Chapter 946 — Gazing Into That Abyss
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 1 of 4
The Dao is a toad.
That one sentence sums up the Dao Ancestor's heart in seeking the Dao.
In the past, when the Dao Ancestor sought the Dao, he gave no thought to the world outside; he could not even manage his own food and clothing, his home and his travels, and had to rely on the Great Brahma Heaven King Buddha for relief. In those years, when Shen Mu returned to the early Longhan era and saw the two of them, it was the Great Brahma Heaven King Buddha who went begging alms and gathered spirit elixirs to keep the two alive.
And the Dao Ancestor then was drunk on the Dao, asking nothing of right and wrong, of truth and falsehood.
The Dao is a toad: he took the ancient gods for the Dao, for toads, and used the arts of calculation to unravel the ancient gods. Through a million years of long ages he pushed the classical arts of calculation to their peak, and with those classical arts he unlocked the great Dao of one ancient god after another, turned that great Dao into runes, and helped the Ten Heavenly Venerables construct the Heavenly Court realm.
He no longer needed the Great Brahma Heaven King Buddha to beg alms for him.
Yet what Shen Mu meant by seeking the Dao from the Dao was that he sought the Dao from the ancient gods. The ancient gods are the incarnation of the Dao; he sought the Dao from them, and the ancient gods' Dao had been there all along. Whether he sought it or not, the Dao was there; of it he had created not the slightest bit.
What Shen Mu also said, that one seeks the Dao from people, meant that people are creative. Before people there was no sword Dao, and people created the sword Dao; there was no Dao of calligraphy and painting, and people created the Dao of calligraphy and painting; there was no Primordial Womb Divine Treasury, and people created the Primordial Womb Divine Treasury; there were no cultivation methods, and people created cultivation methods.
Cultivation systems, whether the Divine Treasury or the Heavenly Palace, were all created by people; they reside neither in the ancient gods nor in toads.
All these years the Dao Ancestor had studied the ancient gods and been drunk on scholarship, and yet he could not leap free of his own scholarship; his achievements fell short of the Ten Heavenly Venerables'.
Still, he must have sensed his own limits, which was why he told those two toads to give him a show of face.
It is not that the longer one lives, the wiser and more intelligent one grows. Wit and talent are five parts inborn and five parts cultivated, and what cultivation yields depends upon one's surroundings.
Shen Mu came from Jingping, had lived through the Jingping Reform, was himself the man who led that reform, and had witnessed the course from reforming the law to reforming the Dao, when the great Dao of heaven and earth was changed thereby.
Of his vision he would not presume to say it surpassed the Dao Ancestor's, but in certain respects his views stood above the Dao Ancestor's.
"I hear Lady Yunxiao went to the Jade Pool and met Heavenly Venerable Mu. Then this visit of yours must be for Heavenly Venerable Yun's box."
The Dao Ancestor took out a wooden box and said, "This old Dao has guarded this box for several hundred thousand years; now at last I may set down the burden on my heart."
Shen Mu took the box and asked, "The Dao Ancestor does not know what is inside it either?"
The Dao Ancestor shook his head. "What Heavenly Venerable Yun entrusted to Heavenly Venerable Mu, how could this old Dao presume to open? Heavenly Venerable Yun's relics were in two boxes: one for Heavenly Venerable Mu, one to be given to Heavenly Venerable Shen. The other box, this old Dao has already given to Heavenly Venerable Shen."
"Heavenly Venerable Yun also left a box for Kaihuang? Yet Lady Yunxiao never said a word of this to me."
Shen Mu was astonished, and said, "What was in Heavenly Venerable Shen's box?"