Chapter 138 — The Debate on Smiting the Gods
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 1 of 4
Danyang Zi rose to his feet and looked toward the battle between Shen Mu and Daoist Son Lin Xuan; as for the strange beast beneath the mountain gate, half dragon and half qilin, it had long since lost interest in the affair and had gone back to sleeping soundly. "The Daoist Son cannot hold out; he means to bring out his full strength," Danyang Zi thought, and his heart tightened.
Shen Mu's attacks were simply too swift and too overbearing: once he seized the initiative he gave his opponent no room to breathe, hammering away until the man conceded or died.
In vital qi, Daoist Son Lin Xuan could gain no advantage whatever, and in technique too he was pressed into the inferior position; having sealed his own Six Realms Divine Treasury, many of his moves and divine powers were beyond his use, and his only chance now lay in invoking the sect-guarding sword art of the Daoist sect. Only the sect-guarding sword art could alter the shape of things and turn defeat into victory.
But even Danyang Zi did not know whether Lin Xuan, at the Five Luminaries Divine Treasury stage, could bring forth the sect-guarding sword art. The sect-guarding sword art of the Daoist sect demanded an exceedingly high vital qi and consumed a great deal of it, and Danyang Zi judged that Lin Xuan would likely manage only a single stroke of it before his vital qi was drained away to nothing. No sooner had he thought this than the dust-threads in Lin Xuan's hand began to change—a wondrous change it was.
Part of his threads turned black, part turned white, spreading out through the air; black and white flowed slowly, like a scroll of the Taiji diagram surfacing in the sky.
The sect-guarding sword art of the Daoist sect, first form of the Fourteen Dao Sword Chapters: one point pierces and joins the vast movement; within the Two Modes, yin and yang turn back and forth!
① Lin Xuan's arm quivered, and the black-and-white diagram pressed downward! Danyang Zi let out a breath, well pleased: Lin Xuan was a Daoist Son, after all; by virtue of his own deep and mighty cultivation he had brought forth the sect-guarding sword art even at the Five Luminaries stage.
You must understand that of those in the Daoist sect who studied the sect-guarding sword art there were not a few, but few indeed ever perfected it; and of those who perfected it, scarcely one in many could bring it forth at the Five Luminaries stage. The art consumed too much; not to speak of the Five Luminaries stage, even at the Divine Power stage it was hard to perform. Moreover, cultivating this sword art demanded the highest gifts and comprehension, and the greatest of those demands was the arts of calculation.
The Ten Chapters of the Arithmetic Classic alone were enough to give a man a splitting headache, and beyond the Arithmetic Classic there were the deeper and more abstruse texts of that discipline, the Great Expansion Numeric Art and the Jade Mirror of the Four Unknowns.
② Yet Lin Xuan, the Daoist Son, was a talent outstanding among them, thoroughly versed in the arts of calculation; at a very young age he had already reached the highest attainments in them, and with such a foundation he learned the Fourteen Dao Sword Chapters more easily than anyone else.
Of the Fourteen Dao Sword Chapters, each was harder than the last; by the fourteenth, the Dao Sword itself, hardly anyone could perfect it—even the Sect Master of this age had not perfected the Fourteenth Sword. Yet the Sect Master held great hopes for Lin Xuan, believing that one day he might perfect the Fourteenth Sword.