Chapter 639 — The Head in the Jar
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 3 of 4
That faceless man walked outward, leaving him behind. He committed them to memory with all his heart, and after a very long time at last memorized the incomparably complex blueprints of the Ark of the Other Shore.
He destroyed the blueprints. They burned, and burned for a long while before they were extinguished.
When the blueprints had burned away, the hall fell into darkness.
Before Shen Mu's eyes, light surged out of the darkness — a vast and magnificent battlefield of gods and demons. In the sky, on the ground, everywhere were scenes of vigorous gods and demons locked in slaughter. Countless gods and demons perished; it was a spectacle grand and savage.
Shen Mu saw the Kaihuang Heavenly Court falling from the highest heights. The Kaihuang Heavenly Court smashed through layer upon layer of heavens, trailing long flames and streaming light, and plunged into other worlds.
Shen Mu watched, dazed, as "he himself" raised a divine sword, and then lowered it again. He returned to the divine city, stole down into the earth, and in the depths built a dark space, built an altar.
With his own spirit he constructed a strange psychic force-field. He prepared a coffin for himself, and in the coffin placed a great jar. The water in the jar was a divine water refined from his own spirit and life-force, able to preserve a body from decay.
Once more he raised the sword.
"O one who beholds this scene..."
Once again Shen Mu heard that unfamiliar voice, murmuring to itself: "Are you a descendant of the Shen clan? Have you come, in obedience to the Kaihuang's command, to retrieve the blueprints? For the Kaihuang's grace of recognition, I have no way to repay it. This subject offers up his head and waits in silence for Lord Shen to come and take it."
Chi —
The sword-light flashed past. Shen Mu felt a violent pain, and then saw "himself" topple into the jar. He looked outward and saw the headless body of the god Ying Zhao shifting the coffin lid, slowly drawing it closed over the coffin.
After a moment, he heard from the gloomy earth-core the sound of something heavy striking the ground — the sound of this god's corpse falling from the altar and crashing to the earth.
Shen Mu's eyes stung and reddened. He wiped away his tears.
The head in the jar seemed to see him. His head revolved within the jar, and wave upon wave of powerful psychic force resonated with Shen Mu's spirit. Blueprint after blueprint transformed into images and imprinted themselves firmly in Shen Mu's mind. The blueprints grew more and more numerous, while the divine water in the jar, transmuted from spirit and life-force, grew less and less.
When the divine water in the jar was exhausted, Shen Mu's mind was already stuffed full of the blueprints of the Ark of the Other Shore.
The god's head was still giving off psychic waves, transmitting the remaining blueprints into Shen Mu's mind. The god's head rotted at a speed visible to the naked eye. When his spirit was utterly spent, nothing remained but a skull lying quietly at the bottom of the jar.
Shen Mu stood silently before the stone coffin for a long while, then suddenly said, "You owe the Shen family nothing — it is the Shen family that owes you! I cannot let you die with your body incomplete!"
He sprang down from the altar. A thread of vital essence suspended him as he descended into the deep, dark earth. After a long while, Shen Mu rose slowly, bearing a headless white skeleton on his back, gripping a spider-silk thread of vital essence.
He returned to the altar, lifted out the great jar, and laid the headless white skeleton respectfully within the coffin. He brought out the skull from the jar and set it upon the neck of the headless white skeleton.
Shen Mu closed the stone coffin and knocked his head three times in obeisance to it. Then he turned, sprang up, and went leaping upward from grain of star sand to grain of star sand.