Chapter 4: Niu Youdao

Luo Yuangong accepted the Sect Leader Token with both hands, showing the respect due to it. As he returned to his place, he looked at Tang Susu and Su Po and could not help sighing.

There was nothing to be done. In his present condition, Tang Mu had no reason to fear pressure from anyone. Even if every member of the sect united in opposition, it would make no difference. The sect rules gave the Sect Leader the authority to designate his successor. If Tang Mu insisted on playing matters this way on the verge of death, who could outplay him?

"All of you, remember this. After I die, keep my death secret and do not announce the mourning. Otherwise, the Shangqing Sect may be drawn into a great disaster." Tang Mu issued another final order before everyone present.

The disciples looked at one another, not understanding what he meant. The Elders exchanged glances, worry in their eyes. They seemed to have sensed something.

A while later, the other inner disciples dispersed. Only the three Elders, Tang Yi, and Wei Duo remained in the hall.

Only then did Elder Luo Yuangong ask in a grave voice, "Sect Leader, you and Dong Guo Haoran left one after another, each taking disciples with you. Now you've returned with injuries like these. What exactly happened? Who wounded you?"

Tang Mu held himself upright and replied calmly, "My strength is failing. Whatever questions you have, ask my junior martial brother after he assumes the position of Sect Leader."

Tang Susu's expression turned cold. "There have been rumors outside lately that the Shang Mirror has reappeared in the world. Did you and Dong Guo Haoran end up like this because you were fighting others over the Shang Mirror?"

At the mention of the Shang Mirror, everyone present reacted. Their eyes fixed on Tang Mu, watching for the slightest response.

The Shang Mirror's origins were simply too momentous.

Though seven great powers now stood side by side beneath Heaven, the order of the realm had ultimately grown out of the foundations of the State of Wu. In years past, Shang Song, the foremost expert in the cultivation world, could have lived out his life free and unfettered. For reasons no one understood, however, he had suddenly taken it into his head to involve himself in worldly affairs. He exhausted himself unifying all under Heaven, founded the State of Wu, and became its emperor. Thereafter, he continually suppressed the cultivators of the realm, claiming that he was preventing cultivators from competing with ordinary people for worldly interests.

Later, in pursuit of immortality, Shang Song went against his own original purpose and pierced a hole in Heaven. Vast quantities of spiritual qi poured in from beyond the heavens, making it impossible for the cultivation world not to flourish. Shang Song's wife, Li Ge, Queen of Wu, did not forget their original purpose. She therefore mended Heaven. In the end, husband and wife both disappeared without a trace.

Once the two vanished, no one remained capable of restraining the hundreds of vassal states that had been enfeoffed across the realm. The feudal lords plunged into war, and the fighting had continued ever since.

Legend held that Shang Song had refined a set of eight magical treasures. Both his breaching of Heaven and Li Ge's mending of it had relied on those treasures. When the State of Wu collapsed and its divine artifacts scattered, the eight treasures passed continually among the vassal states. As smaller states were swallowed one after another, the realm eventually settled into a balance among eight great powers. Each of the eight treasures came into the possession of one state and was regarded as a divine artifact safeguarding that state.

The Shang Mirror was the divine artifact held by the State of Qin. Rumor claimed that the Shang Mirror was the key that activated the treasures used to breach and mend Heaven, making it the foremost of the eight. That rumor drew cultivators into the struggle and ultimately brought about the destruction of the State of Qin. Yet when Qin's ruling house collapsed, the Shang Mirror vanished. Every faction searched for it, but none could find any trace.

The crucial point was that, according to rumor, Li Ge had not completely repaired Heaven. A fissure remained. Some believed this was why there were now so many cultivators in the world. Once cultivators became too numerous, conflict with ordinary people over worldly interests was unavoidable. Those people believed that cultivators' ceaseless interference in secular affairs was what kept the realm trapped in endless war. They therefore wanted to gather all eight treasures and completely mend the breach in Heaven, severing the source of spiritual qi.

