Chapter 157 — The Golden Palace Drugged
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 2 of 4
"The Buddhists' Thousand Banners Pagoda is a fine thing too — only it is too big.
" Shen Mu looked the Thousand Banners Pagoda up and down. Each banner was exquisitely wrought, only a little over three inches tall; but a thousand banners cunningly bound into the shape of a pagoda made for something very large, standing over ten feet high.
If he carried that on his back, it would draw every eye.
The sariras he did pick up and stuff into the cloth bag, and then he found several jade beads and dropped those in as well. Shen Mu tossed the Saber Pill into the bag too, and only then sensed something odd: the Saber Pill was very heavy, yet once it was in the bag he could not feel its weight at all. He lifted the bag and turned it over and over, examining it several times.
This bag too was one of the treasures sealed upon the golden altar; he did not know what material it was made of, nor what use it had. On one side of the bag was embroidered a strange beast with its great mouth open, and the beast's open mouth was positioned exactly at the bag's opening.
He opened the bag and looked inside, and saw several things the size of sesame seeds — the very treasures he had just thrown in. Shen Mu was stunned for a moment, then poured out the god's hand bone, the sariras, the Saber Pill, and the rest.
As these things slid out of the bag's mouth they were all the same size as before, unchanged. "Strange! " Shen Mu pulled the bag's mouth wide, thrust his head inside, and peered in — and got a fright. He saw a space roughly a mu across, sixty or seventy feet high.
He drew his head back, reached his hand into the bag, pushed his whole arm in, and still could not touch the bottom. Shen Mu thought it over, then put the god's hand bone, the sariras, the Saber Pill, and the rest back into the bag, stuffed the zither in as well, and crammed the Thousand Banners Pagoda in after it.
Then he heaved up that glittering golden lower half of a body and stuffed it into the bag too. Then the youth rose and began picking things up off the floor, taking whatever he saw and stuffing it into the bag; whatever was too large to fit he simply abandoned.
Before long the bag bulged slightly, and he could gradually feel a little weight to it, though it was not heavy.
Shen Mu bowed his head and went over the things he had thrown out, picking up several pill furnaces along the way. One of them was a sealed furnace, a little larger than the one in the Imperial Academy and even more precious.
Only the ritual implements that the Shaman Cult had refined from human bone remained in this treasure vault.
Shen Mu let out a breath, tied the bag at his waist, and covered it with his clothes. "I have been here long enough.
Time to go find Sister Yuxiu and the others and leave as soon as may be.
" The youth's heart pounded wildly. He steadied himself, thought things through carefully for a while, and did not put on the human skin; instead he took out his Slaughter Blade and trimmed his hair, cutting it into the style worn by Shaman Cult disciples.
Shen Mu put on Danbaro's clothes and circulated the Heaven God Art of Creation from the Great Nurturing Dark Demon Scripture.
At once the color of his skin began to alter subtly, giving off a faint golden light, so that at a glance he was a shaman-priest of Loulan's Golden Palace who had achieved some small success in his cultivation. Shen Mu opened the map of Loulan's Golden Palace, studied it for a while, then put it away.
His vital qi stirred the talisman treasure; it rose into the air, rune after rune lighting up, shining upon the seal on the treasure vault's door. "Twelve, nine, six, ten, seven, six, seven, one.
.
. " Shen Mu recited the numbers aloud, and with each number the talisman treasure turned once in the air, aiming one of its fourteen faces at the seal. When he had entered this vault, the turtle-backed guard had stirred the talisman treasure to undo the seal.