Chapter 315 — The Ancestral Secret Art
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 2 of 4
The painting began from the first realm, the Origin-Guiding Art, and already the Origin-Guiding Art differed from the one Shen Mu cultivated — simpler, more concise. The Origin-Guiding Art of the Mystic Body Three Elixirs Art that the village headman had taught Shen Mu had already been pared to the utmost simplicity; it could be called the simplest method of laying foundations under heaven, the practice best suited to ordinary people.
And the Origin-Guiding Art painted by the man in the painting was simpler still — simple, yet not crude.
Shen Mu's present vision and understanding were far beyond what they had been in his childhood, and he understood the principle that the simpler the foundation, the harder the cultivation, and the greater the achievement. It was like painting on a blank sheet of paper: the less one paints at the foundation, the simpler it is, the more likely it is that what is painted later can be more exquisite and more refined.
If one scribbles and smears at random on the blank paper, then even with a divine brush it would be hard to write fine prose or paint a splendid picture upon such a foundation. The Origin-Guiding Art of the man in the painting was simple to an inconceivable degree.
Shen Mu tried driving his vital essence according to the Origin-Guiding Art in the painting.
At first it was somewhat sluggish, but as the vital essence circulated it grew ever more joyful and mighty, penetrating the four limbs, reaching the hundred bones, with a feeling of seizing the creative power of heaven and earth. "If there were such a guiding diagram, I fear it would be all the harder to break through the primal fetus wall.
" Shen Mu sighed. When the village headman had taught him the Mystic Body Three Elixirs Art, he must have altered it slightly, making the Origin-Guiding Art's assault on the primal fetus wall a little easier.
But which was better and which worse was still a matter of two opinions. After the alteration, breaking through the primal fetus wall was indeed somewhat easier, but in terms of foundation it was not so deep as the Origin-Guiding Art of the man in the painting.
And at that time, what mattered most to Shen Mu was breaking through the primal fetus wall. The man in the painting painted a second diagram. The second diagram of the Mystic Body Three Elixirs Art Shen Mu had seen in the canyon of the Disaster-Quelling Palace; what he painted differed little from the wall painting in that canyon, only in small details was it somewhat different.
Shen Mu tried circulating it, and at once felt that as the method turned, his spirit fetus had a sense of bearing heaven and touching earth, and his heart stirred.
The Mystic Body Three Elixirs Art he had learned in the Disaster-Quelling Palace had given him no such feeling. The spirit fetus was the realm of a martial artist; only upon reaching this step did one truly cross the threshold of cultivation.
The foundation was of the utmost importance, but so was the crossing of the threshold. By Shen Mu's present understanding, the primal fetus sacred treasury was the opening of the heaven and earth within the body; as one cultivated and one's attainment deepened, the primal fetus sacred treasury came to be divided into heaven and earth — the high became heaven, the sunken became earth — and the spirit fetus stood at the center, beneath its feet the spirit platform, breathing in and out the five qi, and the five qi were metal, wood, water, fire, and earth.
The spirit fetus trod the great earth, its body commanding the six harmonies, and the six harmonies were heaven, earth, east, south, west, and north. He had cultivated to the Six Harmonies realm, and such was his understanding of these sacred treasuries and realms.
As for the Seven Stars, Heaven-Man, Life and Death, and Spirit Bridge that came after, he did not understand them much, though he had some views of his own.
At the Six Harmonies realm one could basically refine a primal spirit.