Chapter 412 — Soul and Spirit as the Guide
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 3 of 4
"They can be put back. It's only that some of the optic nerves have withered. I must first treat you for a few days, Grandpa Blind. With luck, medicine can stir those nerves back to life..."
Shen Mu looked up and smiled. "Set your heart at ease, Grandpa Blind. My medical skill may not match Grandpa Alchemist's, but I am at least second best under heaven."
He thought a while, then prepared his ingredients and began refining medicine for the Blind Elder. The nerve clusters of the eye are more intricate even than the heart, and as fragile as the brain; Shen Mu had no choice but to proceed with caution, striving to make every medicine utterly free of impurity, utterly free of side effects, its potency gentle and yet able to rouse the nerve clusters to life.
For him, this too was a tremendous test.
Shen Mu devised several means of boosting the activity of the ocular nerve clusters. Besides oral doses and topical applications, he built a small contraption to cover the eyes, containing a decoction that heated itself and turned to steam, moistening the Blind Elder's eye sockets.
Beyond that, repeatedly refined medicinal liquid was injected through hollow silver needles into the half-dead muscles around the old man's eyes — attacking the problem from every angle at once.
After days of such treatment, the Blind Elder felt both sockets burning, as though countless fine tentacles were about to sprout inside them. Only then did Shen Mu set to work, joining the nerves of the two eyes. Then he bound the old man's head with silk ribbons holding crushed spirit pills, covering his eyes.
"Grandpa Blind, leave the ribbons on until the muscles and nerves of your eyes have healed completely."
After giving his instructions, Shen Mu called over a tree demon and bade it change the Blind Elder's medicine on time. The tree demon nodded and nodded, took root before the Blind Elder, and waited for the hour of the next dressing.
Shen Mu let out a breath and checked the dragon lair. To himself he thought, "If you pieced together all these body parts of Xing'an's, you could assemble the body of a god. A pity we don't know what strange art Xing'an practices. He must still be keeping his own body, or at least his primordial spirit, or he could never have survived. Odd — what exactly are the parts left over from his original body?"
In their battles with Xing'an, that dreadful being had swapped out his own head, and his brain with it; his divine blood, his heart, his legs and feet, every part of him had been exchanged.
More dreadful still, he possessed different primordial spirits. It seemed that even his primordial spirit could be swapped!
When he fought Yu Zhaoqing, he had used his own primordial spirit; different primordial spirits assailed Yu Zhaoqing and dealt him grievous wounds.
Some part of his original body must still remain, never swapped away. His life must be lodged in that part; every other piece of him could be cast off, but that one part could not be.
That place was his life gate!
Only by destroying his life gate could he be slain!
"Every part of him, from head to toe, has been exchanged — but his soul and spirit he could never exchange."
Shen Mu's eyes lit up. He sought out Granny Zhu, and the two of them studied the matter. Granny Zhu's understanding of soul and spirit ran deeper than Shen Mu's, and she said, "Soul and spirit divide into soul and spirit. The soul is threefold: the heavenly soul at the brow, the earthly soul at the tailbone, the living soul at the navel. The seven spirits are the Corpse Hound at the crown, the Hidden Arrow at the brow chakra, the Sparrow's Shade at the Adam's apple, the Thief-Swallower at the heart, the Non-Poison at the navel, the Filth-Remover at the perineum, and the Stinking Lung in the pulmonary chamber. By rights, if those places are swapped out, his soul and spirit can no longer be whole — and yet his soul and spirit are plainly whole."