Chapter 534 — Jade Face Like a Painting, Sword Like a Rainbow
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 3 of 4
. " Shen Mu withdrew his gaze; the suns still stung his eyes.
"So ugly! If I look any longer, I shall not be able to stop myself from running over and fixing them.
. . " he thought.
He paced slowly by the altar, marshaling his vital qi, urging on the Mystic Body Three Elixir Art. Spirit fetus and soul abruptly joined and became the primordial spirit, body and spirit as one.
His primordial spirit trod the Spirit Terrace and unified the Six Harmonies, the sun and moon above his head, the Five Luminaries ranged across the sky. At a single stirring of his vital qi it reached every limb and every bone of him; strand by strand his hair drifted lightly, infused with vital qi. This time, slaughtering on the battlefield, he had seen for himself the strength of another world's divine-arts practitioners; passing through life and death amid the fighting had wrought some subtle, imperceptible change in his state of mind.
Ever since his battle with the First Ancestor, the Human Sovereign, he had sunk into a decline for a time.
Facing a fight, he could not even deliver his own moves, and Zaifu had cursed him roundly for it. It was not that he dared not strike, but that he felt whatever move he made, whatever divine art he used, was wrong. And the reason it was wrong was not only that his confidence and his faith had been shattered by the First Ancestor, the Human Sovereign; it was also that in crossing blades with him, his vision had been hauled in a single leap to a height he had never before imagined.
Standing at that height and looking down on the moves and divine arts he had once learned, every one of them was riddled with flaws.
His vision had risen high, but his foundation was not deep enough to transform him into the next realm, and so when he faced an enemy he felt that whatever move or divine art he brought out would be broken by his opponent, that in the next instant he would die at his opponent's hand.
He had taken his opponent for the First Ancestor, the Human Sovereign; that was the source of his delusion. But on the battlefield, Shen Mu had no time at all to think of such things. The tide of battle shifted from instant to instant, and he could not spare a thought for whether there were flaws; the move came out, and he cut down powerful enemies.
After this one battle, Shen Mu suddenly felt that he stood at the edge of a great transformation.
If only he could step over the threshold, there would be blue sky beyond, and a grand, broad road. Radiance gradually blazed about him; his vital qi circulated within his body, linking the three great divine treasuries, the Spirit Fetus, the Five Luminaries, and the Six Harmonies.
The light given off by sun, moon, and stars shone through the treasuries, so that he was like a man of pure light. Even the Heaven-Man treasury within him was lit up, revealing the treasury's gate.
And below the Six-Spheres treasury, a deep, dark gate hovered, faint and then clear; that was the gate of the Life-and-Death treasury, which connects to Youdu.
Shen Mu walked without haste and without slowness.
In Little Jade Capital he had studied the divine treasuries of the divine man Shen Chongming, wandering a long while within that divine man's treasuries. From that time on he had begun remaking his own treasuries, filling in what was lacking in himself. Whummm.
His vital qi quaked within him, giving out rank upon rank of dragon cries.
Dragon qi coiled about his body, boring in and out of him, tempering his flesh.
Suddenly Shen Mu made his two hands into sabers and, pacing along the rim of the altar, began to cut. The wind rose to a roar.
The saber fell like rain, cleaving by night through the storm of a thousand cities.
The great sun surges up, leaps from the face of the sea; the sun blazes over a thousandfold waves of the Eastern Sea. A gold-inlaid saber in a white jade sheath, by night it pierces the window casement and shoots forth light.