o she said hastily: "You are surely not going to think that pile of broken clay jars at the Pill Master's door is a treasure too?" Shen Mu looked at the broken clay jars by the Pill Master's door. Inside them were unknown medicinal herbs, and in them were kept small creatures—spiders, silkworms, centipedes and the like. Just now, when the flood had spread, water had gotten into the jars and several insects had crawled out and stood on the rims, fighting one another. Suddenly a black spider flew into a rage, flames all over its body; then the spider swelled to the size of a table and spewed fire at the other little insects. In the flames, several golden silkworms grew wings and became more than a foot long, flying out of the fire to pounce on the spider and bite it with a squealing sound. The Pill Master thrust his head out and barked a rebuke, and the insects hastily shrank back to their proper size and returned to the clay jars, where they stayed obediently. Shen Mu grew all the more suspicious. Granny Zhu gave two dry laughs and mumbled: "It is all perfectly normal, nothing more ordinary..." Shen Mu ventured: "Granny, do people outside also fly, like Blind Grandpa?" Granny Zhu nodded: "Everyone outside can fly." Shen Mu said: "And are people outside also like the people in our village, all spirit bodies?" "All of them spirit bodies!" "And are the people outside as formidable as the people in our village?" "Formidable indeed! Otherwise Granny and the Blind Elder and the rest would never have been driven to hide away in the Desolate Ruins! Stop always thinking of running outside—be careful you do not die out there. The people outside are far more vicious than the Blind Elder!" ... Shen Mu was half convinced, half doubtful. Were the people beyond the Desolate Ruins truly as formidable as Granny Zhu said—able to ascend the heavens and burrow into the earth, capable of anything? By the river, the Lame Elder finished tending the corpses and laid them in their coffins. Lord Huo drove wooden wedges one by one into the coffin lids, nailing them shut, and then pushed the coffins one after another into the river, letting them drift downstream. The current was swift, and downstream there were many hidden reefs and jagged rocks. These coffins would find it hard to drift all the way to the sea; on the way they would be smashed open, and the bodies would sink into the water and become food for the great fish of the Surging River. "The Lanjiang Sect may be struck from the rolls of the Southern Wastes." Watching the coffins recede, the Lame Elder said quietly: "The sect master is dead, and all the masters of the sect are dead. It will be hard for this sect to survive." "What I am thinking of now is not that." Lord Huo shook his head and looked into the distance: "What I am thinking of now is that first man beneath the gods. Ling Hanchuan was the prefect of the Qili Prefecture of the Southern Wastes; the Imperial Teacher of Jingping himself brought him to terms and granted him a post of the junior second rank. He is dead, and the Five Elders of Lanjiang are dead as well—will this stir that first man beneath the gods?" The Lame Elder shook his head and said decisively: "It will stir him! But he absolutely will not dare enter the Desolate Ruins!" Lord Huo glanced at him: "Do not forget—one Imperial Teacher of Jingping may be unable to do anything about the Desolate Ruins, but behind the Imperial Teacher of Jingping stands the State of Jingping! Jingping is a great sect wearing the name of a nation! How could such a colossus not cast a covetous eye upon the Desolate Ruins? This is a place with countless treasures!"