Chapter 1353 — The Fire God's Desire
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 1 of 3
A flicker of worry crossed the Alchemist's eyes, and was just as swiftly hidden away.
Shen Mu had been able to see through the dao wound left by the Ancestral God King, and through the dao wound left by Heavenly Venerable Hao, because he understood their Great Ways; the Way of Heaven, the Innate Qi, the Way of the Returning Abyss—he had studied them all deeply. Yet of Heavenly Venerable Fire's Great Way, he knew nothing.
What he knew were the Way of Heavenly Fire of Xuandu, and the Way of the Vermilion Bird's Holy Fire of the Southern Pole Heaven.
But both of those were fires of the innate, whereas the fire of Heavenly Venerable Fire was a fire of the acquired, the emblem of the highest attainment the acquired can reach.
To fathom in short order the dao wound left by Heavenly Venerable Fire—that, he feared, was a task beyond accomplishing!
The Alchemist looked at Shen Mu.
Shen Mu was wholly absorbed in evolving the dao patterns within the dao wound left by Heavenly Venerable Hao, utterly earnest.
So he had been as a child—earnest, scrupulous in every detail, learning knowledge at the side of the nine elders of Hidden Remnant Village, and often rapped across the palm by the Deaf Elder.
The Shen Mu of today was a grown man; sometimes he seemed flippant, careless of all things, and sometimes he was as earnest as a schoolboy.
When he was flippant, it was usually when he was wagering his own life; when he was as earnest as a schoolboy, it was usually when he was healing someone he cared for. The Alchemist knew Shen Mu very well.
After a long while, Shen Mu rendered the dao wound left by Heavenly Venerable Hao into dao patterns and evolved them, explaining each one in turn; the Alchemist listened quietly.
The dao wound left by Heavenly Venerable Hao posed an enormous challenge! The dao wound that Heavenly Venerable Hao had left upon Heavenly Venerable Yue was far more complex than the Ancestral God King's single strike of the Way of Heaven; the Innate Qi and the Way of the Returning Abyss were even harder to unravel than the Way of Heaven!
His Medicine-Way Celestial Palace had reached great perfection, but the Way of Medicine belongs to the acquired Way, while the Way of Heaven, the Innate Qi, and the Way of the Returning Abyss all belong to the innate Way. Whether Heavenly Venerable Yue could be cured looked like a matter of compounding medicine, but in truth it was the Way of Medicine doing battle with the innate Way.
Though the spirit medicines produced by the Ancestral Court were marvellous, and many of them held within them the principles of the innate, the Way of Medicine is the art of combining these disjointed principles into a restraint—even a dissolution—of the innate Way, and so achieving the cure of sickness and the salvation of lives.
To the Way of Heaven, the Innate Qi, and the Way of the Returning Abyss, the Alchemist's Way of Medicine was poison; to Heavenly Venerable Yue, it was medicine.
Once more Shen Mu parted the long hair at Heavenly Venerable Yue's brow and examined in fine detail the holy fire of Heavenly Venerable Fire. This time he took even longer.
Just as the Alchemist had feared, Shen Mu did not understand Heavenly Venerable Fire, and the dao wound left by Heavenly Venerable Fire took him longer still.
Heavenly Venerable Fire's dao arts and divine powers were exceedingly profound and mysterious, and the Archive Pavilion held no matching records; the dao arts and divine powers kept in the Archive Pavilion were all aimed at the ancient gods, and the runes of Heavenly Venerable Fire's Great Way had little overlap with the runes of the ancient gods' Great Way.
Shen Mu stared at Heavenly Venerable Yue without pause; she could face it calmly now, holding her breath, saying nothing.
An unknowable length of time passed.