Chapter 589 — The Divine Eye Between the Brows First Wakes
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 1 of 4
Shen Mu and Granny Zhu and the others continued their exploration of the ruins of Wuwang City. Granny Zhu and her companions each had their own strengths, and what they could discern from those lingering traces of divine arts differed from one to the next; as they shared their findings with one another, Shen Mu too profited greatly.
For though he had already comprehended his own art and entered the Way, when it came to achievement in any single aspect of the body, he was far outmatched by Granny Zhu, the Blind Elder, and the rest. This was chiefly because his art had entered the Way by cultivating every aspect at once—body, primordial spirit, vital essence, and all the rest—and so he could not possibly advance as swiftly as the Blind Elder or the Silent Craftsman, who each devoted themselves to a single specialty, nor could he delve as deep as they did.
Yet as the Blind Elder and the others exchanged what they knew, all of them benefited greatly; a stone from another hill may polish jade, and these were, besides, mighty ones who had each reached the utmost limit in some one field. From the divine arts left behind by the gods and demons of Taihuang Heaven, they also saw their own manifold deficiencies; comparing notes, they reaped a great harvest.
"Granny, I have already joined the cultivation systems of Taihuang Heaven to my own, and comprehended the Mystic Body Three-Core Art, which can temper the whole body! " Shen Mu displayed the course of his vital essence, and in the air before them it took the form of a human body's inner structure: the Sacred Pupil, the brain, the dantian, the four limbs and hundred bones, the spirit embryo, the Five Luminaries, the Six Harmonies, the Seven Stars—every pathway of vital essence laid bare before them without the least reservation.
Granny Zhu, the Blind Elder, Zaifu, the Silent Craftsman, and the others were at once drawn in, examining that body of vital essence in fine detail. The longer they looked, the more their hearts were shaken.
Within Shen Mu's Sacred Pupil there was another hidden space, revealing the workings of the Sacred Pupil; within his brain there was yet another configuration of vital essence, tempering the power of the mind; and whether in hands or feet or skin, or in heart, liver, spleen, lungs, and kidneys, in gall, stomach, large intestine, small intestine, bladder, and the triple burner, there were vital-essence pathways of the most exquisite subtlety.
And within each of the divine treasuries, the vital essence moved according to the mysteries of that treasury: the spirit embryo joined with the soul to temper the primordial spirit through the rushing of vital essence; the vital essence of the Five Luminaries treasury was divided according to the five phases, and the deities of the Five Luminaries sat enthroned in the temples of five stars, their vital essence likewise coursing along different paths. The Six Realms treasury was the surging of the earth's breath, transformed into geomagnetic force. The Seven Stars treasury commanded the stars of the Five Luminaries and the twin stars of sun and moon, gathering their power into one and feeding it back to the primordial spirit.
Nor was that all. Shen Mu's spirit embryo joined with his soul to become the primordial spirit, and this in turn was knit inseparably with his flesh—so that his vital essence circulated within his body, and the vital essence within his primordial spirit coursed along the very same paths; to cultivate the body was at once to cultivate the primordial spirit!
The pathways of Shen Mu's art were in themselves a three-dimensional construct, exquisite to the last degree, and within every organ of the body lay hidden mysteries, a three-dimensional system of cultivation concealed therein; take out the method for cultivating any single organ, and it could be called an art sufficient to bring a person to the divine realm in that one aspect!