Chapter 482 — The Register of Life and Death
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 1 of 4
Little Tathagata and the assembled demon-clan monks who had attained the Way went pale, and every one of them reached out a hand to snatch at that scroll of scripture. That scroll was a precious volume the monks of the mountain had come upon by chance; not knowing what treasure it was, nor how it was used, they had presented it to the temple.
Little Tathagata and the others knew nothing of its purpose either — they knew only that its power was immense and that countless wronged souls writhed about it, and so they had sealed it away beneath the pagoda. Who would have thought that the scroll was in fact the property of the shaman-god Kuiwu, and that it had a name: the Register of Life and Death. No sooner had one monk's palm brushed the Register than he saw his hand begin to rot, and in an instant it was bare white bone. He snatched his hand back at once. Seeing this, the other monks each unleashed their divine powers to hem the thing in and cut it off, yet not one of them could block it; it burst through layer upon layer of their arts and flew toward the golden alms bowl.
Little Tathagata shifted his stance, scooped up the golden bowl, and with his other hand formed a seal.
The moment the mudra took shape, his five fingers became a mountain — peaks wrought of thunderbolt after thunderbolt — which came crashing down over the bowl. He meant to refine Kuiwu to death first. But just then the Register came flying at him, and before it had even drawn near his palm, that palm withered with astonishing speed. Startled, Little Tathagata swept his sleeve and flung the golden bowl away. The Register chased after it.
"Brother Xu! " Shen Mu stepped out, fast enough to overtake the golden bowl, and there in midair he pointed a finger forward. Runes streamed from his fingertip; the runes his vital essence had shaped blazed with splendor in the air, flickering in and out before him.
At the same moment Xu Shenghua darted out too, no slower than Shen Mu, his hands flying, vital essence bursting forth and turning to runes as well — but his were god-glyphs, one after another.
Though these god-glyphs were all the same character, no two were written alike. Shen Mu stepped out again, and pointed with his other hand.
Four strides, four points of the finger — and the teleportation runes joined as perfectly as paired jades, becoming a teleportation art that sealed the mouth of the golden bowl.
The Register hummed and plunged into the bowl, where the teleportation art caught it up and hurled it more than twenty li away. Meanwhile Xu Shenghua's hands flew, and several hundred god-glyphs stamped down one after another upon the golden bowl. Every one of them was the character 'seal'. The 'seal' of the god-glyphs was utterly unlike human writing, and carried a strange power in its very nature.
Xu Shenghua was, after all, the heir of the Jade Lord, and the Jade Lord was a deity; small wonder that he had come by many a subtle formula no one in the lower realm could ever obtain. Several hundred seals in succession fell upon the golden bowl, and at once the connection between Kuiwu inside it and the scroll of the Register was severed.
Shen Mu dug brush and ink from his Taotie pouch, drew out a scroll of painting silk, and tossed it to Xu Shenghua, who with a single flick unrolled it — a sheet of blank white paper.
Shen Mu took up the brush and painted, the tip flying, and swiftly produced a painting of wind and thunder. Then he seized the golden bowl and slapped it into the painting. The bowl drifted, unsteady, amid the wind and thunder of the picture.
Then, holding the scroll, he handed brush and ink to Xu Shenghua, who wrote upon the painting of wind and thunder, tracing a ring of square, upright sealing god-glyphs around its border. Shen Mu took his own seal from the Taotie pouch and stamped it in the lower corner of the painting.