荒墟牧神 - 第34章 荒神古廟拜慈尊 - 雲海書庫

The lame old man's heart gave a faint shudder. Could it be that the State Preceptor of Yanning and the kingdom of Yanning were truly so reckless, so audacious, as to covet even a place as uncanny and dreadful as the Wilderness Ruins — to want to swallow it whole? And yet Old Man Ma had said one thing that was not wrong: Yanning was indeed a sect disguised as a nation! Yanning took the martial way as its foundation and the martial way as its rule. Its officials were ranked in nine grades and eighteen steps, from the Principal First Rank — the State Preceptor, the Grand Guardian of the Heir Apparent — down to the Secondary Ninth Rank — the Gentleman for Attendance, the Ceremonial Officer, the Erudite (not the doctorate of today, but the man of broad learning and many talents; the Secondary Ninth Rank included the Erudite of Calligraphy, the Erudite of Medicine, the Erudite of Mathematics, the Erudite of Divination, and offices of that sort) — and every one of them came out of the martial path; some were simply the sect masters, patriarchs, or presiding masters of other sects. As for the soldiers of this nation, each and every one was a martial artist too, hardy and battle-tested: abroad they could storm cities and seize land, at home they could crush rebellion — an utterly fearsome power beyond any doubt. When a sect disguises itself as a nation, governs its territory the way a nation does, pools its resources into one hand, subdues other sects, brings every martial artist and every wielder of supernatural powers within its borders under a single rule, and turns every sect in its domain to its own use — then how mighty, how terrifying, will that nation become? In recent years Yanning had expanded without cease, its territory growing ever broader and ever larger, swallowing sects like the Lanjiang Sect and swallowing one small kingdom after another. And now the borders of Yanning had reached the edge of the Wilderness Ruins, and there the Ruins barred its way. What barred the nation's path was the gloom and the uncanniness of the Ruins; in the Wilderness Ruins, whenever night came down, that eerie thing came with it — the invasion of the Gloom. To enter the Gloom was certain death, and that kept Yanning from stepping into the Ruins. Nor did the perils of the Ruins end there; monstrous beasts swarmed, freak occurrences were commonplace, ill fortune lurked on every side, and if the State Preceptor of Yanning wished to march his armies up to the Ruins, it was no trifling matter. Yet the perils of the Ruins could not frighten the State Preceptor. The lame old man knew this man; he understood something of his temper — after all, it was he who had cut off his leg. Nothing dreadful could daunt him; no danger could halt this man! He would most certainly enter the Wilderness Ruins! It might even be that the man was at this very moment gazing out over the vast, boundless, treacherous Wilderness Ruins! The village soon sank back into quiet. The water left behind when the little Lijiang collapsed was quickly drunk up by the mud, and by the next day the ground had been baked hard and stiff by the blazing sun. This time Shen Mu had come by a sword sheathe — the one that had belonged to Qianxun, a disciple of the Lanjiang Sect. The sheathe was six chi long, not especially large, fashioned from the hide of a small crocodile, with a strap for the waist and two shoulder straps so that it could be carried on the back. When vital essence entered the sheathe, the crocodile's jaws would open, and out of its mouth would come a scabbard and a hilt. A martial artist refines his breath into silk; when threads of vital essence wound about the hilt, he could draw the blade and ride a flying sword with his vital essence. And once the first sword was drawn, another hilt would rise from the scabbard; draw that second sword, and a third would appear in turn. That was the very reason it was called a sword sheathe. Lanjiang Sect was a sword sect of the southern b