Chapter 342 — Heart-Piercing Pain
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 1 of 4
Linxuan Daozhe was the first to collect himself. He raised a hand to stay Shen Mu and said, with utter sincerity, "Sect Master Shen must not leave! You came bearing the golden book, and this is plainly no simple matter of letting a poor Daoist read it for three days—you are baiting a hook for me! Since you have already cast the bait and I have already taken it, why not sit down and talk it through in full?"
All those old Daoist priests and Daoist nuns nodded and said as one voice, "Talk it through! There is nothing we cannot talk through!"
"We are all cultivators of the Dao, all qi-refiners—there is nothing we cannot discuss!"
"The righteous path and the demonic path are both the Dao. One family!"
Linxuan Daozhe invited Shen Mu to be seated, and at once an old Daoist nun went to brew tea and served it to them. Shen Mu drank and said with a smile, "Fine tea—only a little beneath what Heaven drinks. What tea is this? Might I be given some?"
"Given!" The old nun grinned, baring the few teeth she had left. "This is our sect's Sky-Blue Precious Fragrance. Only tea plucked from bushes growing by the Jade Void Spring may be called Sky-Blue Precious Fragrance. There are but three bushes along the spring, and a year's yield is no more than a few catties! How many catties does Sect Master Shen want?"
Shen Mu set down his herb basket, invited the headman out, and poured him tea. "Grandpa Headman, does it suit your taste?"
"Sky-Blue Precious Fragrance is light in fragrance but its aftertaste lingers long—of course it suits me!" The headman laughed. "Even the emperor never gets to drink this tea! Then let's start with one catty, and when spring comes next year we'll drink the new leaf."
Shen Mu said to the old nun, "Wrap up a catty so I can taste it. The pre-Qingming picking."
The old nun hurried off and returned in a moment carrying a large package of tea.
Shen Mu put the tea away, looked around, and said, "This Daoist sect is rather poor, it seems."
An old Daoist priest said hastily, "Not poor! We had some private wealth once, it is true, but it was stolen later on. Sect Master Shen, this golden book of yours, this precious scroll..."
"Oh, that's my old Shen family's."
Shen Mu laid the golden book and precious scroll to one side. "There was some friction between me and the Daoist sect from the first. I have long meant to come up the mountain and make amends, only I never managed it. I have come today, first, to let Daoist Lord Lin read the book, and second, in the hope of dissolving that old grudge."
"Sect Master Shen need say no more!" Linxuan the Daoist Lord said gravely. "Grudges can be dissolved, but the contention over doctrine cannot be dissolved. Even if the grudge is settled today, in days to come a quarrel will rise again over doctrine, and fresh grudges will pile upon the old. Let Sect Master Shen speak instead of this golden book."
Shen Mu marveled inwardly at how clearly the man saw. "Daoist Lord Lin, your gaze goes deep as an abyss; Shen admires you. Then let us speak today of this golden book and precious scroll. Recorded within it are three sets of methods—the Magpie Bridge, the Mystic Guiding, and the Spirit Crossing—methods for joining the seventh divine treasury, the Spirit Bridge treasury. Why I brought this book here, you should all be able to guess."
"So it is indeed a method for repairing the Spirit Bridge!"
The old Daoists and nuns were shaken to the heart, stirred beyond all composure.
To repair the Spirit Bridge, break the final shackle, and become a god—that was the long-cherished wish of who knew how many, and the lofty ones of the Daoist sect were no exception!
What the Daoist sect called cultivating immortality was no more than a convenient pretext.