darkened at once. "Cheapskate!"
Xu Shenghua said, "Don't be angry, Swallow. Truthfully, I want to know what happened in the sky after Cult Master Qin fired that shot as well. And he wasn't wrong—with or without our help, it makes little difference to him; it's only a matter of how long it takes."
Qin Mu gathered the young masters—Dao Master Lin Xuan, Wang Muran, Mu Qingdai, and the rest. Once everyone had assembled, Wang Muran asked, "What do you want calculated, Cult Master Qin?"
Qin Mu looked toward the bureau's Fire Well Officer, whose eyes flickered. "The celestial signs."
Dao Master Lin Xuan laughed. "Celestial signs? Cult Master Qin cultivated our Dao Sect's Dao Sword, and the fourth chapter of the Dao Sword is precisely Celestial Phenomena. With him here, what does he need us for?"
Qin Mu shook his head. "The fourth chapter of the Dao Sword calculates normal celestial signs. What the Heaven Observation Bureau wants us to calculate is an abnormal one."
Dao Master Lin Xuan and the other Daoist priests were all bewildered. Celestial signs could be normal or abnormal?
The Fire Well Officer described what the bureau had observed. "The stars all moved, and the stars in the crack vanished. Such celestial signs are absolutely abnormal. It was as if— as if..."
Mu Qingdai blurted out, "As if the stars were hung on a curtain!"
The Fire Well Officer clapped his hands. "Yes! As if hung on a curtain! Your cannon light tore the curtain open, Lord Qin, and then the stars, the sun, and the moon parted to either side!"
The young people exchanged a look, their expressions grave.
The celestial signs... were hung up in the sky?
Xu Shenghua raised his head to gaze at the heavens and steadied himself. "Cult Master Qin, what exactly do you intend to have us calculate?"
"From the shift of the stars caused by that shot, calculate the height and thickness of the sky!"
Qin Mu glanced at the many star officials of the bureau. "Gentlemen, is that what you mean?"
The star officials looked at one another, then slowly nodded, each and every one.
"You are perceptive, Lord Qin."
The Fire Well Officer said in a husky voice, "In the past, we believed the sky's height was boundless and its thickness boundless. But your shot, Lord Qin, has made our bureau think that the sky may be finite in height and finite in thickness. The stars above may not be as large or as far away as we imagined, and the sun seems to be— to be..."
He didn't dare go on.
Qin Mu looked at the others. "What do all of you think?"
They were all young. Though they came from different places, inherited different legacies, and belonged to different camps with different convictions, they were all curious, and one by one they lifted their heads to look at the sky.
Dao Master Lin Xuan withdrew his gaze. "Since Cult Master Qin's shot has shown us that the sky has a height and a thickness, why not calculate them right now?"
Everyone nodded in agreement.
Wang Muran said, "We'll need the precise shift data for each individual star before we can work it out."
The Fire Well Officer said, "Our bureau has records for every star, the sun included."
"Then this will be much easier!"
They set to work at once, measuring and calculating. A long while later, they pooled their results, and every face turned grave and lost.
"I don't believe it!"
A Daoist priest sprang to his feet and hurled the Eight Trigrams diagram in his hands to the ground, where it smashed to pieces with a crack. "I don't believe it!" he raged, then bolted for the door.
The other masters of calculation fell silent. Long Yu murmured, "It's impossible. We must have miscalculated. It's absolutely impossible..."
A few Daoist experts had their composure crumble outright, and they chuckled weakly. "We definitely got it wrong. The sky can't be this thin..."
"It's definitely wrong!" the Fire Well Officer said quickly and firmly.
"Right, it must be wrong!" quite a few people chimed in.
Xu Shenghua shook his head. "There's no way all of us calculated it wrong, is there? Every one of us reached the same numbers, so the result is correct. The sky really is this high, and this thick."
"Impossible! It's impossible..." Long Yu staggered away, soul-lost, as if he had gone a little mad.
Mu Qingdai's head swam, and she hurriedly crouched down and sat on the ground.
Qin Mu stared at the numbers they had calculated and sank deep into thought. The heavens were a hundred thousand li high, yet a pitiful three hundred zhang thick. Which meant that, within a thickness of just three hundred zhang, there were the sun, the moon, the Milky Way, and countless stars!
How was that possible?
"Heh heh heh heh..."
His own composure suddenly began to crumble too. He kept giggling and giggling, laughing until tears streamed down, laughing until he sat down and slapped his own knee again and again.
"Cult Master Qin, what are you laughing at?" Dao Master Lin Xuan glared at him and demanded.
"Forsaken ones..."
Qin Mu roared with laughter, pointing at the tip of Lin Xuan's nose, laughing until he nearly wept. "You're a forsaken one! You're one too! And you, and you, and you! You're all forsaken ones!"
Everyone stared at him coldly as his finger jabbed at their faces one by one, until at last it settled on Xu Shenghua. His laughter died away, and his face turned terrifyingly cold. "You're a forsaken one too!"
Xu Shenghua's brow furrowed. The sky—only this high, only this thick. Never mind placing the sun, the moon, and the river of stars inside it; you couldn't even fit a single great mountain in there.
And yet the sky held the sun, the moon, and the river of stars. If so, only one possibility remained. The dazzling stars above, the blazing sun, the luminous moon, the Milky Way with its hundred million stars flowing like a long river—all of it was fake. Pasted on!
This sky was like a seal, sealing in this world. The sun, moon, stars, constellations, and river of stars presented to them were all fake.
The Great Ruins, walled in by the God-Severing Mountains on every side, never saw the light of day. When night fell, darkness crept in, and no matter how high one looked, one could never see the stars, never see the moon.
The people of the Great Ruins were the gods' forsaken ones.
But perhaps the living beings of this outside world were just like the forsaken of the Great Ruins—forsaken ones as well!
Dao Master Lin Xuan abruptly shook out his sleeves and said coldly, "I will not be a forsaken one! Disciples of the Dao Sect, we're leaving—back to the mountain!" But as he walked, walked on, tears suddenly streamed down his face.
"'The Dao models itself on nature'... nature, my ass! It's a damned fake nature!"
The young Dao Master tilted his head back and cursed at the sky at the top of his lungs: "Every ounce of effort in this life, and it all went into studying a damned fake nature and its myriad phenomena!"