Chapter 359 — Worn Down to Death
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 1 of 4
In a duel to the death, what decides a fighter's strength is by no means only cultivation base, divine abilities, and techniques; it is also the mind, and it is also wisdom.
Of this Shen Mu had learned much from experience.
Many masters among the Daoist sects, when they face a duel to the death, will calm their hearts before the battle, burn incense and bathe; some will even sit in meditation for three days, sweeping every stray thought from their minds, letting no notion encroach upon the wisdom of their fighting, so that their wisdom comes full circle, whole and unclouded. Though Xu Shenghua claimed to have fought his way across the whole of the Heaven Above with no equal at his own realm, duels in the Heaven Above seldom came down to life and death. His experience on that score was pitifully slight; indeed, one might fairly call him a blank sheet of paper.
And the lower world, though in his eyes it was a "filthy" place, teemed with every manner of life-and-death struggle: whether towering figures like Daoist Master Lin Xuan and Ban Gongcuo, or young masters like Ling Yuxiu, Si Yunxiang, and Shen Wanyun, or long-renowned presences like the Imperial Preceptor Jingping and Emperor Yanfeng, every one of them had risen to prominence through the whetstone of life and death.
In the wisdom of battle they left Xu Shenghua far behind. Had it been Shen Mu, he would never have gone to study the structures of the parts and components of the Sun-Shooting Divine Cannon, its array diagrams and veins, on the eve of a life-and-death duel, for that drained the mind too grievously. When Shen Mu designed and forged the Sun-Shooting Divine Cannon, he summoned hundreds of masters of the mystic arts, along with all manner of great craftsmen and talents in the refining of treasures; he very nearly rebuilt the Directorate of Works from the ground up, and he pooled the wisdom of all these people to make the cannon. For Xu Shenghua to plumb the cannon's secrets, he must commit the pooled wisdom of all those men to memory in a short space of time; the drain upon his mental power can well be imagined. And a drain upon mental power must bring a drain upon strength, slowing one's speed of response in battle.
For a master like Shen Mu, even if Xu Shenghua's reactions lagged by a grain of dust, a mote, a shadow of a hair, that alone would be enough to decide victory and defeat.
In the Directorate of Works Xu Shenghua examined one by one the veins and structures upon those parts and components, calculating from them the form and the might of the cannon. The parts and components numbered in the tens of thousands, and the array markings and runes upon each differed from all the rest, the array patterns invoked all different; with no order to guide him, he must rely on his own formidable mental power to deduce and assemble them, which drained his mind the more.
Suddenly his head swam. He came to himself with a start, hurriedly shut his eyes; after a moment he opened them and looked toward Shen Mu. Shen Mu smiled and nodded to him. Shen Mu's smile was sunny, the smile of a big boy with no guile in him at all; yet in his eyes that radiant, sunlit smile looked utterly evil.
"Many thanks, Brother Shen.
I have learned a trick.
" Xu Shenghua steadied himself and walked over. As he walked, he strove with all his might to forget the array markings and runes he had just committed to memory. It was but mending the pen after the sheep had strayed, yet better than doing nothing at all. Shen Mu smiled faintly and walked out of the Directorate of Works, saying in an easy tone, "Does Brother Xu still think it so fine a thing to dwell in the Heaven Above?
" Xu Shenghua shook his head.
"Dwelling in the Heaven Above, never having known true battle, I truly find it hard to grow.
It is the turbid world that makes a man grow. Brother Shen, you grew up in this turbid world, and you are the strongest and most fearsome opponent I have ever met.