Chapter 1501 — Twin Dao Fruits Appear in the World
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 1 of 3
The Lame Elder hesitated, then said in a low voice, "There is something odd about this schoolmaster. Let me go in first; the two of you stay outside and see what trick he is up to.
" With that, he pushed open the door of the private school and went inside. Shen Mu and Lan Yutian stood outside watching, and saw that once the Lame Elder entered, the schoolmaster struck him across the palm with his cane, and the old man actually sat himself down and began studying together with the people who were held suppressed here, reading aloud with great fluency, as if he had read the text many times over. The two of them shuddered. Lan Yutian whispered, "Brother, why has Crippled Grandpa sat down too?
" Shen Mu had never encountered anything so strange before.
He at once opened the vertical eye in the center of his brow and looked the school over.
Most of those seated there were souls or primordial spirits; only the Lame Elder had a physical body. And the schoolmaster was but a phantom, not a real existence at all. Shen Mu searched carefully, hunting for the source of that phantom.
After a while, his gaze came to rest on a painting behind the schoolmaster.
In the painting, an ancient tree coiled its roots through the earth, hoary and weathered, its crown holding up the blue sky. Flowers bloomed on the tree and fruit hung from its branches; beneath the tree sat a man on a stone, a book scroll in his hands, reading.
Shen Mu's eyes flickered.
He pondered for a moment, then handed the divine bow to Lan Yutian and, with a ripple of divine consciousness, sent him a message: "I am going in.
You stay outside. If I too am trapped inside, do not come in—use this bow to shoot at the Dao Fruit on that tree. " Lan Yutian acknowledged.
Shen Mu pushed the door open and went in.
The schoolmaster raised his hand, and the cane lashed toward Shen Mu's palm!
Shen Mu laughed aloud, his voice like thunder: "I, Mu the Heavenly Venerable, have commanded heaven and earth all my life and ranged a million years across past and present—how could I possibly fall for your trick? " Crack!
A stroke landed on Shen Mu's palm.
How the cane had come, how it had fallen upon his palm, he had not seen in the least! It was as if, without thinking, he had stretched out his hand and offered it up to the blow on his own!
That one stroke of the cane left his samadhi veiled, his seven consciousnesses cut off, his Dao heart drowned in a hazy stupor.
When he came to again, he was already seated on a meditation cushion, right beside the Lame Elder, swaying his head and chanting scripture along with him! "My Dao heart has been suppressed? " Cold sweat broke out on Shen Mu's forehead.
His Dao heart was extremely firm and his Dao realm extremely deep—he had already cultivated to the twenty-seventh heaven of the divine-power Dao realm.
How could it be suppressed in the space of an instant? Even if Kaihuang himself struck, he should not have such ability, should he?
"It is the Dao Fruit!
" Shen Mu forced his head up, though scripture still streamed from his mouth, and fixed his gaze on the painting behind the schoolmaster, thinking, "The tree in that painting is the Dao Tree; the flowers on it are Dao Flowers; the fruit is the Dao Fruit!
This schoolmaster is only a projection cast by the Dao Tree and Dao Fruit within the painting! " The chant from his mouth rang out sonorously: ". . .
Equilibrium is the great root of the world, and harmony is the universal path of the world! Perfect equilibrium and harmony, and Heaven and Earth assume their positions, and all things are nurtured.
. .
" At that very moment, Shen Mu saw the figure beneath the tree in the painting gradually growing more distinct, as if, with their chanting, he could step out of the painting a little at a time. Shen Mu's heart turned cold.