Chapter 163 — The Waters of Bangong Lake
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 2 of 4
" The Shaman King smiled, reached out, and made a grasping motion from afar, and Bangong Cuo, helpless against the pull, came flying through the air to land before him. "What an endowment — the very special constitution the Shaman Sovereign has been seeking! " The Shaman King looked him up and down, approval written on his face. "The Shaman Sovereign commanded me to find the sacred child of reincarnation, and at last I have found him! Bangong Cuo, come with me!
" The garrison commander was aghast and moved to stop him, but the Shaman King had already turned into a streak of golden light and fled afar with the boy. When he brought Bangong Cuo back to Loulan's Golden Palace and delivered the little prince before the Shaman Sovereign, even the Shaman Sovereign could not contain his startled joy. He hurried with the boy to the sacred temple and bowed.
"Great Sovereign, the sacred child of reincarnation has been found. He bears the same constitution as yourself — a heaven-endowed genius such as the grasslands see only once in centuries.
You may reincarnate now. " From within the shrine came a shrill, piercing laugh, and then a withered, skeletal freak of a man shot out head-downward, feet in the air, and pressed crown to crown against Bangong Cuo. An earth-shaking boom rang through Bangong Cuo's skull — and then his soul scattered and his spirit dissolved.
Surging vital essence poured ceaselessly from the freak's body into Bangong Cuo's, and at the same time the Great Sovereign's soul passed over as well, planted within the boy.
"Disciple," came the voice, "in my reincarnation I defied heaven and altered fate — those who should die do not die, and those who should live do not live. For that, the underworld bailiffs will come to seize my soul. Set your formation well and hold them back.
" The Shaman Sovereign hurried forward, carrying out shrine after shrine and setting them in a ring around Bangong Cuo. The golden bones within those shrines were the remains of the Great Sovereign's previous seventeen lives, refined into artifacts. All at once space shuddered.
A chill wind breathed in from another world, and the lamps in the sacred temple dimmed at once; out of that other world drifted a small boat, unhurried. It was a dark world, and its only light, it seemed, was a green lamp hung at the boat's prow, burning dim and uncertain. Beneath the lamp sat a withered old man, folding paper boats and paper figures. The little boat drifted on, toward the sacred temple.
The Shaman Sovereign was frantic; he poured every scrap of his power into the shrines, and within them the seventeen golden-bone skeletons seemed to come alive, barring the gateway between the other world and the world of the living.
The old man in the boat sat steeped in boundless darkness. From where he sat, the only lights in all of heaven and earth were his own lamp and the entrance to the other world — and that entrance was blocked by seventeen skeletons. He raised his hand, and the paper figures and paper horses came alive as one: the figures mounted the horses, the horses galloped joyously, and the whole cavalcade hurled itself at the entrance barred by the golden skeletons. On horseback the paper riders brandished paper knives and paper swords, mouths open in soundless cries — a war shout, bristling with killing intent. The seventeen golden bones moved as one and clashed with the onrushing paper host in a single tangled melee.