The Lost Tomb : Sea Of Sands

Chapter 133: King Mu of Zhou

What was this person basing his answer on? He told the emperor a story about the King of Zhou's western expedition. King Mu of Zhou—whose name was Ji Man— was a legendary and deified figure. In all of the Zhou Dynasty's history, only the records pertaining to this person seemed to be fairy tales.

Legend had it that this Emperor Mu [1] had a very strange passion. He didn't care about state affairs, wasn't close to his ministers or wife, and only seemed to care about running around.

At that time, a man named Zao Fu made him a war chariot pulled by eight magical horses, and he swept all the way to the west with his troops. He hit the Kunlun Mountains, but was stopped by someone known as the Queen of the West.

She invited Emperor Mu to the jade lake on top of the mountain, and then invited him to see the "Yellow Emperor's Palace". The two happily drank in the jade lake.

Before leaving, the Queen of the West was very reluctant to part with Emperor Mu and said something like this:

White clouds in the sky, the hills emerge.

The road is far away, between mountains and rivers.

The child who is not dead, can still come back.

Before they left, they exchanged a large number of gifts between the two countries. After that, Emperor Mu left the Queen of the West and returned to the Zhou Dynasty. He died at the age of a hundred and five, but never returned to the Queen of the West's country.

At this point, the middle-aged man repeated the poem composed by the Queen of the West and said: "Emperor Mu ascended the throne at the age of fifty-five, when the Zhou dynasty was at its strongest. But after his death, the Zhou dynasty began to decline. Historically, Emperor Mu's lack of interest in the imperial government and his wanton travels during his reign could be regarded as the cause of the Zhou dynasty's downfall. Why did the owner of the fox mask think that the secret of immortality came from the legend of the Zhou Emperor?"

Li Cu shook his head. He thought about it, but he couldn't come to a conclusion.

"You're too young to understand the greatest pain of an ambitious fifty-five-year-old who had just ascended the throne." The middle-aged man continued: "For most people, the happiest thing is to achieve success at a young age, and get what they want the most: women, territory, and wealth. A strong, youthful body could enjoy all this, but when King Mu of Zhou ascended the throne, all this was gone.

"A fifty-five-year-old newly ascended emperor— in addition to struggling with political affairs— couldn't help but ask himself: It was so hard to get all of this, but what is the significance?

"Since ancient times, there had been a legend about the Queen of the West having an immortality elixir. Everyone knew that Emperor Mu's character was different from that of other people, and he usually took the most extreme measures. He invaded the west with the power of his whole country, not caring about anything else. As long as he could get the immortality elixir from the Queen of the West, the days ahead would last for a long time.

"So he entered Kunlun. The jade pool at that time— believed to be the present Qinghai Lake— was considered to be part of the Queen of the West's ancient kingdom. It had been verified that her territory covered a vast area of the Kunlun Mountains, Qinghai Lake, and the Qaidam Basin, and she was the leader of all the ancient countries in this region.

"We don't know what happened between them, so we may as well make a bold assumption that Emperor Mu of Zhou, who was in his twilight years, was attracted to the young Queen of the West and fell in love. Not only did they not fight each other, but they also transferred a lot of cultural items from the Central Plains to this ancient country. The Queen of the West also fell in love with Emperor Mu of Zhou (it was said in history that Emperor Mu was very handsome. Although he was past middle aged, men of such years were often the most attractive.)