Not all things in this world are as simple as mortal eyes make them seem; what common folk see and what a martial artist whose eyes have been opened sees are two wholly different worlds! The stone idols in the village look ordinary enough, yet an opened-eyed martial artist can behold gods within them—relics left by gods and demons lie everywhere, and opened eyes can see the dreadful gods and demons; and as for the Buddha images in the temples, the common wretch sees a Buddha, while the opened-eyed martial artist beholds the Peerless Great Buddha, a Peerless Great Buddha that crushes the mind outright! If a martial artist's heart is not strong, sooner or later he will be frightened to death by the sights he beholds. That is why the Blind Elder, in teaching Shen Mu to temper his eyes, first taught him to temper his heart: only when the god in the heart is shattered will he cease to be terrified, and only then can he achieve anything hereafter. The Buddhists say that to keep a Buddha in the heart makes it hard to become a Buddha. The Imperial Preceptor of Jingping said it is easy to smash the gods of a ruined temple, but hard to smash the god in the heart. Those two sayings, and the Blind Elder pissing on the stone idol, all come to the same principle. The first two require grinding the heart, step by step demolishing the gods and Buddhas within; the Blind Elder's way is crude and violent, even somewhat extreme, even mad—and yet it works. When the headman first laid eyes on the Blind Elder, the aura the man carried was mighty beyond measure, still like a wrathful dragon lashing the eight directions—but by then the Blind Elder's eyes had both been gouged out, and the Blind Elder had collapsed. And now, that Lance God has come back. This must be counted Shen Mu's doing: ever since this boy with all his limbs intact appeared in the village, the rancor upon the villagers had slowly been scattered, and to teach Shen Mu the Nine Heavens Eye-Gazing Art the Blind Elder must first awaken his "Sacred Pupil"—yet his Sacred Pupil had been dug out, and only the heart's eye remained. While the Blind Elder was teaching Shen Mu, the headman sensed the awakening of the Blind Elder's Sacred Pupil; it was a Sacred Pupil of the Heart! His eyes were gone, and the heart took their place! Slowly the headman closed his eyes, basking idly in the sun, and said silently in his heart: "The Sacred Pupil of the Heart will surpass the Sacred Pupil, and the Lance God will surpass the Lance God of old. Blind Elder, when you walk out of the wasteland, your enemies will tremble..." After Shen Mu pissed, he shivered, feeling body and mind utterly at ease. The stone idol could no longer suppress his heart; and when he looked at it again, he saw much that he had never been able to see before. It was like a veil that had lain over his eyes, so that all he saw was blur and haze—and now the veil was peeled away, and the true colors of the world stood revealed. He gazed greedily at the colors all around him; a beauty he had never once discovered stirred him so that he wanted to weep. He went to the other stone idols in the village, and his heart was shaken again: the other three stone idols, like this dragon-headed old man, burst forth with thick divine light, gave off a transcendently refined divine charm, and possessed a sacred and uncommon air! Yet he could look upon them with an ordinary mind; these stone idols could no longer affect his heart. Of the Nine Heavens Eye-Gazing Art he had cultivated only the first heaven, and already he was wild with joy—to what heights would the later heavens raise his eyes, what beauties would they let him see? Shen Mu took out a bronze mirror and studied himself: in the mirror his eyes were somewhat different from usual, for deep in his pupils a ring had surfaced, and within that ring were strange veins and patterns, like woven lightning. The ring gradually dimmed and slowly vanished. Shen Mu closed his eyes, roused his vital essence, and with great care built the Divine Empyrean Heavenly Dipper array pattern within his pupils; then he opened his eyes again and saw in the mirror that another ring had appeared in them. That ring was the projection of the Divine Empyrean Heaven. "If I master the Nine Heavens Eye-Gazing Art, then my eyes ought to hold nine rings nested one inside another, like ten pupils stacked atop one another," Shen Mu thought. The Blind Elder went on instructing him in cultivating the complete Divine Empyrean Heavenly Dipper array pattern, and after a long while Shen Mu had mastered the full Dipper array pattern. "Shen'er, are you rested?" The Butcher "leapt down" from the stone mill, seized his two beast-slaughtering blades, and cried: "If you're rested, then it's time to practice the blade!" Shen Mu answered, took up his beast-slaughtering blade, and charged at the Butcher. Before long Old Huo and the Lame Elder came back from the hunt, straightway relieved the Butcher, and went on training Shen Mu. Only when Shen Mu was too exhausted to move did they let him be. In the afternoon Shen Mu went to the blacksmith, the Silent Smith, to work the forge. The Silent Smith gestured with his hands, grunting ah-ah for a while; Shen Mu nodded, thoughtful. What the Silent Smith spoke of were the arts of cultivation: cultivation, he said, is like working iron—mind the gentle fire and the roaring fire, and beyond gentle fire and roaring fire there is the quenching, which must be done with water. This is one civil and one martial, one hard and one soft, one dragon and one tiger. Shen Mu pondered it deeply, and the more he savored it the more sense it made; he could not help but admire the Silent Smith, for the man's words spared him many a crooked road. As he worked the iron, the Silent Smith taught him to watch the fire, and gazing at the fire in the furnace, gestured for a while. Shen Mu's eyes lit up. Following what the Silent Smith taught, he watched the fire while stirring his vital essence, driving the Mystic Body Three Elixirs Art; his vital essence moved like a small furnace hidden in his chest, then was carried to every part of his body. He felt as though his vital essence were burning—most wondrous. At the same time, in his Primal Fetus Divine Treasury, the Spirit Fetus drew energy from the sea of light, breathing vital essence in and out, and his Spirit Fetus too began to change, for the vital essence it exhaled was set alight, firelight coiling about the Spirit Fetus and bathing it as in a furnace. Shen Mu was astonished: his Spirit Fetus was tempering its body as well! Watching the furnace fire had brought about this strange change in the Spirit Fetus, beyond anything he had expected. The Silent Smith was astonished too, and studied Shen Mu with curiosity. After a long while Shen Mu felt that the fire his Spirit Fetus could endure had reached its limit, and hurriedly looked away from the furnace fire. "Ah-ah!" The Silent Smith gestured twice, thrust the red-hot iron bar into the water—hiss, and a puff of white smoke—then gestured twice more. Shen Mu's eyes lit up; he watched the water vat, thoughtful. In his chest a sound of flowing water gradually arose, a murmuring of water, and then the murmuring vital essence flowed into the Primal Fetus Divine Treasury and became a thin trickle of water; touching the Spirit Fetus, a wondrous thing happened—his vital essence was tempering the Spirit Fetus! Tempered by water and fire, his Spirit Fetus reveled in it! The next day at dawn Shen Mu rose feeling brisk and radiant, filled from head to foot with exuberant vigor; cultivating by the Silent Smith's method truly did yield twice the result for half the effort! "Time to go fight that Dark-Fanged Demon Ape again!" In high spirits he swallowed an Essence-Condensing Pill, and the surging force of the medicine drove him to dash out of the village to vent it; and below the cliff, the Dark-Fanged Demon Ape had long been waiting. "Little Bean Sprout, down