Chapter 260 — The Old Ox and the Broken Cart
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 1 of 5
West of Bazhou Prefecture, for a hundred li and more, all was grim and murderous; it seemed even the air had frozen solid. One after another the old Daoist priests and white-browed monks seethed with vital essence, which congealed behind them into sacred divinities whose grandeur swallowed rivers and mountains.
The Daoist Order and the Great Tingming Temple were of ancient lineage, older even than the Youmo Cult; in the eyes of those two holy lands, the Youmo Cult was a comparatively youthful sect. And from the divinities their vital essence had formed behind them, one could see the gods that had risen up over the long river of history: some with three heads and four arms, some with a turtle's back and a horsetail whisk, some with a sheng crown and a leopard's tail, some as vajra yakshas — divinities of every shape and form.
As for Qiong Fuzi, Tian Zhenjun, and the others, theirs was another sight altogether. Their lineages were not so ancient as the Daoist Order's or the Great Tingming Temple's, yet they were mighty beyond measure; the divinities manifested behind them were in some cases great Confucian sages, in some a woman holding a golden insect in her palms, in some a poverty god clad in a robe of a hundred patches. And behind Emperor Yanfeng, the court's first-rank grandees each presented a different aspect.
Behind Grand General of Heavenly Strategy Shen Jian, also named Shen Baoyue, what took shape was no divinity but a pair of maces — two golden maces blazing with golden light, eight-edged, spinning without cease. He was a man of the battlefield, one who cultivated neither gods nor Buddhas, but made his own weapons his gods; his charge was war and slaughter. Behind Grand Commandant Monk Yuankong there stood, likewise, no Buddha, but an ascetic, his body wrapped in chains, gripping a precept blade, in a posture of battle — the very image of the man himself.
Behind the Prince of Mount Tai, Ling Xuhua, nine dragons coiled about Mount Tai, with Mount Tai as the altar and the nine dragons doing worship; his charge was the sacrifices of Jingping. Minister of Works Wei Pingbo governed the waterways of Jingping, and what his vital essence formed behind him was no divinity but the long rivers and great dams of earthworks and waterworks; water conservancy was his god. Minister of State Xiu Leqing was a female official who held the treasury and the realm's finances in her keeping, and the divinity her vital essence formed was no god either, but strings of Great Harvest coins twisted together like great serpents and pythons. Coin was her god.
High Minister Su Yunzhi was also a female official; she had the right to open her own office, and her rank was equal to that of the Three Excellencies. She was a civil official without portfolio, yet her position was at the very summit of subjects, and she governed the great academies and small schools of every region; what her vital essence formed was no divinity either, but a scroll of books and a measuring rule.
Behind Grand General of Agile Cavalry Quan Dingwu stood a stallion wreathed in roaring flame, and on the horse a divinity bathed in the fires of war, with eight arms, holding saber and shield, spear and lance, sword and halberd; four faces looked in all four directions, and fire spouted from its eyes like light.
Yet the four faces amid the flames were all his own. From this one could see how the sect-leader-tier powerhouses of the court differed from those of the sects of the jianghu.
The Daoist Order and the Great Tingming Temple reverenced gods and Buddhas, and the divinities behind them were all gods and Buddhas; whereas the powerhouses of the court made gods of their own offices, turning the duties they held into their own divinities — each with his own charge, each with his own strength. Even Monk Yuankong, though he came from the Buddhist gate, made of himself an ascetic cultivating amid battle, and manifested no great Buddha.