荒墟牧神 - 第43章 妖靈踏月疾行 - 錦書坊

Granny Zhu warned, "If you go begging him, he will be even less willing to teach you. Only when he himself has come around will he teach you! You now carry several peerless arts on your body, and you have not mastered any one of them. Wait until you can beat Lord Huo with your fists within the same realm, cleave the Butcher with your saber, challenge the Blind Elder with your spear, and outrun the Lame Elder—then come think about how to sharpen your swordsmanship! By then, if he will not teach us, we will force him to!" The Blind Elder yawned and said lazily, "He has the greatest insight and the deepest cultivation; these years he has grown ever more terrifying. Even if we tied ourselves together, we might not beat him." "So you were willing to wake?" Granny Zhu raged and jabbed another needle into his backside. The Blind Elder got down from Shen Mu's back, leaned on his cane, and said, "This matter is better explained by you in the end. I cannot explain it. The killing of the watchman, though, I can explain. That watchman's Shadow-Transforming Demonic Art was formidable; he had already achieved the interchange of man and shadow—his body was not his true body; his shadow was. In a fight with him, if you attack only his body, you will be killed by his shadow. When he tried to kill me, I nailed his shadow to the ground with my bamboo staff and pinned him dead there." Shen Mu thought for a moment and said, "Then what was he cultivating by raising serpents and using infants' innate essence and souls?" The Blind Elder said, "Granny, you are the most skilled in demonic arts. You explain." "This art is called the Perfect Innate Art." Granny Zhu said, "This art is one by which the Nether Demon Cult transforms the acquired into the innate. But he obtained only a fragmented text from somewhere and practiced it askew, going so far as to use unborn infants to cultivate. The true Perfect Innate Art, though a demonic art, is upright and honorable; it disdains such low and filthy means. Instead, it breathes in the spiritual energy of heaven and earth and draws the essence of the sun and moon for cultivation." Her expression held some worry, and she lowered her voice: "For people of the Nether Demon Cult to appear nearby means the Wasteland Ruins can no longer remain quiet. These fellows often appear in swarms..." The three returned to Granny Zhu's Temple. The gathering was still going on. By afternoon, people from every village began to leave and return to their own villages. Shen Mu once again drove the ox cart back to Yincan Village. "Shen'er, from now on you may go out hunting alone." Lord Huo sat on the ox cart, his body rising and falling with the jolting road, and suddenly said, "You have grown up." Warmth rose in Shen Mu's heart. He turned and smiled. The cowherd of Yincan Village smiled as brightly as the early spring sun. "However, you are only allowed to hunt strange beasts. You are not allowed to challenge strange beast lords." Granny Zhu said, "And every evening you must come back to graze the oxen and let them eat more grass." The cowherd's face fell immediately, and the two bulls silently pulling the cart gave angry lowing cries, their ox eyes brimming with tears, looking exceedingly wronged. Seeing this, Shen Mu asked suspiciously, "Granny, are these two oxen also people?" "Guess," Granny Zhu said with a chuckle. Shen Mu did not want to guess. A gust of wind came from behind. The youth's heart rippled under the wind. He suddenly stepped forward, leaped up from the ox cart, and ran after the wind. He wanted to catch this wind, to tread its edges and walk in the sky! He was extremely fast. He leaped out of the pine forest, stepped along the tips of the pines and sped madly onward, faster and faster, until at last he caught the head of that wind. He sprang up and leaped into midair. Though he was in the air, a wondrous upward support suddenly came from beneath his feet. The youth cheered and stepped through the air as swiftly as