Chapter 1206 — Interception at the Ancestral Gate
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 2 of 3
" He was short and stubby, and though he was Qi Kang's master, the road he walked was utterly different from Qi Kang's: he had entered the Dao through divine powers.
Yishan stepped up before the array, yet did not challenge Xiao Heavenly Venerate's disciples at once; he looked at Shen Mu instead, cast him a glance of arrogant contempt, and said with a cold laugh, "Beating these Heavenly Venerate disciples is no fun.
If I am to fight, I fight the strongest.
Come down —" Shen Mu said apologetically to Gao Huaitong, "My elders are lacking in discipline.
Let me go teach him a lesson first.
Friends, kindly wait a moment.
" Gao Huaitong and the others wore strange expressions: "Have they come to blockade our gate, or to beat their own old men? " Then they heard Shen Mu's furious shout: "Old man, you are awful cocky, aren't you?
Three days without a beating and you tear the roof off to climb on it!
How about you old fellows all come at me together — I will settle you nice and obedient first!
" Gao Huaitong and the rest looked at one another. Over there, Shen Mu's hand rose and fell, and a single move — the Great Luotian Gathering into Perfection — nearly flattened Human Sovereign Yishan into a sheet of no thickness at all hanging in the sky, and only then was Human Sovereign Yishan convinced.
"This short fat man looks awfully weak.
. .
" Looking at the dust-covered, ashen-faced Human Sovereign Yishan, the same thought rose in everyone's mind at once: "Can they be playing a two-man act?
This short fat one deliberately loses a move to Mu Heavenly Venerate so that we look down on him, and then he strikes with all his strength when we least expect it and defeats us? " But in this they misjudged Shen Mu and the various Human Sovereigns. Whether Yishan or Qi Kang, when facing Shen Mu both had used their full strength; it was not that they feigned weakness before the enemy, but that Shen Mu's strength was so dreadful that they still lost in a single move.
And as for challenging Shen Mu before fighting Xiao Heavenly Venerate's disciples, that had to do with the rules of the Human Sovereign Hall.
By the rules of the Human Sovereign Hall, a disciple did not learn his master's arts; he must strive to walk a road different from his master's, and the disciple must be stronger than the master. Hence masters cheating disciples, and disciples beating masters, happened often.
The Human Sovereign Hall had also formed a peculiar tradition: affection skips a generation.
Master and disciple would start fighting the moment they met, yet toward grandmaster and great-grandmaster they were most affectionate. By Shen Mu's generation the rules had changed again: Shen Mu had beaten his way from Qi Kang all the way down to the First Ancestor Human Sovereign, and the Human Sovereigns naturally were not reconciled; whenever they found the chance they wanted to teach this fellow a lesson, yet every time it was he who taught them.
Each Human Sovereign who stepped up to challenge either won or lost; the winners celebrated, and the others mocked the losers roundly. Yet every one of them, before he challenged, must first call Shen Mu out and take a beating from him, and only then, elated, go challenge Xiao Heavenly Venerate's disciples.
Xiao Heavenly Venerate's disciples looked at one another, unable to tell whether these men had come to blockade the gate or to be beaten by Shen Mu. Yet the disciples of Xiao Heavenly Venerate saw, too, the strength and strangeness of these Human Sovereigns.
The Human Sovereigns had cultivated few heavenly palaces, and by rights should not compare with them; yet whether in the surging abundance of their vital essence or in the subtlety of their divine powers, these Human Sovereigns were in no way inferior to them — even stronger! Such were the benefits brought by the Jingping Reforms.