Chapter 48 — The Sunken River's Dragon Soul Is Not Yet Extinguished
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 2 of 3
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."