Chapter 592 — Painting Mountains and Rivers with a Brush
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 2 of 4
The Silent Artisan had labored over it for a long time, with the Blind Elder, Granny Zhu, the Butcher, and the Deaf Elder assisting; they had polished and tempered it painstakingly, the Blind Elder himself designing the sealing formation, and together they had imprinted their own mana upon that tiny golden willow leaf before it was finally forged. Granny Zhu herself pressed the golden willow leaf to Shen Mu's brow, covering the eye.
The elders of Yincan Village earnestly warned him that unless matters came to a critical pass, he must never peel the golden willow leaf away. Many fine, exquisite patterns emerged upon the golden willow leaf; as an ornament it was quite beautiful. When Snow Fox saw it, she was filled with envy and clamored for a willow leaf of her own.
The Blind Elder and the Deaf Elder, who doted on her, cajoled the Silent Artisan into forging another golden willow leaf. This time, however, it was not for sealing: the Blind Elder and the Deaf Elder imprinted upon the leaf the Sage Eye and the world within the painting, and an exceedingly intricate formation was imprinted within that painted world inside the leaf. The Deaf Elder pressed it to Snow Fox's forehead. Snow Fox was wildly excited, and from time to time she would activate it, whereupon a beam of light would shoot from her brow, slicing through rocks and blasting great pits into the earth.
Snow Fox studied spells and divine powers under the Fox Immortal of the Five Immortals, and her cultivation was by no means weak. The Fox Immortal had been a companion in the Dao of the village head "during his lifetime," and governed the demon tribes of Jingping.
Shen Mu had several times gone to invite her down from the mountains to lecture the scholars of the Tiansheng Academy, and their friendship was warm. Granny Zhu, the Butcher, and the others each sorted out cultivation arts suited to themselves and cultivated as well.
Together they discussed the trajectories of vital essence within the human body and established a form of human vital essence that gathered the strengths of them all. But each of them had different priorities in cultivation, so each modified it on that foundation, making the art better suited to himself. Shen Mu asked Granny Zhu for a copy of the chart of human vital essence trajectories they had established, and solemnly put it away.
"Mu'er, you already have something better—why keep our art as well? " Granny Zhu was rather puzzled.
"Granny, you have done a great thing. The chart of human vital essence trajectories you established is, in truth, an art capable of tempering every aspect of the physical body and the primordial spirit. " Shen Mu said gravely, "My art is very hard for others to learn; without a Tyrant Body, one cannot master it, and so it is difficult to pass down.
I believe your art gathers the strengths of every house in Yincan Village, yet it is simple to cultivate, and can therefore have many more practitioners. I want this art to be passed down; perhaps in the future, the gods of Jingping will all be your disciples and heirs!
" Granny Zhu was taken aback, then laughed. "We never thought that far.
" A strange excitement stirred in Shen Mu's heart.
When he had first established the trajectories of human vital essence, he too had not thought so far; at the time he had been in a state of enlightenment, with but one thought in his mind—to build a system of cultivation arts best suited to himself—and so he had suddenly entered the realm of attaining the Dao through cultivation arts.
Not long before, he had passed this method of cultivation to Granny Zhu, the Silent Artisan, and the Butcher. They, too, had not thought much of it, merely gathering the strengths of the many to remedy their own deficiencies, so that they might possess the makings of true gods.