"And what's to be done with Senior Sister Liu here?" Shen Mu forced himself onto his feet and looked at the girl beside him, still unsteady from her fright.

"Or else—"

Granny Zhu's eyes lit up at once. She nudged Shen Mu's shoulder with her own, nearly toppling the boy who had struggled so hard to stand, and said with a grin that boded no good: "Leave her to be your little wife? You were the sweetest thing when you were small; now that you've grown you're nothing like so sweet as you used to be, but a fat baby you'd make with this little girl would be sweet as anything too — Granny does love children..."

Shen Mu glanced at Senior Sister Liu, whose face was swollen to a pig's head, and hesitated: "Granny, best not, I think..."

Pfft.

The Lame Old Man had at some point come up behind Senior Sister Liu; he raised a hand and ran the girl clean through, the heart pierced through and through, the simple, honest smile still hanging on his face: "Then we kill her."

Shen Mu's eyes bulged and his tongue stuck fast; he stammered out: "Grandpa Lame, why did you kill her?"

"You said you didn't want her. So of course we kill her." The Lame Old Man drew the blade out, his smile growing only more guileless, as though he were puzzled.

Shen Mu sulked. He had never had the least notion of making babies with Senior Sister Liu. It was only that he was, after all, a boy of eleven or twelve, and in his daily life all he ever saw were old monsters like Lord Huo and Granny Zhu; the folk of the neighboring villages were cutthroats and ogres all, and there was scarcely a boy or girl of his own age to be found anywhere near.

No playmates — yet his heart was still the heart of a boy.

"Let's go back," said the Village Head, and he turned his head to look at the ruins in the gorge.

The Alchemist said to Shen Mu with a smile: "We're all short an arm or a leg among us, and no one's going to carry you; so you'll have to walk back on your own two feet. Oh, yes — there's still Four Symbols Blood here. You didn't come home last night, so we laid it out for you all the same."

Shen Mu nodded, took the four white porcelain cups, drank down the Four Symbols Blood, and struggled forward one step at a time. Driving the Mystic Body Three Elixirs Art to break down the power of the blood, he began telling them of the strange things he had met with in the Hidden Valley ruins.

Granny Zhu's expression stirred faintly. "Gods and demons? A great dark face, a skeleton girl? Interesting..."

The other villagers found it interesting too, but had no further thoughts on the matter.

Shen Mu could not hold back: "Granny, aren't you even curious about the story inside these Hidden Valley ruins?"

The Alchemist sighed. "The Divine Kingdom that once flourished so brightly, and is now scattered to ash and smoke; the divine bones, hard and stark, dancing in the night — is it that their hearts will not yield?"

The Deaf Elder stared hard at his lips and said: "Yield or not, they're dead. What good is any of it? So curiosity about the story here is mostly good for nothing either."

"Deaf Elder, are you really the Deaf Elder?" The Alchemist studied his ears — a pair of iron ears, forged of snow-white iron, plugging even the ear holes — and asked, curious.

The Deaf Elder pulled the two iron ears out of his head, revealing the iron pegs, three inches long, by which the ears hung in the holes, and said coldly: "Let me fit these two ears into your ear holes, and then you'll know whether I'm the Deaf Elder or not!"

The Alchemist smiled faintly and said no more.

With another pfft, the Deaf Elder jabbed the two iron ears back into his ear holes and said to the Silent Smith: "These two ears have been bothering me lately. Rework them for me."

The Silent Smith nodded.

Shen Mu was quite speechless at these relatives of his. That the Alchemist and the rest should take more interest in the Deaf Elder's ear holes than in the ruins left him thoroughly bewildered.

Granny Zhu laughed. "Little Shen, there are far, far too many secrets in these wastes. Beyond the Divine City of the Hidden Valley there are more secrets than can be counted. Spend all your curiosity on them and you'll have no time left for anything else."

The party set off in the direction of Hidden Remnants Village. The Village Head said in a low voice: "The way you cut with that blade of yours is far from weak. A blade of one foot three inches, and it could hold its weight against that youth's treasured sword — you've come a long way in this trial."

Something stirred in Shen Mu's heart, and he gave voice to what puzzled him: "Why is it my primal qi can't command and control things the way theirs does? My qi can only seep into a willow branch one foot three inches long — I can't make it reach any farther."

He envied them their qi-ridden flying swords more than he could say; it was only that he could not do it.

The Alchemist shook his head inwardly. The primal qi cultivated by a commoner's constitution has no attribute to it and cannot command or control things, for there simply is no art that lets ordinary primal qi perform such a function.

That Shen Mu, a commoner, could make his primal qi sustain a willow branch of one foot three inches and pit it, hardness against hardness, against the treasured sword of a martial artist like Senior Brother Chu without having it cut through — that was already extraordinary.

The Village Head's face was calm. "Your Overlord Body has not yet fully awakened, and the Primal Embryo Divine Treasury has not yet been opened. There's no need to fret. Before your Overlord Body even awakens, you can beat to death a martial artist at the peak of the Spirit Embryo realm; once it awakens, your strength will far surpass your peers."

Granny Zhu and the others were well pleased with Shen Mu's showing as well. That Senior Brother Chu was a martial artist at the peak of the Spirit Embryo realm, and could even ride a flying sword on his qi, circling it about his body — plainly he could not be far from the Five Luminaries realm.

And Shen Mu, with his Overlord Body unawakened, had beaten him to death with a little wooden stick. Plainly Shen Mu was indeed that "Overlord Body," unheard of and unseen before — the Village Head had not deceived them!

The corner of the Alchemist's eye twitched, and he thought: "The matter of little Shen having a commoner's constitution will come out sooner or later. When it does, these fellows, in their despair, might well turn the whole sky over... And yet that little Shen beat a peak martial artist to death with a little wooden stick. That is truly strange. Can there really be an Overlord Body? Or is it the doing of the spirit blood?"

Widely read and widely traveled as he was, even he was at a loss now, his mind gone hazy.

With the Four Symbols Blood down, the primal qi within Shen Mu grew ever more lively, its circulation gradually quickening, so that his swollen muscles and fascia slowly recovered, the flow of his qi and blood sped up by degrees, and the weariness drained from his body bit by bit. Unawares his steps quickened, and then quickened again.

Lord Huo, the Lame Old Man, and the rest showed surprise on their faces, but said nothing, keeping pace with him all the while.

That cultivating the Mystic Body Three Elixirs Art while running advanced his cultivation the faster — this was Shen Mu's new discovery; and with the Four Symbols Blood replenishing him, that advance would climb another storey still. So Shen Mu quickened his pace without knowing it, losing himself a little.

He soon forgot the ache in his muscles. His speed kept climbing, and the primal qi within him ran ever faster, reaching his four limbs, reaching all his hundred bones, until at last even his hair, his nails, and the very grain of his skin began to take the qi in.