荒墟牧神 - 第244章 禍亂蒼生 - 簡牘書房

The folk of Yincan Village came out to offer their congratulations — celebrating that the village head, with one foot already in the grave, had at last found an heir to his mantle, and celebrating too that Shen Mu had taken up that mantle and become the Human Sovereign of this age. Only, the village head would not give the silent craftsman a kindly look, and Shen Mu himself was none too pleased with the title of Human Sovereign.

After the hubbub, Shen Mu went on following the village head in the study of the sword.

The Sword Diagram was a sword art of the village head's own founding, not a sword art of the Human Sovereign Hall. Its first form, Sword Treads Rivers and Mountains, was already the most intricate sword art Shen Mu had ever seen — more intricate even than the first form of the Daoist sword, the Two Modes' Inner Reversal of Yin and Yang.

And yet Sword Treads Rivers and Mountains was the simplest form in all the Sword Diagram. The second form, Sword Brings Forth Kaihuang, was several times more intricate still, and monstrously hard to learn.

When Shen Mu had first learned Sword Treads Rivers and Mountains, it had cost him more than ten days.

During his wanderings through Jingping Kingdom his horizons had widened beyond all reckoning. He had received the scripture the woodcutter passed down upon the stone, had comprehended the Great Unification Art, had fused the Mystic Body Three Elixirs Art into himself, and his own aptitude and insight had risen no little.

Yet learning the single move Sword Brings Forth Kaihuang still cost him more than twenty days.

Only then did he understand the village head's painstaking intent. Had the village head not crossed swords with him over that one move, Sword Treads Rivers and Mountains, he would surely have needed far longer to master Sword Brings Forth Kaihuang — a year or half a year, perhaps.

It was precisely because the village head forced his talent out of him and wrung it dry that Shen Mu could learn Sword Brings Forth Kaihuang in a mere twenty-odd days; for he now stood at a height half sword-art and half sword-craft, and though comprehension came hard, he could still manage it.

But the third form of the Sword Diagram, The Supreme Emperor's Tribulation Stirs, reached in technique and variation the utmost limit a sword art can attain, and that lay beyond Shen Mu's power to learn. He could only commit the moves to memory; to perform them he would have to fathom the mystery within them, and though he pondered with all his heart, he could not wholly unlock the mystery of The Supreme Emperor's Tribulation Stirs.

This was the doing of his horizons and experience. If a man's horizons are not high, his experience not deep, his foundation is insufficient; even if the art is taught to you, you cannot learn it, cannot use it.

Shen Mu had no choice but to let it be, and gave himself wholly to the one move Sword Brings Forth Kaihuang.

One sword brings forth Kaihuang, blood a vast ocean.

In the little barren village of Jingping Kingdom, Shen Mu had heard the young village head who stepped down out of the deaf elder's painting recite that verse; a strange feeling lay hidden in the sword art.

The Sword Treads Rivers and Mountains the village head had taught him carried a flavor and a sentiment too — the sentiment of gathering heroes to the cause and warring against gods and demons — while Sword Brings Forth Kaihuang was the sentiment of mourning the fallen.

The two sentiments were not the same, and the inner realms of the two sword arts stood worlds apart. Though Shen Mu had learned both forms, he could not yet fathom the inner realm and the feeling stored within them.

Sword Brings Forth Kaihuang demanded an even more terrifying expenditure of vital essence; a single move drained nearly half his cultivation. Without a deep reserve of vital essence, the move could not be performed at all.

"Village head, how many moves does the Sword Diagram hold?" Shen Mu asked.