Chapter 47 — A Third Guest Suddenly Appears in the Trap

Before them a colossal dragon coiled about a towering palace, ring upon ring, its enormous head reared high above the great hall, staring toward them!

It was a dragon skeleton, a vast dragon skeleton of bone alone, without flesh or blood; its teeth alone stood taller than Shen Mu!

Though the dragon had been dead no one knew how long, its fearsome majesty was still plain to see; in life it must have been a being of extraordinary power.

Shen Mu opened his Lingxiao Heavenly Eye and looked, and at once the dragon bones before him seemed to come alive, divine radiance surging to the heavens; in his eyes the great dragon seemed to writhe and swim. The dragon was plainly dead, yet such was its bearing, its grandeur, that he felt it still lived!

"The Dragon King of the Surging River, a true dragon..."

Shen Mu gazed at the great dragon, and something stirred in his heart; he thought of Grandpa Ma's boxing art, of the move in the Eightfold Thunder-Cry Formula called Nine Dragons Ride Wind and Thunder. In Nine Dragons Ride Wind and Thunder the yuan qi is divided into nine layers of force; the first layer is the Raging Dragon Charge, the second the Twin Dragons Entwined, and each layer's power adds one more dragon-force to the last!

Shen Mu had practiced boxing at Grandpa Ma's side since childhood, and this move he had practiced more times than he could count, yet he had never grasped its essence. Only recently, with his cultivation greatly advanced, had the might of Nine Dragons Ride Wind and Thunder risen sharply; even so, when he crossed blows with the young monk Mingxing, he had still come off the worse.

To be sure, this was because he had not obtained the Great Thunder-Cry Temple's Thunder-Cry Mahayana Sutra; but more than that, it was because his nine-dragon fist-force was only like a dragon.

Like a dragon but not a dragon, possessing the semblance without the substance, it naturally crumbled at a single touch.

If his fist-force were a true dragon, then even without having learned the Thunder-Cry Mahayana Sutra, his Nine Dragons Ride Wind and Thunder would be true transmission!

For the principle of Nine Dragons Ride Wind and Thunder is to imitate the true dragon's mastery of wind and thunder: thunderbolts of ten thousand jun, the divine dragon pouncing and striking from within the thunder. If he could achieve that, whether or not he learned the Thunder-Cry Mahayana Sutra would not matter!

"Nine Dragons Ride Wind and Thunder, Nine Dragons Ride Wind and Thunder..."

Little by little Shen Mu studied that dragon skeleton; his feet moved without his knowing it, and in his eyes there remained only the bones of the true dragon. He watched the dragon's form, examined the structure of its bones, observed the dragon's momentum, pondered the dragon's cadence, comprehended the dragon's breath, and dwelt in thought upon the dragon's spirit.

More and more he forgot himself; walking as he watched, he even made strange movements, his arms and his body unconsciously imitating the true dragon's every motion.

His yuan qi, too, unknowingly began to course through his body like a true dragon, again and again, filling in ever more detail.

And in the divine palace of his spirit-soul, his spirit fetus moved as he moved, breathing in and out the yuan qi, gradually undergoing a wondrous change. The yuan qi he exhaled did not enter Shen Mu's body but wandered over him, turning into a little dragon; and as more and more yuan qi was breathed in and out, this little dragon grew, slowly becoming a man's height, coiling about the spirit fetus.

Hu Ling'er had been afraid at first, but as time passed the fear in her heart gradually lessened and she grew less frightened; it was only that Shen Mu, absorbed in studying the dragon bones, had forgotten her too.

After a long while Hu Ling'er's belly rumbled; cautiously she climbed down from Shen Mu's back and stole out of the undersea dragon palace on tiptoe. It was not that she feared disturbing Shen Mu, but that she had a natural dread of dragons, and feared that any noise she made would disturb the dragon bones.

Half an hour later the white fox returned from outside, carrying a bag in her hand, and in the bag were strange creatures like dandelions.

Hu Ling'er, fighting down her inner fear of the dragon bones, walked into the mist, came to Shen Mu's side, climbed up onto him again, sat on his shoulder, and stuffed one of those creatures into his mouth.

Shen Mu seemed unaware; when food came he opened his mouth and obediently swallowed it.

Hu Ling'er fed him more than twenty of those strange creatures before she began smacking her lips over her own meal.

Shen Mu still showed no sign of waking; he walked on and on, his eyes fixed on the dragon bones, and sometimes he even climbed onto them, walking about upon those vast skeletons.

About his spirit fetus a green dragon coiled, crackling with lightning; but Shen Mu, his mind wholly fixed on the dragon bones, did not notice.

Thus, imperceptibly, two days passed. Shen Mu ate, drank, relieved himself and slept there; his body had long since grown rank, and still there was no sign of his waking.

Hu Ling'er was very patient. These few days she tended his food and drink: when Shen Mu was thirsty she went to fetch water cupped in leaves; when he was hungry she went to catch the strange creatures in the passage. Only, the way there must pass the pool, and the monstrous fish lurked in the water; one careless moment and she would be eaten by them. Luckily she was clever, and nothing went amiss.

Of course, when Shen Mu relieved himself, she still kept away.

On the third day, just as Hu Ling'er was about to fetch some water, Shen Mu's voice suddenly came, startled: "How did I get so filthy?"

Hu Ling'er was both astonished and delighted, and said in her crisp voice, "You've been standing here three days! It would be a wonder if you weren't filthy!"

"Three days?"

Shen Mu was taken aback and blurted out, "This is bad! Three days gone and no word of me; the people in the village must be worried sick! Come, let's hurry back!"

Suddenly he stopped again and said, "If we go back now, I'll surely be scolded, and they may not even let me out again. Since we're here, we might as well take a look in the dragon palace; who knows, we may find some treasure."

Full of eagerness, he walked into the undersea dragon palace. Hu Ling'er followed him into the towering hall, summoning her courage; but being timid, she dared only to keep at Shen Mu's heels, not venturing to walk about freely.

This great hall too was shrouded in mist, and thicker mist at that, vast and dim, so that one could not see far.

"Strange. What is it that gives off this mist?"

Shen Mu wondered. This mist was no water vapor; even with his Lingxiao Heavenly Eye he could not see far through it. The deeper they went toward the center of the hall, the heavier the mist grew and the shorter the range of sight. Hu Ling'er grew more frightened still, and bit down on the hem of Shen Mu's trousers, letting him lead her along.

Then he heard a strange sound: soft, long-drawn, yet somehow sorrowful, as though someone in the mist were singing a mournful song, though he could not understand the words.

It was an ancient tongue, mysterious and obscure, as ancient as the speech of gods or demons.

As Shen Mu listened, he raised a hand and touched his cheek; unknowingly his face was wet with tears.

The song gave him the feeling that in the mist a woman drifted to and fro, singing a story that broke her heart.

Suddenly the golden rings of the Ximiro in his hand clanged and rattled, making a fearful din.

"Grandpa Ma said the golden rings of the Ximiro dispel stray thoughts and evil thoughts: when the heart stirs, the rings stir, and for each stray or evil thought the rings sound once. Now they ring like copper beans in a sieve, clanging without cease — do I truly have so many stray and evil thoughts?"