Chapter 735 — Strange Peaks at Heaven's Edge, a Hundred Palms Revolving
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 2 of 4
— The Old Farmer harbored deep resentment toward the Woodcutter; the matter between them was no simple question of the Heavenly Master rankings, for there were other grudges and entanglements besides.
From what Old Ox had just said, that Overlord Body was none other than this descendant of Kaihuang who had come seeking the Woodcutter — though they had still found it hard to believe. Now, seeing Shen Mu break through in a single turn of thought and cultivate a martial dao primordial spirit, and almost in the same instant stand on the verge of entering the Dao through martial arts, and with those corresponding divine and demonic divine treasures besides, they had no choice but to believe.
To go in a mere ten days from a divine ability user who did not even possess a martial soul, to comprehending in succession the martial soul and the martial dao primordial spirit, and now to be on the verge of comprehending a great martial dao divine ability and entering the Dao through martial arts — how could such a person not be an Overlord Body?
Yet it had never occurred to them that the reason Shen Mu could comprehend the martial soul so swiftly was precisely that his foundation was so good.
His foundation was simply too good.
In his childhood Shen Mu had failed to awaken a Spirit Fetus, and the elders of Hidden Remnant Village found him to be an utterly ordinary commoner, incapable of cultivation — until a single word from the village headman, "Overlord Body," roused the elders to high spirits. They piled all manner of spirit medicines and spirit beast blood upon Shen Mu, and their training of him was ferocious beyond measure.
And because Shen Mu firmly believed himself an Overlord Body, his confidence was boundless, and he cultivated with diligence and bitter toil.
At that time he was a single step from awakening his martial soul.
More crucially still, what he cultivated was the Mystic Body Three Elixirs Art, which the village headman had told him of with his own lips — a technique that everyone else took for a common, run-of-the-mill yuan-guiding art, yet which Shen Mu cultivated to a height no one could hope to reach.
What was more, it was no ordinary yuan-guiding art, but a technique handed down by Kaihuang, the hereditary secret art of the Shen family; even the Heavenly Sage Cult's Great Nurturing Dark Demon Scripture was but a branch of this very technique.
With so fine a foundation, and with Shen Mu having learned the techniques and divine abilities of every combat school, with the painstaking efforts of the Human Sovereigns of past ages passed down in him, and having also fused three Throne-tier cultivation arts, his accumulated depth already far surpassed that of Hu Bugui, who had ground away at the martial dao in bitter isolation.
The spirit of the age embodied in the Jingping Reforms he blended into the spirit of the martial dao, setting his aims above the martial dao alone; deep accumulation released in a thin burst — thus could he comprehend the true essence of the martial dao in so short a time.
This was not, as the War Gods and Old Ox guessed, because he was an Overlord Body; but the true cause Shen Mu did not understand, and others understood it even less, so it could only be laid at the door of his being an Overlord Body.
Shen Mu's six forces of palm met Wind Shakes the Pines, Waves Quake the Valley, and the power of two different martial dao divine abilities burst forth at once. Yet because he had been pressed for time, Shen Mu had not been able to comprehend his great martial dao divine ability to perfection, and came off the worse in raw power.
But he had six arms, and where the power of the divine ability fell short, he stacked the force of three great divine abilities one upon another to raise it.