Chapter 1061 — Proving the Dao Through Law
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 1 of 5
After Heavenly Venerable Moon and the others had sent the Xiaohan Heavenly Court into the sky, they made a brief stir and then did not linger in the Heavenly Court; carrying their packs, they went together to the tribes of the human race to preach the Dao. Shen Mu hesitated a moment, then had Yan'er carry the lantern, and only then went with them to preach. "Yun, there is something odd about you.
" Heavenly Venerable Moon looked him up and down and shook his head.
"Carrying a lantern in broad daylight.
" Heavenly Venerable Ling had no interest in common mortals and hid himself away in the Xiaohan Heavenly Court, absorbed in his own research; their party consisted only of Heavenly Venerable Moon, the Dao Ancestor, and a few other divine men of the human race.
The place they had built for preaching was crude in the extreme, set in the middle of the tribe, and when Shen Mu and Heavenly Venerable Moon arrived, the Dao Ancestor was just then preaching there. "We cannot even keep body and soul together, and you would have us learn your damned arts of calculation! " A grown man dragged his child around and stalked off, cursing under his breath.
"It will not fill a belly either! " The people of this tribe were in rags, their faces sallow with hunger; the place where the Dao Ancestor preached was a ruined thatched hut, and inside a dozen or so boys and girls sat listening with rapt attention as he taught them the arts of calculation.
Shen Mu looked around.
The tribe was not small, a thousand souls or more, living by hunting and farming, poor wretches with their faces to the yellow earth and their backs to the sky; in the village an idol was enshrined, though he could not tell which demigod it was. This place was not far from the Xiaohan Heavenly Court; if one raised one's head, one could see it hanging in the sky.
Yet the idol they worshipped was a demigod, proof that in those days the divine men of the human race still counted for very little. The Dao Ancestor spoke for a while, telling of how to use the arts of calculation to reckon the stars of the whole heaven, to fix the five luminaries within the body, and thereby open the Five Luminaries Divine Treasury. But just then several parents came and hauled away the few children left in the thatched hut to do farm work, until only a handful remained.
When he had finished, the Dao Ancestor sighed, rose in silence, and packed his bundle. Shen Mu and Heavenly Venerable Moon waited outside. The Dao Ancestor came out and bowed.
"To dispel benightedness and open the spiritual intelligence is the hardest of all things. For now this is as far as I can go: first I spread the methods for opening the Primordial Embryo Divine Treasury and the Five Luminaries Divine Treasury, hoping that one among them may become a divine ability user. If even one child can master a divine ability, the villagers will see that the human race too can wield great power, and from then on they will no longer fear the gods.
" "This is precisely shattering the god in the heart," said Shen Mu, who felt the same. This step was the hardest of all. A million years ago, the noble and resolute of the human race had already sought to shatter the god in the heart; yet a million years had passed, and even now the people of Jingping were sometimes still troubled by the god within. Heavenly Venerable Moon consoled him: "There is no need to lose heart, old Daoist.
Sooner or later there will come a day when people no longer fear the gods, no longer hold them in awe.
" The Dao Ancestor hesitated, then said what was in his heart. "Heavenly Venerable Moon, I think there should be no such realm as the Divine Realm. We are the ones who set the realms. Why must the Heavenly Palace realm be called the Divine Realm? Calling it so will only give later generations the illusion that once the primordial spirit reaches the Southern Heavenly Gate, one has become a god. " "That. .
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