Chapter 99 — The Way of the Sage
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 2 of 3
But when Shen Mu drew the glove out into a single thread and read it from beginning to end, his brow knit deeper and deeper — this Great Nurturing Dark Demon Scripture contained not one art that ran through the whole of it! Cultivation arts are divided into root art and method.
Shen Mu's Mystic Body Three Elixir Art, for instance, is a root art, the inner driving force; methods, then, are the Butcher's Blade Art, the Heaven-Stealing Leg Art, the Eight Thunderclap Formulas, and the like — the ways by which the power of a root art is brought forth. For a method to unleash its full power, it must have a matching root art. Take the Eight Thunderclap Formulas: only with the Great Vehicle Thunderclap Sutra can their full might be drawn out.
Though the Great Nurturing Dark Demon Scripture held many root arts and methods, there was not one root art capable of commanding all the methods — and so it could never deserve the name of a demonic canon that makes gods and demons!
"The Great Nurturing Dark Demon Scripture is incomplete!
" Shen Mu grasped the crux at once. For all its all-embracing scope, the scripture lacked a unifying root art.
There were too many arts and powers within it; each was fine, each was formidable, but mastering any one of them consumed enormous effort, and so it was impossible to perfect the whole of the Great Nurturing Dark Demon Scripture.
In the scripture the kinds of root art and method ran to a thousand, and almost every method answered to a root art of its own. No single root art could marshal and command them all. There was only one explanation: the Great Nurturing Dark Demon Scripture was incomplete. "But the Great Nurturing Dark Demon Scripture cannot be incomplete.
The Dark Demon Cult treasures this art above all — a canon that upholds their whole sect. There must be some art that can unify all these arts and powers.
Otherwise the Dark Demon Cult would never have spent forty years hunting the Granny.
. . " Shen Mu's heart stirred. He read the Great Nurturing Dark Demon Scripture through again from first to last, and still saw no thread to follow.
Then he searched it from back to front, and again found nothing. "Where is the secret of the Great Nurturing Dark Demon Scripture?
Perhaps even the Granny never discovered its unifying art. " Shen Mu sank into thought.
Among the nine elders of Yincan Village, Granny Zhu's cultivation was the shallowest; likely she too had failed to marshal the scripture's all-embracing arts into one. She must have chosen to practice only a few of them, lest practicing too many should squander her time and strength to no purpose.
For one person in a single lifetime to learn all the thousand-odd root arts and methods in the scripture and bring each to mastery was all but impossible. "Could it be in that jade box sealed by the patriarchs of past generations?
" Shen Mu rummaged through his bundle and found the jade box. Granny Zhu had tucked this in as well.
He tried to open it, but the box bore many talisman seals, and Granny Zhu, when she ran riot through Jianglong City, had said these talismans were the seals of the Dark Demon Cult's successive leaders.
Shen Mu pinched one talisman and peeled it gently away — and it came off in his fingers with the greatest ease. He stared for a moment, turned the talisman over, and found a few words written on the back: "Fake. Hee hee. " "The Granny does love her jokes.
.
.
" Shen Mu shook his head, peeled off the other talismans, and opened the box.
There was nothing inside. "With no unifying art, who could ever master the Great Nurturing Dark Demon Scripture?
" His head ached at the thought.
He pondered a while, then said to himself, "My cultivation art is the Mystic Body Three Elixir Art; I already have a root art. Why seek a unifying method in the Dark Demon Scripture? Why not use the Three Elixir Art to command them all?