Chapter 63 — The Mystery of the Three-Character Fusion

A thin thread of radiance came flying through the air and hid itself among the village headman's hairs. Showing nothing on his face, he strode down out of the sky and returned to Yincan Village.

A hundred li away downriver, the Yongjiang turned a bend, rounded a mountain and threaded through a gorge; there the ice flood met its obstruction, piled higher and higher, and at last choked the channel. "Sang'e, stop!

" The hundred-legged white-boned centipede woman, bearing Shen Mu, was coursing through the air in sinuous, rearing leaps like a dragon winding forward, yet swift beyond telling; at the words she settled onto a peak on the gorge's left bank and said with a cold laugh, "Brat, why should I listen to you?

" Shen Mu sprang from her back and said doubtfully, "I freed you from your bonds. To repay me, you will naturally help me break open the ice dam. " Sang'e's body swayed, and she became Qixia'er once more, chains dragging from her wrists and ankles.

She hopped and skipped around Shen Mu, circling him several times with her iron chains clanking, then thrust her head round from behind him to face him and giggled, "You help me, and I have to repay you? Have you forgotten?

Last time you did me such harm — that old bald donkey nearly refined me to death! And you stole the treasures I had hidden away all these years. I ought to eat you first! " "Only you don't dare," Shen Mu said with a smile. Sang'e's neck suddenly shot out to a length of several zhang; she wound it around Shen Mu several turns until the two were almost face to face, and sneered, "I don't dare?

The old bald donkey isn't here to help you now.

Why wouldn't I dare? " "I live in Yincan Village.

My family has nine grown-ups, and any one of them could snuff you out as easily as blinking.

" Shen Mu smiled. "No matter how you change your shape, no matter how far you flee, they will find you easily, kill you easily, and make you regret easily that you were ever born into this world.

" Sang'e shuddered several times, drew her neck back in, and became once more a cute girl of snow and ice, shaking the golden rings and chains on her hands as she hopped about. "I'm afraid of your family's grown-ups — but that doesn't mean I have to help you. The old bald donkey was right: you let me out, so I'll go do evil, go eat people, go bring calamity down on the living! Why should I help you save anyone? I'm off—" She turned to go, her chains clattering.

Shen Mu said suddenly, "Sang'e, the Buddhists say that to lay down the butcher's knife is to become a Buddha on the spot.

That saying is far too lax — it draws no line between good and evil, and is not worth believing. But if you help me level this barrier lake and save the countless living things downstream, that will be your merit — merit far greater than that bronze Buddha's. " Sang'e halted, twisted her head round upon her back, and listened, curious.

Shen Mu went on, "Save people with me, and your merit will stand higher than the bronze Buddha who suppressed you — a hundred times higher!

Next time you meet that bronze Buddha, will he still have the face to suppress you? " Sang'e tilted her head, thought it over, then burst out laughing.

"All right, you have a point. I'll help you. Heh — that old bald donkey, all false benevolence and sham righteousness, made my eating people his excuse and suppressed me in the name of justice, saying he would let these rolling waters wash away my sins. I told him: when I eat people I make no distinction between good and evil; I am simply hungry and need a meal, just as you humans eat rice, eat chicken, eat vegetables — when you're hungry, you eat. " She glanced at the choked channel below and said, "I have no feelings for the people I eat, so I treat them as food; you have no feelings for vegetables and rice, so you eat vegetables and rice.

The thieving bald one called it twisted heresy, and suppressed me. Well done him — so I ate people inside his own temple, and made sure he had no merit at all! But if my merit were to stand above his, let us see how he would have the face to suppress me then! Hm — there is too much ice in this channel. If I still had my primal soldiers, I could punch through it, but the thieving bald one took them all away. . .

" Clang— Shen Mu roused the Chubao sword, driving the flying blade with his qi, and slashed down at the ice flood damming the gorge, crying, "Sang'e, lend me your strength!

" "That sword — the one that cut my chains? " Sang'e's eyes lit up; at once she revealed her true form, all hundred legs stirring, and flipped herself off the cliff.

Shen Mu leapt after her and landed on her back, and the hundred-legged white-boned centipede flew through the air, a hundred legs in motion, her body writhing, bearing Shen Mu straight for the choked ice flood.

"Cut! " Shen Mu roared, and the Chubao sword fell upon the ice flood. At the same moment Sang'e opened her mouth and spat, and a dreadful demonic essence rushed forth and poured madly into the Chubao sword.

The Chubao sword swelled in an instant to a hundred zhang in length and came down upon the ice flood!

The ice flood rose ever higher; floes were carried up onto the ice dam by the surging river, making the dam higher still, and if it went on piling up like this it would surely become a catastrophe for every living thing on both banks of the Yongjiang! The Chubao sword tore through the air; where its edge passed, the air was split into two walls of wind, visible to the naked eye; then the hundred-zhang blade came down on the ice dam and cut clean through it as though through bean curd, one stroke to the bottom.

"Oh no!

" Sang'e's face changed; she tried to spring into the air, but it was already too late. The ice dam, struck by the surging river, collapsed at once, and countless fragments of ice, pressed onward by the torrent, came sweeping over them!

This was annihilation, plain and simple. Before the fallen dam could crush them, the hurricane forced them down out of the sky.

Sang'e flew with all her might, striving to escape, but the collapsing dam and the flood had already overtaken her.

Hiss hiss hiss— Shards of ice flew everywhere; pain stabbed at Shen Mu's cheek, and a fragment sliced it open. His essence was thick and his defenses formidable — the raging ape could pound him and leave no wound — yet the ice flew so fast that it could still cut him.

Then imagine the peril if the dam itself came down upon them.

Sang'e raced on with him; chunks of ice great and small and the roaring waves screeched past them on either side, and then the hurricane, the ice shards and the giant waves all together smashed into them and sent the man and the monster flying! Bang.

Bang.

Two muffled thuds came from the cliff opposite, and broken stone burst into the air.

Shen Mu and Sang'e were pasted against the cliff, embedded in its face — one pinned flat in the shape of a cross, the other strung out into a column of stacked slabs. Then came a shrill sword-song, and the moment Shen Mu heard it he knew something was wrong: that cry of the blade was plainly aimed at him! He hastily spread his legs wide; with a ding, the Chubao sword very nearly buried itself in his thigh.

Whoosh— Shen Mu let out a long breath. Now, with his legs spread and the blade hanging before him like a dot, he had become the sign for "grand"; the Chubao sword still stood half a foot from his body. Beside him the great demon began to wheeze with laughter; Shen Mu could not help laughing too, and the laughter of man and monster grew and grew until it rang through the whole gorge.

Below them the river roared and raced — a crisis dissolved by this strange pair.

Not long after, Shen Mu and Sang'e — once more in the shape of Qixia'er — sat on the cliff, leaning back with both hands braced against the ground behind them, gazing up at the blue sky and white clouds, a great stillness in their hearts. "Who was that bronze Buddha?