Chapter 178 — Nine Turns, Three Gates
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 2 of 4
Most crucially, he had remedied the Mystic Body Three Elixirs Art's deficiencies in body tempering, spells, and combat techniques. He drove the improved Mystic Body Three Elixirs Art, and the Mystic Body Three Elixirs Art of today had incorporated the Nine Turns Three Verifications Mystery Art, a body-tempering art from the Great Nurturing Dark Demon Scripture, one of the scripture's highest-grade body-tempering arts.
Shen Mu had long envied the body-tempering arts of the combat schools, but Lord Huo, the Butcher, and the Lame Elder had none of them taught him such arts, so he could only seek them in the Great Nurturing Dark Demon Scripture.
As the art was driven, Shen Mu immediately felt the extraordinariness of the improved Mystic Body Three Elixirs Art. His essence raced through its circuits, then seeped into his skin, his muscles, his bones, his sinews, his very hair, his marrow. In former days his Mystic Body Three Elixirs Art had run only within his body along a fairly simple path; now it reached into every aspect of his frame.
The new Mystic Body Three Elixirs Art, besides tempering the body, also tempered the soul and tempered the breath, and was exceedingly refined at it. Shen Mu walked slower and slower, gradually growing calm, carefully sensing what deficiencies remained in his art and correcting them.
The basic framework of his Great Unification Art was set; all that was lacking now were minor details. He was greatly deficient in body tempering and soul tempering. He felt now as though his body were land that had gone half a year without rain, madly drinking in moisture, drinking in nourishment.
The Nine Turns Three Verifications of the Great Nurturing Dark Demon Scripture: nine turns of essence and flesh, three verifications of the bones within -- the first verification, bones drawn tight; the second, a body like iron; the third, a form like a hill or peak.
He was now only at the stage of the first turn and the first verification. Unknowingly half a day had passed.
Shen Mu gradually came to the Heavenly Records Tower. Before its gate a Secretariat official happened to be passing by; he glanced at Shen Mu, his face changed drastically, and he said in a fluster, "Doctor Shen, you had best see to yourself at once, or your life will not last long!
" Shen Mu was puzzled, not grasping his meaning, when suddenly a wind blew over him; at once he felt dizzy and blinded, swaying as though about to fall. "This is bad!
" Startled, Shen Mu hurriedly raised his hand, and saw that his arms were thin as firewood. He touched his face and felt only thin skin, almost plastered to his cheekbones.
Clothes that had once fit him well were now somewhat loose.
Only then did he notice that in these two hours he had grown frighteningly thin, like a man made of dry sticks -- and more than that, his flesh was withering away.
And as he drove the Mystic Body Three Elixirs Art, the speed of that withering rose sharply.
When the energy stored in his flesh was exhausted, that would be the day of his death. He had been wholly intent on perfecting the Mystic Body Three Elixirs Art and cultivating the methods of body tempering and soul tempering, paying no heed to his own body; only now did he realize he had come near to the lamp going dry and the oil spent.
"The new Mystic Body Three Elixirs Art carries no small hidden danger -- it cultivates too fast. I forgot that body tempering consumes one's own energy, and when the energy in the body is consumed without replenishment, the burden laid on the body is immense!
" He was already at the Five Luminaries Realm, his cultivation profound, yet in cultivating the new Mystic Body Three Elixirs Art, tempering body and soul, the energy within him could not hold out even two hours.