Chapter 845 — Rebuilding the Heavenly Palace
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 2 of 5
The Lame Old Man shook his head, somewhat displeased: "That boy was great fun when he was small, but he grew less and less fun as he grew up. I taught him the Profound Art of Stealing Heaven and Swapping the Sun, thinking he would go thieving across the world with me and be a grandfather-and-grandson pair of master thieves. But no — he goes out to play every day without taking me along, and he does not steal anything either; he learned from the Butcher until his head was stuffed full of nothing but muscle. Come, I will take you to see my treasure vault! I tell you, these past few years I have made my fortune — when Emperor Yanfeng sees me he has to call me Grandpa Thief. Can you fly? I will teach you how to tread the wind..."
Light leaped and danced. Shen Mu stood amid the streaming radiance, and his heart gave a start: "This is... a teleportation divine power? Subtler even than Teacher Woodcutter's teleportation art. It is somewhat like the Great Spatial Shift... Could it be that the Daoist sect and Kaihuang have some murky connection?"
The teleportation art had been handed down by the Woodcutter and passed on to the Heavenly Sage Sect, whereas the radiance that held Shen Mu and the others was the Great Spatial Shift, subtler than the teleportation art and employing a more refined art of calculation.
The two had something in common, and so Shen Mu suspected that the Woodcutter had once seen the Daoist sect's Great Spatial Shift.
He had been somewhat alarmed at first, but now he steadied himself and quickly sorted out his thoughts: "The Fisherman Heavenly Master said that the old generation are all crafty and sly like this... hmm, wise and penetrating, and so indeed they are. This Great Spatial Shift divine power must have been worked by the Dao Ancestor borrowing the power of the star signs. He does not want Xiao Chunfeng and me to decide the Daoist sect's stance for him, and so he has taken us up to make the decision himself."
At last the radiance dispersed. Shen Mu saw the light around them fade, and from the receding glow the figures of Xiao Chunfeng, the girl in red, and Daoist Master Linxuan emerged.
The woman in red wore a look of panic and had fallen into a defensive stance.
Xiao Chunfeng coughed and said, "Yu Hongxiu, there is no need for alarm. The Dao Ancestor has summoned us."
Daoist Master Linxuan praised: "When the Dao Ancestor moved the star signs and the Lord of Heaven, the art of calculation he employed was truly beyond compare."
Shen Mu looked around. They stood within a jade edifice of immense scale, built of fine jade, its beams soaring high. Looking up, he could make out six corners — it must be a tall tower with six-sided flying eaves.
Looking outward, he could dimly see a thousand palaces and ten thousand halls, resplendent in gold and glory.
"So that is the Heavenly Court beyond the realm?"
Shen Mu's heart stirred. He wanted to walk out of the jade tower and see whether this Heavenly Court was the Longhan Heavenly Court of old, but he restrained himself.
He went on studying the tower. Its interior was hollow, and a jade pillar that a dozen men with arms outstretched could barely encircle stood at its center; stairs wound around the pillar all the way up, and looking from the bottom one could not tell how many storeys the tower had.
On every storey, the six walls were lined with row upon row of bookshelves, also carved from fine jade, and each storey was joined to the jade pillar by several jade bridges, so that one could walk across the bridges to the six walls and read.
Yet what was strange was that this repository was utterly empty; the four of them had appeared here abruptly, and no one had come to question them.
They looked outside: around the tower there was no one either, all was desolate and bare.
"This place is... the Heavenly Court's Archive Pavilion!"