Chapter 632 — Where I Stand, There Is Youdu
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 2 of 5
Buddha-light surged all about that Buddha as he strove with all his might to resist, yet his primal spirit surfaced against his will, drawn a little way out of his body again and again before shrinking back within. The Buddha struggled without cease; his divine treasuries rose up one after another, and his primal spirit, standing before the gates of his heavenly palace, could find no footing, again and again nearly sucked clean out of the palace.
Shen Mu found that his years had shrunk once more: a moment ago he had been four or five, and now he was not yet three. Just then Dharma King Molun came flying in with a howl, and a seal like a wheel crashed into the middle of Shen Mu's back.
Shen Mu went tumbling over and over with the Buddha in his grip, skidding across the golden sea dozens of times and smashing several mountains down before he came to a stop, and by then he had drawn the Buddha's primal spirit out with a single breath.
Yet the Buddha's primal spirit did not fall into Shen Mu's mouth; it twisted and spun and sank into his third eye.
Aghast, Shen Mu suddenly understood.
He understood at last why the Shenwang Hall had collapsed after King Yama of Fengdu suppressed the seal upon his jade pendant, and why King Yama had been wedged among the pillars; he understood at last why Vajra, mighty as he was, had been struck down the moment he touched the jade pendant, his chest bursting open, to lie unconscious and jammed within an altar. He understood, too, why Wuwang City had met its unlooked-for calamity, and why Earth Lord had insisted on meeting him in Youdu, to lay the seal within the jade pendant anew.
He had once thought it no more than a curse set in the pendant's seal; never had he turned his thoughts upon himself, and in those several cataclysms he had always fallen into a deep sleep, never knowing what had truly happened. And now he understood at last: the true curse was himself, or rather the other "self" within his body.
Before, he had slept because that other self was too strong and took possession of his flesh; now he was awake because Earth Lord's seal was too strong, and the other self could not fully shake it off, so that two consciousnesses dwelt in one body, awake at the same time.
He had no leisure to ponder further: Dharma King Molun and three other Buddhas were already charging in, treading the Buddha-light of the golden sea, four great Buddhas unleashing every art they had, their divine powers towering to the heavens, their might overturning mountains and seas, prodigies of light reaching to the clouds.
Then suddenly Shen Mu's consciousness took hold of the body, and he sprinted at speed, bringing forth the Sky-Skimming Divine Legs the Lame Elder had taught him, dodging the attacks of Dharma King Molun and the rest in the last instant. The Lame Elder's Sky-Skimming Divine Legs, under his feet, grew extraordinarily swift, all but able to pass through space itself; had the Lame Elder been there, he would surely have gaped, eyes wide and mouth open, unable to believe his leg-art could reach such a height.
Yet Shen Mu now possessed boundless magic power, and he drove those legs to their utmost, passing through a garden of ten thousand flowers without letting a single leaf cling to him, so that none of Dharma King Molun's divine powers could graze him.
"Why can I suddenly command the body? " In the midst of his dodging this doubt rose in Shen Mu's mind; then Shen Fengqing's consciousness came surging back, and that voice, innocent and evil at once, said: "Earth Lord, you have wronged me again! " Shen Mu's consciousness fell back to second place once more.
His body had become an enormous infant, so wildly elated that it churned the seas and rivers, leaping as though it flew, stamping the golden sea until it burst apart again and again, its Buddha-light rising in mountainous waves.