Chapter 704 — Climbing onto a Giant's Shoulder

Lady Tianyin swept her gaze around the circle and said in admiration, "Your wisdom and talent are rare in all the world, and yet six of you appeared at once. What age is this? How has it suddenly produced so many gifted people?"

Shen Mu laughed. "My lady, the six before you may be called the wisest men of the past twenty thousand years. They are more than one in a hundred million. Right now, all the wisdom of those twenty thousand years is gathered before you."

The Woodcutter urged him, "Hurry up and use the art that will revive our lady. Enough boasting. There are only five wise men in the last twenty thousand years. You have an Overlord Body — you are not one of them."

Shen Mu, disgruntled, roused his cultivation method and drew out the Book of Youdu. Once more he activated the Soul-Pulling Invocation, which he had improved with his own hands. The structure of the Heaven-Bearing Gate shifted at his will, and the Youdu tongue rang out, making everyone frown.

Again and again Shen Mu turned the Gate of Youdu, stealing the power of the Heavenly Lord, then the power of Tubo, and at last he stole the strength of both ancient gods at once.

The onlookers were dazzled by the sight and muddled by the sound.

"It is the Youdu tongue. I can understand eight parts in ten."

Yama roused his own art, and a gateway appeared behind him, somewhat like the Heaven-Bearing Gate. "But I have never seen this book before," he said, "and stealing the power of the Heavenly Lord and Tubo is likely to leave hidden dangers. Either of those two beings is more than we can bear."

"I can understand six parts in ten of the Youdu tongue."

The Imperial Preceptor Jingping said, "I studied it under my master for a time, but much of it remains obscure and hard to grasp. I fear I shall never master it."

The Woodcutter Sage frowned. "I cannot understand all of it either. Stealing a little of Tubo's and the Heavenly Lord's power might pass, but steal much and those two beings will surely stir. To steal their strength to revive the souls of the Tianyin Realm will certainly enrage them."

Xu Shenghua and the First Ancestor Human Emperor had never studied the Youdu tongue, and were all the more at a loss.

Xu Shenghua ventured, "Since we cannot steal the power of Tubo and the Heavenly Lord, why not alter Hierarch Shen's art and go around them?"

The Imperial Preceptor Jingping said, "It is not a matter of going around. The Hierarch has laid a fine foundation for us. My lady, the Tianyin Realm surely has no system of divine arts of its own?"

Lady Tianyin nodded. "There were once many wielders of divine arts living here, but all of them came in from the outside world, fleeing war, and they brought the arts of the outside with them. In the beginning there was only me here. There were no others."

A faint smile appeared on the Imperial Preceptor Jingping's face. "Then from this day on, the Tianyin Realm may have a system of divine arts of its own."

Xu Shenghua's eyes lit up, and he could not help glancing at the Imperial Preceptor Jingping. He thought, "A sage who appears once in five hundred years — truly of the highest intelligence! Yet the reason the Woodcutter Sage has said nothing is surely that he wishes to see how clever this disciple of his is."

The First Ancestor and Yama were suddenly enlightened as well. The First Ancestor laughed. "With the Imperial Preceptor Jingping's guidance, we have found our road at last."

Yama let out a breath. "The Human Emperor Shen's art is the key that opens the Tianyin Realm's system of divine arts."

The Woodcutter Sage looked at Shen Mu. "Disciple, explain your art once through."

Shen Mu explained the art in careful detail. All of them were of surpassing intelligence; one hearing was enough to fix it in their hearts, and each began to pace back and forth.

The Imperial Preceptor Jingping chanted the Youdu tongue in a low voice, and the black sand of souls all around rippled and rose and fell with his voice.

Xu Shenghua halted and recited the Youdu tongue at the starving ghoul Shen Mu had captured. The ghoul opened its mouth and gave a shrill, wretched howl; black sand poured ceaselessly from within it, while more black sand surged in from outside.

The First Ancestor Human Emperor borrowed the Book of Youdu from Shen Mu and used his own vital essence to imitate the Youdu script, seeking to improve Shen Mu's art.

Yama, who had studied the divine arts of Youdu, simply altered Shen Mu's art outright.

The Woodcutter Sage, meanwhile, paced around Ning Jin, the Divine Man of the Kaihuang Era, studying him without pause.

Each was lost in his own thoughts, each held a different view, and all of them were tampering with Shen Mu's art.

Only Yan Jingjing, who had truly never studied such things, could do nothing but watch these strange men meekly.

Shen Mu watched them with a dark face. In the past it had always been he who tampered with other people's arts; now at last he knew what it felt like to have his own tampered with.

A long while passed. Some walked, some lay down, some sat, some ran, all pondering bitterly.

The Imperial Preceptor Jingping drew bizarre runes in the sand by the sea; the First Ancestor wrote and sketched in the air with his vital essence; Xu Shenghua took out his Ruler and his Arithmetic Elemental Soldiers and calculated at furious speed, writing strange equations on the ground one after another, trying to solve them.

Behind Yama floated a great metal ring, on which runes flickered in and out of being.

The Woodcutter Sage took from Ning Jin's neck the pendant Shen Mu had forged for him, then turned to examine the Heaven Dipper the Dark Son of Heaven had forged.

How much longer passed, no one knew. They gathered around the Heaven Dipper, each branding the void with his vital essence, and one magnificent symbol after another appeared in the air.

They were golden runes, and from them burst ceaselessly a golden light like grains of sand — like the black sand of souls, yet not black.

"What are they doing?" Lady Tianyin could no longer follow it either, and asked Shen Mu and Yan Jingjing in a whisper.

Shen Mu's expression was grave. He said in a low voice, "They are trying to sort out, from my art and from the Dark Son of Heaven's Heaven Dipper, some of the foundational runes of the Tianyin Realm's divine arts, and from there to deduce all of the foundational runes."

Lady Tianyin was briefly startled. "Foundational runes of the Tianyin Realm? There is such a thing?"

"You have never been to the outside world, my lady, have you? You do not know that most of the divine arts under heaven are built from foundational runes."

Shen Mu explained, "Wind, rain, thunder, lightning, cloud, mist, the stars of heaven, and Creation itself — every kind of divine art has its most fundamental structure, and these are the foundational runes. Take swordsmanship: swordsmanship has eighteen foundational sword moves. And your Tianyin Realm, my lady, is another world, different from the outside, with different rules. Its divine arts and Dao methods may be said to form a system of their own."

Yan Jingjing had been forced up into the divine realm by Xizhou, and her understanding of the foundations of Dao methods and divine arts was slight. Now she could not help listening closely and comprehending, making up for her own shortcomings.

"The art with which I would revive you, my lady, was born out of several great systems of divine arts — Youdu, Mingdu, Xuandu, Creation, the way of gods, the way of demons, the way of buddhas, the Daoist gate. It touches on the arts of all these systems. These are the great systems; the lesser systems within them are too many to count. Only by fusing so many systems of divine arts could I revive you."

Shen Mu went on, "But what I used were not the foundational runes of the Tianyin Realm. I used the knowledge of these systems of divine arts to imitate the Tianyin Realm's foundational runes."