Chapter 300 — The Uncanny Thing
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 3 of 4
He looked with the Cinnabar Heaven Eye, and suddenly saw something beside the corpses moving at furious speed, vanishing in an instant. Then his heaven eye seemed to take a violent impact, and layer upon layer of the heaven eyes snapped shut at speed. Shen Mu's mind too was left dazed and reeling by the impact; it seemed countless shrill voices were howling and shrieking in his head, all but tearing his soul apart.
Fortunately he had already refined his primordial spirit, and withstood the attack by main force. But what it was that had attacked him, he had not seen clearly.
"Boundless, boundless, Maha-boundless!
" The shrill screams in Shen Mu's head grew louder and louder.
He acted at once, rousing the Thunderclap Mahayana Sutra.
Buddha-light blazed from his whole body, and behind his head appeared the gods and Buddhas of the six heavens, chanting in unison, Buddha-voices wreathing about him, and at once the uncanny shrieking that assailed his soul was refined away. The soil beneath his feet suddenly hissed and gave off a wisp of green smoke; a stench came up from the earth. Shen Mu stretched both hands forward and gathered emptiness into an embrace.
With a great boom his essence became a bodhi tree descending from the sky, lush and green, sweeping down upon the ground before him. Thousands upon thousands of branches, together with the trunk, struck the earth; branches and roots whirled and bored into the ground. From beneath the earth came a shrill cry, and then the ground before Shen Mu heaved, as though something were fleeing at speed through the soil. When it passed a great tree, that tree too was shaken by the thing underground until it clattered and rustled. "My Bodhi Swaying divine ability cannot kill this thing either?
" Shen Mu gave a low shout, and suddenly his whole body was like jade, his skin translucent as if carved of jade, and behind him faintly appeared a bodhi tree, as though he were an ox-headed Buddha awakening to the Way beneath the tree. In the Great Thunderclap Monastery he had obtained only the Dharma of the Thunderclap Mahayana Sutra, not its divine abilities; but with the Dharma he could work out the abilities for himself. The divine abilities of the Thunderclap Mahayana Sutra were in fact encompassed within the twenty heavens of the Mahayana Sutra.
The Eight Thunderclap Formulas were one part of it, belonging to the Shakra Heaven level of divine ability—already the highest grade of ability, second only to the Brahma Heaven ability.
The Bodhi Swaying ability belonged to the Bodhi Tree Heaven, the fourteenth heaven counted from the top, or the seventh counted from the bottom. Though the Thunderclap Mahayana Sutra was not the principal art Shen Mu cultivated, he drew understanding by analogy, and had not neglected his study of the Mahayana Sutra.
What he now displayed was the Bodhi Jade Buddha True Body, using Buddha-nature to suppress the strange thing underground and keep it from coming near. But at the same time he roused the Mars Fire Lord True Art, and so still kept the ox-head, human-body divine form, flames blazing all about him, blossoms of fire floating at his side—altogether a rather incongruous sight.
The uncanny thing underground came and went in a flash, exceedingly swift; and strangely, Shen Mu felt that the thing was sometimes scattered and sometimes condensed, and at times it even burrowed into the trees, or into those corpses. "What on earth is it? " Just then two auras swiftly approached from behind.
The Carefree Sword at Shen Mu's back rang and left its sheath, becoming the Cloud Sword Form, whirling swiftly about him to guard his body. But the two auras passed him by, flying past on either side: it was the two great white bats.