Chapter 152 — The Golden Palace of Loulan
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 1 of 4
He gave Shen Mu no chance to speak, only muttering to himself: "My one fear is that this Shaman Sovereign will play some trick, wear me down in relays and leave me pinned. .
.
that would be awkward. .
.
" Before long, the Golden Palace of Loulan appeared at last before them all. Gazing from afar, Shen Mu saw that a lake had suddenly spread across the boundless grassland, its jade-green waters rippling, so vast it seemed an ocean set within the steppe.
Looking farther still, he dimly made out that beyond the lake rose range upon range of mountains, clad in silver and heaped with snow.
And among those towering peaks stood one summit blazing with golden light; only when Shen Mu opened his Soaring Heaven Eye did he see that it was no mountain of gold, but a sprawl of resplendent palaces. There were so many of them, covering the whole mountain snug and complete, that from a distance it looked like a golden mountain forged of gold.
On the grassland there was no fixed currency; only gold circulated, and all along the road they had paid for their meals with the gold ingots General Bian Zhenyun had given them. To the common folk of the steppe gold was a rare thing, of the highest value; yet these palaces were wrought of pure gold, extravagance plain for all to see.
When Libationer Bashan came to the lakeshore, Shen Mu looked about: a wooden boat lay moored there, and upon it stood a man with horns on his head, dressed in black, leaning on a bamboo pole at the bow. In the shallows of the lake, poles were stuck this way and that, and from each one hung a rotting human head.
"Great shamans harvest souls to cultivate their arts — they look more like a demon cult than our own Heavenly Sage Cult. " Shen Mu studied the man: his face was somewhat goatlike, yet a brown goat's face, unlike the usual white goat, and scant of hair.
"Goat-Face the Great Shaman?
" Shen Mu was briefly taken aback. Back in the capital he had treated several soldiers from the frontier posts who had been poisoned by shaman arts, and those men said they had met a horned barbarian who merely held up a mirror to them, whereupon they fell senseless.
Shen Mu had always assumed that the barbarians' great shamans wore masks; only now, seeing this great shaman in the wooden boat, did he know that horned barbarians truly existed.
The Goat-Face Great Shaman shot them a glance and said in a shrill voice: "Khagan of War, the Shaman Sovereign has waited a long while! Board the boat, if you please!
" Libationer Bashan stepped aboard, smiling: "This lake is the Weak Water; it has no buoyancy — even a feather sinks to the bottom. Only a boat of the Golden Palace of Loulan can ferry us across.
Let us board.
" Shen Mu and Ling Yuxiu climbed onto the wooden boat, and the Green Ox and Snow Fox came aboard as well. The great shaman's gaze settled on Shen Mu and Ling Yuxiu; he gave a cold laugh and poled the boat toward the far shore.
Ling Yuxiu laughed: "If we cannot walk across the Weak Water, why not go around it? Or simply fly over.
" The barbarian great shaman sneered: "Fly over?
Try the air here — see whether you can lift off at all. The air here is dead.
" "The air is dead?
" Ling Yuxiu was baffled.
Beside them the Green Ox rumbled in his muffled voice: "The air here truly is dead. You cannot fly. " He was skilled in commanding wind and thunder, and could sense that the air here did not move at all.
Ordinary folk breathe — inhale, exhale, and the air flows. But if the air does not flow, then with a single breath the air beneath your nostrils is drawn away and a vacuum forms; the air around cannot replenish it, and you suffocate of course. So it was with this lake of Weak Water: the air above it was pinned fast by some nameless force and did not move at all, and only while the wooden boat glided forward, carrying its passengers along with it, did breathing feel normal.