Chapter 48 — The Sunken River's Dragon Soul Is Not Yet Extinguished

Hum—

Behind Shen Mu, the halo behind that Buddha image's head began to turn; its radiance blazed out, shooting in all directions, and even that uncanny mist was swept clean away by the Buddha light. Then came a ceaseless thump, thump, thump, and Shen Mu looked around him: dried corpses were dropping out of the air one after another, so many that there was scarcely a place to set his foot!

Besides the dried corpses there were skeletons too, their flesh long gone, nothing left but bone; and yet those skeletons wore loose, flowing garments that looked like official robes.

The mist about him vanished and his sight was at once clear again. The singing, however, sang on, only farther off now, still plaintive and desolate, heavy with boundless sorrow.

Shen Mu dispersed his yuan qi, and the Buddha image behind him gradually faded.

"How can there be so many corpses hidden in this great hall? These bodies... they do not look like ordinary people..."

Shen Mu studied them, frowning slightly. There were far too many corpses here, and not one of them had rotted — something was not right. After all, the corpse of the Dragon King of the Surging River outside had long since decayed, leaving nothing but a skeleton; how then could the corpses in this hall have been preserved until now?

"One possibility: these corpses came in after the Wasteland Cataclysm. Like Hu Ling'er and me, they found the road leading to the Dragon Palace of the Surging River, and then entered this great hall."

Shen Mu's eye twitched; he looked ahead. Deep in the great hall there still hung layer upon layer of mist.

"Something in the mist killed them and left them like this!"

His scalp prickled and he gripped his staff tight. Ximilo was worthy indeed of a treasure that could buy a whole city; just now he had only poured yuan qi into the staff, and it had erupted with terrifying power.

Bringing the staff out this time had been Grandma Zhu's idea. Grandma Zhu was deeply anxious for his safety, and besides the staff she had taken on all manner of forms to guard him in secret.

"Grandma must have been worried sick these past days..."

A little guilt stirred in Shen Mu's heart. Then he gathered himself and swept his gaze around. "The source of the mist must be here in this hall, and the danger with it! What in the world killed these martial artists who came to explore?"

Just then the mist deep in the hall came surging toward him, spreading to his ankles, then slowly rising. And the dried corpses on the ground, wrapped in that mist, began slowly to writhe, rising to their feet in uncanny postures.

Higher and higher climbed the mist, until it passed over Shen Mu's head; and within the mist those dried corpses too began to float up, and as the mist grew thicker and thicker they vanished into it, no longer to be seen.

"What devilish thing is this, playing ghosts and gods and stirring up trouble? Ximilo!"

Staff in hand, Shen Mu walked on. He had gone ten zhang or more when the singing drew near once more. He raised the staff and struck the ground heavily; Buddha light blazed, Buddha sound coiled about him, and behind him there rose again the figure of a great Buddha, whose light shone upon all and drove the mist apart. And once more the dried corpses fell thumping to the ground, one after another.

"Little bald donkey..."

A voice suddenly sounded in the hall, enough to make a man's hair stand on end; yet the voice spoke only that one phrase, leaving Shen Mu and the little fox to wonder whether they had heard a phantom.

Shen Mu had at last seen the source of the mist. At the heart of this dragon palace stood a sculpture of ice, and it was from that ice the mist flowed.

He stepped forward. In the ice lay a young dragon, still and quiet, a broken sword driven into its chest, the blade run through its heart.

And among the dragon pillars of the hall, a great azure dragon swam slowly to and fro in the air; seeming to possess no true body, it passed straight through the pillars.

The singing came from the mouth of that azure dragon, and its gaze rested ever upon the ice-sealed young dragon, never once turning away.

Its eyes brimmed with tender love and grief, and its song was sorrowful in the same measure, as though it mourned its own child's going far from it.

This was a dragon soul.

The soul of a dragon.

It might be the Dragon King of the Surging River; it might be the Dragon King's wife. It was a mother, and the young dragon sealed in the ice must be her child.

She must have met with the Wasteland Cataclysm; calamity came, and her child too met with misfortune, taking a wound that must be death. She loved her child too well — she sealed it in ice, and herself died in the cataclysm; yet her soul still wanders this great hall, guarding her beloved child, still humming the cradle songs of the dragon clan, hoping to wake her child.

"Little bald donkey, look this way!"

Suddenly the voice came again. Shen Mu turned swiftly toward it, and saw that besides this block of mystic ice there was another in the hall. That one was hidden behind the ice that sealed the young dragon; the two were joined.

Sealed in this ice was an old man in purple robes with white brows; his garments seemed those of an official — a blue-black upper robe and a crimson lower, embroidered with the nine emblems of rank, a belt of gold and jade at his waist, a sword at his side, and on his head a nine-tasseled crown. His posture was that of one reaching out to take something.

One hand leaned upon a black banner; the other reached deep into the other block of ice, seizing a green bead the size of a hen's egg.

What that green bead might be, Shen Mu did not know; but coiled within the green bead was a tiny azure dragon.

"Could this bead be what sealed the old gentleman in the ice?"

Shen Mu blinked and stepped closer, studying the old man sealed in the ice; then he found the strangeness in it: as his own body moved, the old man's eyeballs moved as well!

"So it truly was him, that voice!"

Shen Mu felt a chill. He turned to the dried corpses strewn over the floor of the hall, and at once a possibility occurred to him.

This old man in the ice must have been the first to discover the Dragon Palace of the Surging River. He had found this bead in the mystic ice, and when he sought to take it, the bead sealed him in the ice.

By the look of it he had survived in the ice a very long time, and the reason he had not died was surely that, with the black banner he leaned upon, he had killed these martial artists who came into the dragon palace, drawing in their vital essence and blood; and that was why these martial artists appeared as dried corpses after death!

The old man was sealed in ice, and sealed until now; the cultivation he could command must be little. And Shen Mu had entered the dragon palace bearing Ximilo; under Ximilo's protection he had not died beneath the uncanny power of the black banner, and had escaped the calamity.

"So it is the Ximilo of the old bald donkey of the Great Thunder-Cry Temple. No wonder it could withstand the uncanny power of the mist."

The old man in the ice could not part his lips, yet his Adam's apple quivered and made sound: "You are no bald donkey of the Great Thunder-Cry Temple. Why do you carry the old bald donkey's staff?"

Shen Mu answered honestly, "I won it by defeating his disciple."

"Won it?"

A laugh sounded in the old man's throat. "And would that old bald donkey ever accept defeat at a wager? How old are you?"

"This autumn I turn twelve."

The purple-robed old man said in praise, "At twelve you can defeat the old bald donkey's disciple — remarkable, truly remarkable."

Shen Mu blinked. "Senior, why are you sealed here in the ice?"

The old man chuckled. "Naturally there is a story in it, and it must be told from the beginning... Do not leave! Come back!"

Shen Mu halted and said with a show of difficulty, "Senior, I am in haste to go home. I have no time for stories."