Chapter 726 — The Sovereign and the Minister Share One Heart

Shen Mu and the others arrived at the Imperial Preceptor of Jingping's residence, but the Imperial Preceptor was not there. His wife was teaching the child to read; flustered, she took the boy by the hand and came out to greet them. "My husband has gone to see the emperor and has not returned for quite some days now. Yunjian, quick, call him godfather!"

The child at her side was only three or four years old, and in a soft, milky voice he called Shen Mu "godfather."

Shen Mu's face flushed red. He stammered, "Sister-in-law, I am not yet married. How could I be a godfather?"

The Imperial Preceptor's wife laughed. "When Yunjian was born, he already acknowledged a godfather. Surely the Sect Master cannot disown him?"

Shen Mu thought for a moment, then drew a great wing from his Taotie Pouch and plucked a single fire feather from it. "This is a feather of the Vermilion Bird. It belongs, at the very least, to a mighty one of the God-Slaying Platform. Let Yunjian play with it for now. The wing itself I cannot give—it is too heavy, and far too dangerous—but the feather is very light. Wait a moment; I will suppress the Vermilion Bird's Sacred Fire within it."

He sealed the Vermilion Bird's Sacred Fire with the runes of the Great Way of Heavenly Fire, and only then handed the three-foot-long feather to Jiang Yunjian. The child carried the feather off to hack at the stone lion by the gate, and with a single flash of firelight the stone lion was sliced clean in two.

The Imperial Preceptor's wife was startled half to death and hastily snatched the feather away. "You can play with it when you are grown!"

Shen Mu brought the Woodcutter, Di Yiyue, and the Primordial Human Sovereign to the imperial palace. The Empress said, "His Majesty was carried off by the Imperial Preceptor of Jingping. He said they were going to the Imperial Academy, but many days have passed and he still has not sent His Majesty back. As it stands, the Crown Prince is overseeing the realm and handling court affairs."

They went on to the Imperial Academy, where Pei Wujiu shook his head and said, "His Majesty and the Imperial Preceptor of Jingping are not here either. They came for a time and gathered the scholars, saying they meant to forge a Xizhou and a Pozhou, and then they took many of the scholars to the shipyards of Jiangling. His Majesty went along as well."

Di Yiyue laughed. "This emperor of yours actually refuses to sit upon the Dragon Throne, and instead runs about all day long."

They came next to Jiangling. This was the Imperial Preceptor of Jingping's native place, and it had the greatest concentration of shipyards—over a hundred of them.

Before they had even caught sight of Emperor Yanfeng and the Imperial Preceptor of Jingping, they saw great ships coming and going across the water, transporting enormous, exquisitely precise components to the largest shipyard in Jiangling.

Those components, surely, were the parts of a Xizhou and a Pozhou.

In the Kaihuang era, Xizhou and Pozhou had been forged from stone; here, they were forged from metal, and the cost in wealth was enormous.

Shen Mu also saw many women of the Western Lands' True Heavenly Palace lending their aid here, and the little girl at their head was an old acquaintance of his—Xiong Qier, the daughter of Xiong Xiyu.

After several years apart, Xiong Qier had grown to eight or nine years old. She was casting spells in the Jiangling shipyard, activating component after component, causing those colossal things to float up and assemble themselves automatically.

"Brother Sect Master!"

Xiong Qier was overjoyed to see him, and even more overjoyed to see the Dragon Qilin. She came running over at once, tossed Shen Mu aside, and clung to the Dragon Qilin's whiskers in delight.

Shen Mu, thus abruptly abandoned by the little girl, watched as she leaped onto the Dragon Qilin's tail. The Dragon Qilin lifted its tail, and the child slid all the way from the tip of the tail down to the top of its head, giggling without pause.

"The Xizhou that the Imperial Preceptor of Jingping and the emperor are refining—every single component looks as though it were forged from the same mold. Each shipyard makes only a dozen or so components, and then they are assembled together."

Shen Mu was astonished. He went up to examine the components. The runes upon them interlocked ring within ring, extraordinarily precise, and with the Western Lands' art of the Ten Thousand Things Have Spirit, they could be assembled with great speed.

"This is a superb method for manufacturing Xizhou and Pozhou on a massive scale!" Shen Mu praised again and again.

The Xizhou and Pozhou had been designed by the Woodcutter Sage, but in the Kaihuang era the forging of these two great instruments had not been so precise. Thus Xizhou and Pozhou came in all sizes, and the speed of their manufacture had been slow.

But the shipyards here in Jiangling could manufacture Xizhou and Pozhou with utter swiftness!

When they found the Imperial Preceptor of Jingping and Emperor Yanfeng, the two had already fallen asleep inside the shipyard, while the people of the Earth-Walking Clan hurried to forge components of every kind, and one god after another, none of them five chi in height, flitted around the components.

"You are looking for that mud-turtle emperor?"

Lady Earth stroked her beard, her voice like thunder. "He is over there, lying stiff as a corpse!"

Shen Mu, the Woodcutter, and the rest followed the direction of her finger and saw two grown men sprawled every which way in a corner of the shipyard. The forging din inside the workshop was deafening, and yet the two slept soundly.

The Imperial Preceptor of Jingping and Emperor Yanfeng were both handsome men. Though they had reached middle age, they still paid great attention to their bearing.

Yet at this moment their beards were unkempt and their clothes were worn, old, and filthy. The Imperial Preceptor of Jingping had his foot planted on Emperor Yanfeng's face, while Emperor Yanfeng clutched the Imperial Preceptor's leg and slept on in bliss.

Beside them lay many court ministers and scholars of the Imperial Academy, sprawled in the corners of the workshop, sleeping sweetly and deeply.

Di Yiyue was silent for a moment, then suddenly laughed. "Now I know why the Great Heavenly Master held such expectations of them. An emperor like this, an Imperial Preceptor of Jingping like this—these are truly the leaders of reform."

The Woodcutter Sage said, "Do we need to wake them?"

"No need. They are gods, and yet they are exhausted to such a degree—it shows how hard these days have truly been."

Di Yiyue said, "I never imagined an emperor could personally preside over such trivial affairs, nor that the Imperial Preceptor of Jingping who oversees the reforms could attend to every detail himself. This Imperial Preceptor of Jingping has done even better than you did in your day."

The Woodcutter Sage laughed. "In those years I only tinkered a few things into existence and then had others do the work. The truth is I feared trouble and rarely lifted a hand myself."

Di Yiyue said, "You are a sage, too far removed from the common people."

The Woodcutter Sage fell silent, then said in a hoarse voice, "The Heavenly King's reproach is entirely correct. When the great calamity broke out that year, I led the masses in resistance, and our army collapsed like a mountain toppling. Only then did I realize how far I was from the people, how far from the army. As a Heavenly Master, one must indeed survey from the high ground, but one must also enter the army, enter the mortal world. I stood too far off, took matters into my own hands rashly, and so brought about that great defeat. When all is said, I am not even the equal of Prince Shen Wu."

The Primordial Human Sovereign was slightly taken aback, and looked at him with disbelief.