Naturally, that idea offended the cultivators of the entire realm. Prince Ning, Shang Jianbo, Grand Marshal of the State of Yan, had been one of its leading advocates.

And unfortunately, the Shangqing Sect had unworthy disciples who had long been entangled with Prince Ning, Shang Jianbo. Dong Guo Haoran was one of them.

Recently, rumors had suddenly spread that the Shang Mirror had resurfaced. At exactly that time, Tang Mu and Dong Guo Haoran had each taken disciples and gone off somewhere without telling anyone what they were doing, only for matters to end in this fashion. It was difficult not to suspect that their movements had something to do with the Shang Mirror.

How many cultivation sects stood behind any one state? The Shang Mirror was an object capable of bringing calamity great enough to destroy an entire state. If the Shangqing Sect had become entangled with such a thing, how could anyone not be worried? The Shangqing Sect was no longer the flourishing power it had once been. It had long since declined and could not withstand a violent storm.

Tang Mu slowly closed his eyes. "You're thinking too much. We were merely ambushed by people whose identities were unknown."

The others could see that Tang Mu had no intention of revealing the truth. In his condition, he might collapse at any moment. None of them had any way to force him...

At daybreak the next morning, the temple door creaked open a crack. An eye peered through the gap and darted around outside.

The door slowly opened wider, and Master Dao stuck his head out, looking left and right.

He opened it farther and cautiously eased one foot outside, landing on tiptoe without making a sound as he continued to scan his surroundings. Once outside, he circled the small ruined temple, ears pricked and eyes wide, carefully checking all directions.

It seemed to be the depths of winter. The world outside was frozen, the grass and trees withered yellow.

Master Dao tossed stones in several directions to test the surroundings. Nothing reacted. Only after deciding there really did not seem to be any danger did he finally straighten from the wary crouch he had maintained on the hillside outside the temple. He took the bronze mirror from inside his clothes again. Its polished surface was bright enough to reflect a face clearly. Sighing, he turned his head this way and that as he studied himself in it.

He tucked the mirror back into his clothes and noticed a stream at the foot of the hill. He raced downhill. At the water's edge, he jumped onto a rock in the stream and stared at his reflection.

"Ah..." Another long sigh escaped him.

Back in the temple, he had already examined himself in the mirror by the light from outside. Combined with his present circumstances, that had more or less explained why the old man had called him a young fellow. The old man had not been wrong at all. He really was young now. He had become a small adolescent boy.

He slowly crouched on the rock and spent a while gazing ruefully at his reflection in the clear stream. Then his stomach growled.

He was hungry.

Whatever connection this young body might have had to him, he was the one now enduring the very real sensation of an empty stomach. He stood and looked around. He needed to find something to eat.

By chance, he noticed what looked like cooking smoke rising beyond the neighboring ridge. He jumped across the stream, found a rough path that seemed to lead in that direction, and cautiously made his way along it.

After crossing the ridge, he hid behind a large tree and observed a village below.

The place was in disarray, as though it had recently been burned. Quite a few women and children were crying, while the villagers worked to clear away the wreckage.

Master Dao looked down at his own clothes. His filthy hemp shoes were torn open, and his big toe poked through one of the holes. He wiggled it. The sight was miserable enough, but his appearance matched the villagers well enough to give him some confidence. He emerged from hiding and walked toward the village with a trace of unease.

He had barely entered when a disheveled woman ran over, wailing at the top of her lungs, and threw her arms around him. "Dao, you're alive! I thought those damned soldier-bandits had gotten you too..."

About two hours later, Master Dao understood the situation.

The village had been looted by marauding troops the previous day, leaving a number of people dead or wounded. He had probably ended up in the ruined temple while hiding from those troops.

The cooking smoke died away. The village men, who had eaten less than half enough to fill their bellies, began heading into the mountains to search for food. Their main task was to dig up edible roots and tubers or hunt wild animals, anything that might help the villagers survive the winter. The village's grain had all been plundered by the soldier-bandits. Even the little food they had just eaten had come from stores one household had hidden well enough to escape discovery. It was nowhere near enough to feed the whole village.

