Chapter 789 — Where Does He Rank in All the World?
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 3 of 4
Even as he spoke, the Southern Heavenly Gate Shen Mu had painted suddenly collapsed and turned back into ink, streaming down from the air.
"That is the first level—painting a thing and having it resemble the thing. It cannot endure."
The scholar said, "If you could achieve painting a thing and having it be the thing, letting the Southern Heavenly Gate stand long, creating a thing in the void and making it real—that would be the second level."
Admiration rose unbidden in Shen Mu's heart. "Deaf Grandpa never spoke of these things. Perhaps he too never pondered the third realm of the way of painting. Many thanks for your guidance, brother—I am much instructed!"
Water Qilin watched all this and said to Dragon Qilin with suspicion, "This scholar doesn't look like a scholar at all. He looks more like a smooth-tongued charlatan. Your master's been bamboozled stiff as a board. Had I known he was so easy to fool, why would I ever have used force? I could have talked your master out of his underpants and had him thanking me for it!"
Dragon Qilin rolled back his upper lip and said with contempt, "Hee-haw."
"Don't you disbelieve me—I am the foremost wise mind of our Qilin divine race!"
Shen Mu and the others walked on. Suddenly ahead a blade-light tore through the fog, the blade-light spanning the vault of heaven, and with a zheng it split apart into countless blade-lights, arrayed in perfect order, slashing down in a strange formation of blades.
A roar came, and then in the mist a colossal figure toppled.
The blade-lights across the sky were suddenly drawn in, falling behind the figure of a one-armed man in the fog, vanishing into a sheath.
Shen Mu saw that utterly unruffled blade-light, and his heart jumped: "This blade art... it looks familiar..."
The one-armed figure walked on, robes snapping in the wind, striding deep into the fog. Many figures followed him and entered the mist together, soon vanishing without a trace.
"The One-Armed Divine Blade, first divine blade of the Outer Heavenly Court!"
The scholar's eyes lit up. He laughed. "Luo Shen Dao of the Outer Heavenly Court's Lingxiu Army—they say that in his youth he encountered the Overlord Body of the Shanghuang era, and was struck by that Overlord Body's incomparably wondrous sword art, which severed one of his arms. This Luo Shen Dao, in his pain, took thought, and entered the Dao through one-armed blade art, training bitterly for tens of thousands of years. He once entered the Heavenly Court and mounted the God-Slaying Platform, contending against the God-Slaying Mystic Blade without defeat—he is the Heavenly Court's first divine blade beyond dispute! I never thought he would come here too! Those youths around him must be the Lingxiu Army."
Yutian Zun said excitedly, "The Overlord Body of Shanghuang? How formidable! Brother Mu, you too are an Overlord Body—you're formidable too!"
The scholar gave Shen Mu a glance and shook his head. "The Overlord Body of Shanghuang severed Luo Shen Dao's arm with a single sword stroke—how dazzling, how peerless! Overlord Body Shen still has far to go."
Shen Mu's eye twitched. He thought: "The Overlord Body of Shanghuang who severed his arm is right beside you, but I won't say so. Luo Wushuang's divine blade is truly formidable, countless times stronger than in those years. Setting cultivation aside, I think it would be very hard for me to break his divine blade."
"However, Luo Shen Dao has one vile custom: all his disciples must sever one arm, or they cannot learn his blade art."
The scholar laughed. "And so the Heavenly Court youths in the Lingxiu Army usually cut off one of their own arms."