Chapter 927 — Blood Light Surges, a Demon Is Born

How long he had lain there, he could not say. Shen Mu came slowly back to his senses, feeling utterly spent, his qi and blood both drained, and neither his primordial qi nor his blood had recovered more than a trace.

Trembling, he raised a hand and touched the center of his brow.

The Creation Divine Stone was gone from his brow, and the jade pendant with it.

"What happened while I was unconscious? " He struggled upright and looked into the mirror opposite him.

The man in the mirror was gaunt as a stick of firewood, his face ashen, not a shade of color in it.

The wound at his brow, like an eyelid, had already closed, leaving a single line of blood. His mind was a chaos, his divine consciousness would not answer his call, the primordial qi within him was hollowed out, and his heart beat so faintly that little blood reached the rest of his body.

His limbs were cold as ice. He rummaged with difficulty through the Taotie Pouch for spirit medicines, and only after a long while did he gather all the ingredients he needed; then, forcing out what little primordial qi remained to him, he set about refining a spirit elixir.

His command of his primordial qi was not what it had been, and the furnace burst as he worked, ruining the whole batch.

Never once had such a thing happened since his mastery of the medical arts!

When he had studied the medical arts under the pill masters, the only time his furnace had ever exploded was back in Yincan Village; but now, with his cultivation so deep, every refinement succeeded, and a burst furnace was simply not a thing that could happen to him. His depletion was too great.

His command over his own flesh, his primordial qi, his divine consciousness, and his blood and qi was worse than before, worse even than in his youth!

With the medical arts and the arts of Creation he now possessed, so long as a man still breathed he was not truly wounded; yet now he was so emptied out that he could not even employ the arts of Creation, and could barely refine elixirs to heal himself. "Eldest Senior Brother, that divine stone you left me has done me great harm.

.

. " Wei Suifeng had left him the Creation Divine Stone for his own good, but Wei Suifeng's plans could not keep pace with change, and he had never foreseen how tangled Shen Mu's circumstances would become.

A new eye had appeared at Shen Mu's brow, and before he had grasped any of its mysteries, the Creation Divine Stone had tried to take its place, and the struggle had left him half dead. Shen Mu steadied himself and tried again, working with greater care, and at last produced a batch of spirit elixirs.

He seized the elixirs and swallowed them down in great gulps, summoning his last stores of primordial qi to hasten their power.

After a while his marrow began to make blood again, and the blood in his heart slowly increased. Some color returned to Shen Mu's face, and his primordial qi began little by little to recover.

He refined several more batches of elixirs, bringing his depleted blood back to four or five tenths of what it had been, then refined elixirs to replenish his primordial qi and restore a measure of that as well. He rose with difficulty, his body still swaying and desperately weak, but not as before; there was at least some blood in his cheeks now, though he remained gaunt.

"Where have the Creation Divine Stone and my jade pendant gone? Surely they haven't.

.

.

squeezed the eye at my brow out of existence?

" His scalp prickled with numbness. On a sudden impulse he tried to open the third eye at his brow. There were no eyebrows at his brow, only two thin eyelids, and these slowly parted to either side, revealing an eye.

Shen Mu studied it closely in the mirror.

Its structure differed from that of his ordinary eyes: the third eye was still made of flesh and blood, but its pupil was not round, it was rhombic!

And its color was not black either, but the vermilion of cinnabar, a rhombic pupil of cinnabar red! "That Creation Divine Stone failed to squeeze out my eyeball, but it has fused with my third eye!

And what of my jade pendant?

" He kept looking, more and more closely, and saw that the iris was round, yet the patterns within it were like the lay of mountain ranges!

Shen Mu shook his head. A normal iris should be patterned like the ribs of a fan; his traced out the character Shen!

"My jade pendant has fused with my third eye as well. .

.

" He steadied himself and set the Mystic Body Three Elixirs Art in motion, ordering his disordered divine consciousness; once his cultivation had recovered somewhat, he meant to use the arts of Creation to raise up his blood and qi. But no sooner had he stirred the art than he felt his divine consciousness, as it flowed through the third eye, surge violently and multiply, strengthened layer upon layer until it was dozens of times what it had been!

A hum, deep and resonant. Behind his head a thick, heavy wheel of light appeared, a torrent formed of primordial qi, roaring as it turned; the divine consciousness amplified by the third eye made the Mystic Body Three Elixirs Art circulate far faster, and the marvel took shape behind his head!

Shen Mu was stunned. As the art ran its course, the primordial qi in his Primordial Fetus Divine Treasury rose and fell like the tide, and his qi climbed swiftly.

Nor was that all: in the sky of the Divine Treasury the stars breathed in and out; upon the taiji-shaped spirit platform the spirit fetus inhaled and exhaled; and in the Netherworld beneath his feet demonic qi surged and churned, as though some giant god were breathing.

The whole spirit fetus was like an enormous chest, drawing breath and letting it go.

His primordial qi and his divine consciousness recovered and rose with furious speed as the art turned!

Yet still he could feel the eye devouring his blood and qi and his primordial qi, only it was no longer so ferocious as before.

"This is.

. .

the work of the third eye!

" Shen Mu kept the art turning, and in the Divine Treasury a wheel of primordial light gradually rose behind the spirit fetus's head as well.

As his cultivation art ran, the primordial fluid turned to mist, refining far faster than before, swiftly nourishing his body and restoring his blood and qi, yet the blood and qi barely born were drawn away again by the third eye!

In the sky the constellations spread themselves out; beneath his feet the Netherworld grew deeper still; and the taiji-shaped spirit platform swelled steadily. How long passed he did not know, but his primordial qi and divine consciousness returned to their peak and were still climbing, while his blood and qi remained depleted!

His Primordial Fetus Divine Treasury was still expanding; more and more stars surfaced in its sky, and the Netherworld beneath him widened with them. He had thought his Divine Treasury had reached its limit; now, as it expanded, he saw that he had developed only a fraction of its potential.

The lake formed by the primordial fluid was shrinking; at this rate, fluid he had reckoned would take ten years or more to refine completely would be consumed in a few months!

"Only, my eye has already grown in.

Why does it still devour my blood and qi? " Shen Mu roused his divine consciousness; it poured into his brow and became a tiny figure that flew through the third eye.

The space within the eye was terrifyingly vast: a boundless continent shaped like the character Shen, range upon range of mountains, peaks rising and falling to trace out that one great word. This was a fragment of Tu Bo's horn; seen from afar it was a round continent, and it was the lay of these mountains that formed the patterns of the iris.

And the Creation Divine Stone was set precisely at the center of the Shen Continent.