Chapter 1121 — Knocking on the Southern Heaven's Gate
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 2 of 3
" The Blind Elder hesitated: "The Formation Heavenly Palace is easy enough, but how to make him comprehend the way of formations and realize a Formation Heavenly Palace of his own—that is what gives me a headache.
" The Silent Craftsman gestured: "The Forging Heavenly Palace is not difficult either.
The difficulty lies in how to make him comprehend a road of his own. " The two each sank into their own worries.
Yan'er asked suspiciously: "Fat Dragon, is it really that easy for them to realize their own Emperor-Seat arts?
From what I've seen in the histories, everyone who realized an Emperor-Seat art found it harder than hard. " "The people of history found it hard because they started from nothing, and, keeping their own arts jealously, rarely exchanged Emperor-Seat arts with one another," Dragon Qilin explained. "But Jingping is different.
In Jingping, go to any academy or school, and you can learn three or four Emperor-Seat arts. Across all of Jingping there are a dozen or so Emperor-Seat arts, and no one forbids others from studying them. As for other arts, there are even more. " He hesitated, then said: "By now there may be even more Emperor-Seat arts.
If you have the ability, you could study a dozen or more. But while creating a new art is difficult, cultivating to the Emperor-Seat realm is difficult beyond measure.
Techniques alone will not see you to the Emperor-Seat realm. The Heavenly Court has so many Emperor-Seat arts, and yet only a handful have ever cultivated to the Emperor-Seat realm.
" Yan'er stuck out her tongue. There seemed to be an indescribable atmosphere in Jingping, filled with surging vitality, a scene of thriving prosperity and blazing fervor, utterly unlike the scheming and backbiting of the Heavenly Court. Of course, Jingping's rapid development was in truth bound up with the Heavenly Masters such as the Woodcutter and Yan Yunxi, and with the inheritance of the Kaihuang Era.
Before the Jingping Calamity broke out, the four great Heavenly Masters of the Kaihuang Era had taken up residence in Jingping and imparted the achievements of the Kaihuang reforms to the great academies and schools of Jingping—medicine, calligraphy and painting, forging, formations, sword dao, blade dao, architecture, design, agriculture, animal husbandry, and achievements in every other field—all of which Jingping absorbed.
That was the period of Jingping's swiftest growth. Afterward, when the Jingping Calamity erupted, Shen Mu shouldered that great catastrophe, preserving Jingping's foundations and keeping the fruits of reform intact, and so the land could continue to develop.
Another rather intriguing phenomenon was that Yan Yunxi had carried the fruits of Jingping's reforms to Wuyou Township, hoping that Wuyou Township would absorb them and open a road of its own. Yet what she never expected was that Wuyou Township did not absorb Jingping's reforms at all, remaining sunk in lifeless stagnation, until Shen Mu's arrival roused it to vigor once more.
Most thought-provoking of all, the first to absorb Jingping's reform achievements and push forth the new from the old was none other than Kaihuang, the very man the people of Wuyou Township had never ceased to resent. He created the Twenty Sword Forms, and his sword dao rose yet another heaven, drawing one step closer to the ultimate realm of the sword.
"Ten years I've set aside book and blade, and roamed west to Dragon Han City. " Shen Mu's resounding chant came down from the sky.
Everyone looked up to see him dancing with his blade in midair, blade-light interwoven like chains, like lightning flashes, like thunderclaps!
"Knocking at the gate beyond the southern door, my long blade claims lords and ministers!