For the moment, what little food remained had been given to the men who would be doing heavy physical work. The elderly, the weak, the women, and the children had to endure their hunger and continue cleaning up the devastated village while waiting for the men to return from the mountains with something to eat.

Somehow, Master Dao ended up among the men sent out to forage. Even a young boy like him was being counted as a man and put to work.

He was no longer called Master Dao here. His original name in this village was Niu Youdao. Whether by coincidence or fate, it fit his old title of "Master Dao" uncannily well.

Niu Youdao it was. Master Dao did not particularly mind. He had no idea how he had somehow become Niu Youdao in the first place.

Strange as the affair was, he did not find it impossibly difficult to accept. A man who had made a career out of "archaeology" had seen plenty involving the affairs of the dead and no shortage of bizarre things. He had also read many ancient texts and legends about souls taking up residence in other people's bodies. Others dismissed such things as superstition, but he had always taken the attitude that they existed if one believed and did not if one did not. Now that he had confirmed his own condition, his state of mind remained fairly steady. He could accept it calmly.

At least he was not a man without name or origin in this place. He had a plausible identity. Master Dao therefore made his own decision: from now on, he would be Niu Youdao.

The task of searching nearby for food was assigned to the younger boys, while the longer and more dangerous foraging trips were left to the adults.

Using the food search as a pretext, Niu Youdao slipped away on his own. Instead of looking for anything to eat, he returned to the ruined temple.

He tore down a tattered cloth hanging inside the temple, wrapped the old man's corpse in it, hoisted the body onto his back, and carried it down the mountain to the river Dong Guo Haoran had mentioned.

He entered a bamboo grove and used a woodcutting knife to bring down several stalks. After trimming away the branches and leaves and cutting the bamboo to suitable lengths, he found dried vines and similar material and soaked them in water. With them, he lashed together a sturdy three-layer bamboo raft, broad, spacious, and stable. Given his practical experience, making a bamboo raft was simple work and did not trouble him much.

He laid bamboo sections underneath as rollers and shoved the completed raft into the water with a rumble. He placed the old man's corpse aboard, gathered a pile of dry firewood and stacked it on the raft as well, then found a large flat stone by the river and loaded that too.

He brought aboard a crude paddle and a bamboo pole, then tossed on the hoe he had taken from the village.

With one stroke of his knife, he cut the dried vine tethering the raft. He planted the bamboo pole against the bank and pushed off, sending man and raft away from shore.

Using the current, he poled the raft slowly downstream over the blue-green water.

As for why he had not stayed behind to rebuild the village with the others, first, he had no real feelings for these villagers. Nor did these people, tucked away in a mountain hollow, know much about the outside world. He had played dumb and asked them quite a few questions, only to discover that they did not even understand the larger situation beyond the village. He had no desire to spend his life farming here. He was intensely curious about this world, and even more curious about the Shangqing Sect Dong Guo Haoran had spoken of, especially after witnessing internal force so profound that it had left him shaken.

Even when he had still been Master Dao, he had always loved things connected to cultivation. He often searched ancient tombs for texts of that kind. Now he had an overwhelming desire to visit the Shangqing Sect and see what it was truly like.

Second, this wretched place was often plundered by bandits and marauding troops. The family of this young body had long since been killed by them, and there were many others in the village in similar circumstances. He was alone, with no family ties left to hold him here.

Nor did he want to remain too long. He preferred to leave quickly while he was still unfamiliar with the villagers, afraid that if he stayed long enough to form attachments, parting later would become difficult. And so he left quietly.

The kindness of even one meal should be repaid when he had the means, though that meal had not even been enough to make him half full.

As for bringing Dong Guo Haoran's corpse, Niu Youdao simply felt that taking another piece of evidence to the Shangqing Sect would be safer. Perhaps it would make him look a little more sincere as well.

In this bitter winter cold, the body ought to keep reasonably well. Bringing it along was no great inconvenience.

[End of Chapter 4]