The Xuanliao Demon Ape flew into a berserk rage. It leaped up and gave chase to Shen Mu, but after a few strides its bulk betrayed it—it was far slower than he. Enraged beyond measure, the beast reached out and tore up one great tree after another, and with a single sweep of its hand stripped each trunk clean of branch and leaf, until it held a spear of monstrous size, which it flung with a flick of its wrist. "Die, little runt!" The blow carried tremendous force, tyrannical force, terrifying speed—only its aim was poor, and it shot past Shen Mu a dozen zhang away. The Demon Ape flew into an even greater rage. It stripped another tree and made to hurl again, but Shen Mu had already run far off, and it beat its chest in helpless fury. Senior Brother Chu said in a low voice: "That little wretch's cultivation is far beneath ours. His wounds must be graver than mine—he cannot go far." He forced himself to his feet, but a stifled groan escaped him; his chest hurt so badly that he feared several ribs had been cracked by the Demon Ape's blow. Yet if even a little wretch like Shen Mu could withstand the ape's savage strike, then surely he could hold on too. What he did not realize was that Shen Mu's cultivation was not weak at all—not in the least. It was only that his essence had no attribute, and so its power could not be brought forth. If one truly measured cultivation, then Shen Mu, young as he was, was no weaker than any of them—including Senior Brother Chu! The five skirted the Demon Ape's territory and picked up Shen Mu's trail again. It was just as Senior Brother Chu had said: Shen Mu had been wounded by the ape, and badly. Once he escaped its territory, he had no choice but to slow down, giving them the chance to close in. But as the chase wore on, they found that Shen Mu's speed kept rising, as though his wounds were steadily healing. "That little wretch must have some wondrous medicine for his wounds!" The five of them grew uneasy. Senior Brother Chu had already taken his own sect's wound medicine, yet its effect was nothing like that of Shen Mu's "medicine." Judging by how quickly his speed climbed, his wounds must be healing at a rate visible to the naked eye. Such medicine set all five of them burning with envy. "Our sect's wound medicine is hardly of the finest. If we could get the recipe for a superior medicine from that little wretch, our masters would be delighted and reward us richly!" At that very moment, however, Shen Mu was not taking any medicine as they supposed. He was running while breathing in and out, circulating what the village headman had taught him as the Mystic Body Three Elixirs Art—which was in truth the most ordinary Essence-Drawing Art. He simply did not know it. This time, driving the Mystic Body Three Elixirs Art while fleeing at a run, Shen Mu made a sudden discovery: his essence grew livelier as he ran, and circulated faster! But this was not what the village headman had taught. In teaching him the Mystic Body Three Elixirs Art, the headman had always required him to sit in stillness, regulate his breath, inhale and exhale slowly, nourish his essence, move it through its courses, and let it moisten his body. For more than ten years Shen Mu had practiced the Mystic Body Three Elixirs Art exactly as the headman taught, and only now did he discover that it might work better when practiced at a run. At a full sprint, the Mystic Body Three Elixirs Art ran faster, nourished his essence faster, and moistened his body far more swiftly! More than that, wave upon wave of essence scoured his organs, scoured his limbs and bones, even scoured along the fascia between bone and muscle, again and again. The Demon Ape's palm had injured his organs and bones, but under the scouring of his essence, the cracks in both were steadily mending. Senior Brother Chu and the others thought he relied on some superior medicine; it never occurred to them that he relied on that unreliable Mystic Body Three Elixirs Art. Gradually Shen Mu discovered a place in his body—a patch of fascia between bone and skin—that his essence could not reach. That place was the space between his brows. A spot between his eyebrows, no more than a finger's width. His essence could not reach this place. It could scour beneath the scalp and strengthen the skull, but whenever it came to the space between his brows it met with tremendous obstruction, as though an invisible wall stood across the way, barring his essence's path. And when he drove his essence against that invisible wall, something even stranger happened: he heard a mysterious sound. The sound seemed to come from beyond the ninth heaven, high and distant, rising and falling, melodious and sacred, like a god enthroned on high proclaiming a divine decree. And whenever the sound rang out, his essence slipped beyond his control, receding like the tide and flowing around the space between his brows. "Could this be the Spirit Fetus Wall?" Shen Mu was puzzled. The village headman and Granny Zhu had spoken to him of "walls" and "breaking walls." A wall was a seal upon one of the body's many treasuries; to break a wall was to open the seal and take the treasure within. But the headman and Granny Zhu had never told him where in the human body the Spirit Fetus Wall lay, nor how to open it. What Shen Mu did not know was that it was not that the headman and Granny Zhu were unwilling to tell him—it was that no method or art for breaking the Spirit Fetus Wall existed in this world at all! Ordinary people and spirit bodies were two different orders of being, two different castes. Being a spirit body, one's Spirit Fetus Wall was open from birth, and one was born a cut above. For ordinary people the Spirit Fetus Wall was sealed, and they were a cut below. Those lofty spirit bodies rarely troubled themselves with the needs of ordinary folk. Among ordinary people, martial artists were rare; as for an ordinary person who had opened the Spirit Fetus Wall, even the headman and Granny Zhu had never heard of such a thing, and so of course they did not know how to break it. As Shen Mu ran, he urged his essence again and again against the invisible wall between his brows. The mysterious sound kept ringing out, making his essence retreat of its own accord. Though he failed to break the wall each time, he had patience to spare, and he firmly believed that sooner or later he would succeed. He did not intend to tell the headman and the others of what he had discovered today about the Mystic Body Three Elixirs Art. He meant to wait until he had broken the wall, and then give them a surprise. Whether, for the headman and the rest, it would prove more a surprise or a shock—that was hard to say. The harder Senior Brother Chu and his four companions chased, the more anxious they grew. Ahead of them, the "little wretch" was not merely healing—his speed had actually increased beyond what it once was! That was terrifying. It meant that Shen Mu's cultivation was growing even as he fled! Slow as the growth was, it was already frightening enough! Everyone cultivated step by step. Even after breaking a wall, one's cultivation advanced by gradual degrees—no one could grow fat on a single mouthful. Who among them had not trained ten days, months, even years without letup before their cultivation showed any progress? Yet this "little wretch," even as he fled, showed a cultivation that was visibly rising. That was truly terrifying! Fortunately, Shen Mu had been weaker than them to begin with, and though he was rising now, a gap still remained between him and them. Still, catching him was no easy matter. Ever since Shen Mu had been caught out once, he had grown far more cautious, and as he ran he avoided the territories of the dire beasts. When the alchemist took him out to gather herbs, he had told him that the dire beasts of the Wastes were highly intelligent, each with its own domain, and that they left marks behind—trees stripped of their bark, white bo