Chapter 1353 — The Fire God's Desire

A flicker of worry crossed the Alchemist's eyes, and was just as swiftly hidden away.

Shen Mu had been able to see through the dao wound left by the Ancestral God King, and through the dao wound left by Heavenly Venerable Hao, because he understood their Great Ways; the Way of Heaven, the Innate Qi, the Way of the Returning Abyss—he had studied them all deeply. Yet of Heavenly Venerable Fire's Great Way, he knew nothing.

What he knew were the Way of Heavenly Fire of Xuandu, and the Way of the Vermilion Bird's Holy Fire of the Southern Pole Heaven.

But both of those were fires of the innate, whereas the fire of Heavenly Venerable Fire was a fire of the acquired, the emblem of the highest attainment the acquired can reach.

To fathom in short order the dao wound left by Heavenly Venerable Fire—that, he feared, was a task beyond accomplishing!

The Alchemist looked at Shen Mu.

Shen Mu was wholly absorbed in evolving the dao patterns within the dao wound left by Heavenly Venerable Hao, utterly earnest.

So he had been as a child—earnest, scrupulous in every detail, learning knowledge at the side of the nine elders of Hidden Remnant Village, and often rapped across the palm by the Deaf Elder.

The Shen Mu of today was a grown man; sometimes he seemed flippant, careless of all things, and sometimes he was as earnest as a schoolboy.

When he was flippant, it was usually when he was wagering his own life; when he was as earnest as a schoolboy, it was usually when he was healing someone he cared for. The Alchemist knew Shen Mu very well.

After a long while, Shen Mu rendered the dao wound left by Heavenly Venerable Hao into dao patterns and evolved them, explaining each one in turn; the Alchemist listened quietly.

The dao wound left by Heavenly Venerable Hao posed an enormous challenge! The dao wound that Heavenly Venerable Hao had left upon Heavenly Venerable Yue was far more complex than the Ancestral God King's single strike of the Way of Heaven; the Innate Qi and the Way of the Returning Abyss were even harder to unravel than the Way of Heaven!

His Medicine-Way Celestial Palace had reached great perfection, but the Way of Medicine belongs to the acquired Way, while the Way of Heaven, the Innate Qi, and the Way of the Returning Abyss all belong to the innate Way. Whether Heavenly Venerable Yue could be cured looked like a matter of compounding medicine, but in truth it was the Way of Medicine doing battle with the innate Way.

Though the spirit medicines produced by the Ancestral Court were marvellous, and many of them held within them the principles of the innate, the Way of Medicine is the art of combining these disjointed principles into a restraint—even a dissolution—of the innate Way, and so achieving the cure of sickness and the salvation of lives.

To the Way of Heaven, the Innate Qi, and the Way of the Returning Abyss, the Alchemist's Way of Medicine was poison; to Heavenly Venerable Yue, it was medicine.

Once more Shen Mu parted the long hair at Heavenly Venerable Yue's brow and examined in fine detail the holy fire of Heavenly Venerable Fire. This time he took even longer.

Just as the Alchemist had feared, Shen Mu did not understand Heavenly Venerable Fire, and the dao wound left by Heavenly Venerable Fire took him longer still.

Heavenly Venerable Fire's dao arts and divine powers were exceedingly profound and mysterious, and the Archive Pavilion held no matching records; the dao arts and divine powers kept in the Archive Pavilion were all aimed at the ancient gods, and the runes of Heavenly Venerable Fire's Great Way had little overlap with the runes of the ancient gods' Great Way.

Shen Mu stared at Heavenly Venerable Yue without pause; she could face it calmly now, holding her breath, saying nothing.

An unknowable length of time passed.

Slowly Shen Mu closed his eyes, and layer upon layer of dreamscapes surfaced from between his brows; the dreamscapes spread outward, and swiftly shrouded the whole of the great hall. Within the dreamscapes, countless tiny Shen Mus yawned and stretched, waking one by one from sleep.

Heavenly Venerable Yue watched this with curiosity; it was not unfamiliar to her, though the last time she had seen Shen Mu employ such an art had been more than forty thousand years ago.

Then, Shen Mu had led her into a dream, seeking within the dreamscape a way to survive. This time, Shen Mu had entered the dream again, searching for a way to cure her.

The Shen Mus, great and small, within the dreamscapes wore grave expressions, chattering in a language no one could understand, little flames spitting from their mouths.

Heavenly Venerable Yue watched for a long while, and saw that one small Shen Mu had actually visualized a wheel of flame behind his own head.

The other small Shen Mus imitated him one after another, each conjuring a wheel of flame of his own, still chattering gravely, no one knowing what they were saying.

"They are imitating Heavenly Venerable Fire!

" Heavenly Venerable Yue was caught between laughter and tears. In Shen Mu's dreamscapes, these little creatures were actually imitating Heavenly Venerable Fire, and imitating him more and more closely, with perfect fidelity.

Those small Shen Mus pondered, bit by bit, the runes of the Great Way within the dao wound left by Heavenly Venerable Fire, testing the function of each rune, trying to combine them into divine powers; some were attempting to deduce Heavenly Venerable Fire's cultivation methods.

"Maha—" Suddenly one small Shen Mu let out a miserable scream and became a burning little man, racing wildly through the dreamscape.

Heavenly Venerable Yue started in fright, and was about to go rescue the little creature, when she saw that the other small Shen Mus had likewise caught fire one after another; the ground was soon covered with burning little men, and quickly they ignited that whole layer of dream, burning the dreamscape to ash. The other dreamscapes remained sound, untouched by the fire.

Many small Shen Mus disguised as Heavenly Venerable Fire paced gravely to and fro, discussing the mysteries of his dao arts and divine powers. Suddenly another small Shen Mu spewed fire from eyes, ears, mouth, and nose; the fire burned up from within his body and in an instant reduced him to ash!

The other small Shen Mus gloated, pointing at him and howling with laughter—and all at once true fire kindled inside them too, burning each of them away to nothing.

Layer upon layer of dreamscape was burned to ash, each layer with a different manner of death.

Heavenly Venerable Yue had been lonely too long in the peach grove; watching these little Shen Mus in the dreams carry on, she did not find it dull in the least. As dreamscapes were consumed by fire, new dreamscapes were born, cycle upon cycle, ceaselessly deducing the meaning of those flame runes.

Several days passed. More and more flame runes were sorted out, while the little Shen Mus in the dreamscapes died at ever greater frequency.

The innate Way leaves traces to follow; the innate Ways of the Ten Heavenly Venerables had all grown out of the runes of the ancient gods' Great Way, but in Heavenly Venerable Fire's cultivation, innate fire accounted for only half.

To deduce the essence of his Way of Fire was extraordinarily difficult; his insight into the Way of Fire even surpassed that of the Vermilion Bird, the Southern Emperor!

Several more days passed. Shen Mu at last fully parsed the flame runes hidden within the dao wound, and his expression was somewhat dazed.

The Alchemist meant to prepare him some medicine to settle his divine consciousness; Shen Mu shook his head and refused, though his look was still rather weary, and said, "My divine consciousness can still hold out.