Chapter 19 — The Mysterious Body's First Awakening Shakes the Barren Village

ut to open. I seem to see it already — one punch, and a dragon slain!" The Village Head nodded, smiling: "Exactly so. Who is to say that, by virtue of this spirit of his, this will of his, he may not walk farther than we ever did?" The two old foxes exchanged knowing smiles and left the room once more. The Village Head coughed once, summoned Shen Mu, and asked how he had awakened the spirit embryo; Shen Mu related how, at the instant when the divine tone, the demonic tone, and the Buddhist tone had fallen to contending among themselves, his primordial energy had charged the spirit-embryo wall, toppled it, and broken through in success. A dazed look came into the Village Head's eyes, and he murmured: "There is such an operation as this?" He could not help marveling that Shen Mu's fortune was likely beyond anyone else's power to reproduce: the divine, demonic, and Buddhist tones locked in contention; a lucky coincidence of chance; and, on top of it all, Shen Mu himself truly audacious — daring to take the initiative in learning the demonic tongue and the demonic tone and pitting them against the divine tone! The very act was audacity enough to defy heaven — as if he did not know how the word "death" was written! Even if another man had enjoyed such fortune, in all likelihood he could not have broken through the spirit-embryo wall; instead, the might latent in the divine, demonic, and Buddhist tones would have done him to death! Others might not know the peril within, but he knew it with perfect clarity: those were the powers of gods and demons — how could a mortal man covet them? For a mortal to covet the powers of gods and demons, there was but one road, and it ended in death! Yet Shen Mu, against every expectation, had succeeded — succeeded inexplicably — and this left him not a little suspicious. What he did not know was that Shen Mu too had very nearly been done to death by the contention between the divine tone and the demonic tone, and that fortunately the Darklight Soul-Protecting Pendant had shielded his life; only so had he not perished. The Village Head made a searching examination of Shen Mu's progress in cultivation; a look of astonishment once again crossed his face, and he suppressed it at once, then said by way of exhortation: "Mu'er, cultivate diligently, and do not disappoint the hopes we place in you. Now that your Overlord Body has awakened, you are a martial artist — no longer a child." Shen Mu nodded emphatically. By this time the sky was wholly dark, and in the village bonfires were kindled; Grandpa Ma and the others roasted the exotic beasts they had captured to celebrate Shen Mu, while Granny Zhu came hurrying over on her little bound feet and pulled Shen Mu away, saying: "Village Head, Master Alchemist, you two come along as well — let us eat and drink together!" "You go on ahead — the Alchemist and I will be along presently." The Village Head watched Granny Zhu and Shen Mu out of sight, then said in a low voice: "Alchemist — Mu'er's primordial energy is thick and massive; of all the martial artists I have seen in the spirit-embryo realm, his cultivation is almost the deepest." The Alchemist looked at the company making merry by the bonfire and asked in a low voice: "How deep?" "The cultivation I held in my spirit-embryo days was about his equal — perhaps even somewhat short of his." The Village Head said levelly: "I speak of my cultivation at the very summit of the spirit-embryo realm; and he has only just entered that realm and will continue to grow." The Alchemist's frame shook violently; he stared at the Village Head in disbelief and blurted out: "Neck and neck with you in your spirit-embryo days? What manner of being are you? How could he possibly—" "But he did it, all the same." Some readers have been discussing samaya and treating it as though it were a pet dog, so here is a brief explanation from Zhai Zhu. What Zhai Zhu has borrowed is Sanskrit: samaya is made up of two words — sa, which carries the sense of producing and creating, and maya, which is the world of illusion; by extension it means the Sovereign Heaven. Bound together, samaya means "creating the Sovereign Heaven." As for qikedo in that demonic incantation, it is a word coined by Zhai Zhu, meaning the majestic and towering power of a demon-god. Taken all together, the sentence means: the demon-god's mighty power creates the Sovereign Heaven; ultimate wisdom opens up the Sovereign Heaven; the demon-god of ultimate wisdom uses mighty power to open up the Sovereign Heaven. Applied to the struggle in the canyon ruins: the thing lurking in the darkness meant to open up, within the ruins, a dominion of the Sovereign Heaven into which a demon-god might enter, and so annex the ruins to itself. And in the old temple — why did the Buddha statue explode at the very hearing of this phrase? Because the Buddha's mother was called Mahamaya: maha means great, and Mahamaya means the Great Sovereign Heaven. The demonic tongue declares that the demon-god of ultimate wisdom created the Sovereign Heaven by mighty power — in other words, the demon-god created the Buddha's mother, and only then was the Buddha born. This is insulting to the Buddha, and so the statue burst at the first touch. Zhai Zhu knows no Sanskrit; he merely patched these together, and does not know whether they are right. Let those who know Sanskrit not laugh at him. As for the divine tongue's tian, shi, dui, xi, wei, ling, and nu — these come from the Songs of Chu, a rather bloody line: "tian shi dui xi wei ling nu, yan sha jin xi qi yuan ye," meaning heaven and earth darken, the majestic heavenly god flies into a rage, every living creature is exterminated, and corpses fill the open fields. When Zhai Zhu wrote the divine tongue, the demonic tongue, and the Buddha tongue, he was not scribbling nonsense, nor was he rolling his face across the keyboard — in truth, there is a measure of learning in it.