Chapter 885 — Attaining the Dao Amid Mortal Dust

In the Moon Palace, Shen Mu and Bai Qu'er truly were exchanging sword arts. Though her swordsmanship had come from Shen Mu, after forty thousand years of tempering it had made a leap in kind beyond the sword arts he had wielded in his youth. In those years, when Shen Mu and the Great Honored One and the rest had returned to forty thousand years past, in Bailong City, Shen Mu had displayed his sword arts before Bai Qu'er, Bai Qingfu, and the others; yet when the Shanghuang era was destroyed, of all who had witnessed those sword arts, only Bai Qu'er survived.

After Shen Mu departed, she alone guarded the people, seeking a place where the Shanghuang era might yet continue; every hardship and hazard fell on her shoulders alone. In her hands Shen Mu's sword arts slowly evolved, until they became a deity that sheltered the common folk. She was like another First Ancestor Human Sovereign, save that, unlike the First Ancestor, she was bolder in advance, keener in enterprise.

And she was only the daughter of the lord of Bailong City, no true-blooded dragon besides; the finest divine abilities she had ever learned were Shen Mu's sword arts and the Ancestral Dragon Grand Mystery Art he had taught her. Yet at that time Shen Mu had never had the leisure to pass his sword arts on to her in full, and the Ancestral Dragon Grand Mystery Art was itself incomplete.

She could only grope forward on her own, refining and improving; though Shen Mu's shadow yet lingered in her sword arts, the substance and the conception of them had long since strayed from his road. And it was this above all that moved Shen Mu to admiration and respect for her.

Only when sword arts take on the spirit of an age may they enter the Dao. This entering of the Dao was not the sort brought about by the Imperial Throne cultivation arts, nor the sort the Heavenly Court's "Yu Tianzun" achieved by using the arts of calculation to deconstruct the great-Dao runes of the ancient gods. To enter the Dao through the Imperial Throne arts depended on the Dao-practice of the art's founder, granting the cultivator supreme comprehension.

To enter the Dao by deconstructing the runes of the great Dao was to take a shortcut, letting one wield the great-Dao divine abilities of the ancient gods. Both were the trickster's way.

True entry into the Dao comes of being infected by the spirit of a great age: to set one's heart of the Dao within that age, to let it leap as the age leaps, to be stirred by the age's breath and pulse, to have one's heart of the Dao shaken by the churn of red-dust worldly affairs, and so to enter the Dao.

Such entry enters the red dust.

To enter the Dao through the red dust is the true entry into the Dao. The Village Elder's sword Dao was to dance his sword through setback after setback, mourning the fallen and broadening his heart.

The Imperial Preceptor of Jingping entered the Dao through reform and change, keen and enterprising.

The Butcher entered the Dao by refusing to bow to heaven, to earth, or to defeat, drawing his blade against the heavens, taking his joy in vengeance.

Shen Mu entered the Dao stirred by the First Ancestor Human Sovereign, bearing a heavy burden and a duty he had not the power to fulfill, striking out in fury on the battlefield of Taihuang Heaven, longing to change the calamitous fate of the mortal world.

Bai Qu'er's entry into the Dao was to use her sword to guard the people's peace, to protect the common folk, to give them the hope of living on. Her sword Dao halted only after the Shanghuang era had wholly ended and the people were safe, for then there was no more war, and the people of Shanghuang had their chance to breed and flourish. At that time her sword Dao had been cultivated to the twenty-seventh heaven.

Kaihuang and other rising talents were also coming to the fore then, and Bai Qu'er, the Shanghuang Sword God, could at last set down her burden; and it was for this very reason that in the tens of thousands of years that followed, her sword Dao could never advance one step further.

Yet her sword arts and her ideals went on to shape the Kaihuang era that lasted twenty thousand years, and reached even Jingping, forty thousand years on.

Shen Mu exchanged sword arts with her, teaching her the Sword Forms Eighteen and Nineteen he had created, and learning from her the great divine ability of her sword Dao.

In that great ability he could see the suffering and torment the girl had endured, and her stubborn persistence.

This time Shen Mu passed on his sword arts to her entire, and imparted the Ancestral Dragon Grand Mystery Art to her without reservation.

The reason the Shanghuang Sword God Bai Qu'er had never been able to cultivate to a higher realm was precisely the incompleteness of the Ancestral Dragon Grand Mystery Art; with this art, though it could not raise her attainments in the sword Dao, it could carry her cultivation realm one step further. "You mean to seek out Guixu?

" Hearing Shen Mu speak of Guixu, Bai Qu'er thought for a moment, then said, "In those years I led our people into the Eastern Sea. Yuandu had not yet been sealed then, and in one stretch of sea I came upon a giant dragon, like the Longbo you speak of.

If Longbo is there, Guixu should be nearby. " Shen Mu's eyes lit up, and he hastily asked where she had met Longbo.

Bai Qu'er drew him a maritime chart and said, "Longbo has a violent temper.

He is a descendant of the primordial divine dragons. If you go there, you must be careful. " In the Heaven Diagram, the scholars of Jingping were most diligent, like busy worker bees, patching the broken formations of the Diagram and altering their structures.

The Heaven Diagram was a treasure, and the Imperial Preceptor of Jingping wished to refine it anew, to make of it a formation weapon for Jingping. He had considered taking the Heaven Diagram away as well, but taking it away would only make the Heavenly Court refine a new Heaven Diagram the faster, which would be the worse for Jingping.

To play upon the Heavenly Court's inertia, to make Jingping seem all the more harmless to man and beast, was what served Jingping's interest.

Shen Mu and Bai Qu'er likewise left the Moon Palace and helped the scholars patch the Heaven Diagram and improve its formation structures; the two of them lived in great fulfillment.

Until one day, when Shen Mu suddenly remembered Yu Tianzun.

"Damn it—I left Brother Yu at the Jiangling Academy for near half a year! " Shen Mu had no choice but to leave. Bai Qu'er stood before the Moon Palace and waved him farewell.

Shen Mu stood atop the dragon-qilin's head, and the dragon-qilin galloped off toward the world below.

Looking back, he saw the woman dancing with her sword in the bright, burnished moon. Shen Mu gazed and gazed at the woman dancing in the moon, and he felt that Bai Qu'er's long-stagnant sword Dao seemed of a sudden to rise again, to advance once more. The woman seemed to have found once more someone and something worth laying down her life to protect, and so her attainments in the sword Dao had risen again.

"Is it Jingping, heir to Shanghuang's ideals, that she means to guard—or is it only me she would guard.

. .

? " Shen Mu shook his head and laughed at himself.

"It is Jingping she means to guard.

It must be so. " At the Jiangling Academy, his face black as a kettle, Shen Mu collected Yu Tianzun and the water qilin, both fattened plump by Yan'er's feeding.

In the half year past, Yu Tianzun had followed the Duke of Wei, and his voice had grown astonishingly loud, till Shen Mu's ears rang and buzzed.

Shen Mu's face turned blacker still; he strictly forbade Yan'er to go on feeding Yu Tianzun and the water qilin, and on the road he forced Yu Tianzun to cultivate like a madman, striving to burn the fat off his body. As for the water qilin, Shen Mu handed it to the dragon-qilin to train.

For shedding the fat from a body, the dragon-qilin had its own methods.