Chapter 392 — The Mystery of the Star River
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 1 of 4
"Could it be that the Nine Dragons Emperor's Art I learned is a counterfeit, and what that cowherd learned is the genuine one?"
Ling Yuxiu was at a loss. The Nine Dragons Emperor's Art Shen Mu had passed on to her belonged to the Ling family, and only its opening stance was theirs; everything that followed went beyond the scope of the Ling family's Nine Dragons Emperor's Art — beyond it, and above it.
What frightened her most was this: the Ling family's Nine Dragons Emperor's Art looked like a branch grown out of that opening stance, while the Nine Dragons Emperor's Art Shen Mu had transmitted looked like the trunk — and the branch was merely one possibility of the trunk.
The most primitive Nine Dragons Emperor's Art was like a sapling just breaking through the soil. The Ling family's perfected Nine Dragons Emperor's Art was like a tree whose trunk had snapped, leaving only a single branch to grow. Shen Mu's Nine Dragons Emperor's Art, by contrast, had grown the trunk itself.
The Nine Dragons Emperor's Art had been perfected by generation after generation of the Ling family, and in Emperor Yanfeng's generation it had finally reached great completion — but it had also reached its limit, with no possibility of unearthing further potential.
Shen Mu's Nine Dragons Emperor's Art, however, showed her boundless potential!
Only — how was it that the unremitting efforts of so many generations of the Ling family could not compare with a few short moments of Shen Mu's "enlightenment"?
Could he too be a sage who appears once in five hundred years?
Shen Mu, for his part, gave it little thought. The Nine Dragons Emperor's Art he had comprehended from the True Dragon's Nest was itself incomplete; he had merely passed on what he had grasped to Ling Yuxiu, which counted as a kind of compensation to the Ling family.
There was no way he would return the Jade Register of the Heavenly Emperor to the Ling family. It was a treasure the Lame Elder had given him, and by the rules of the Desolate Ruins, a thing given away is never given back.
Besides, the True Dragon's Nest and the Jade Register of the Heavenly Emperor were a pair, neither complete without the other. Even if the Ling family obtained the Jade Register, it would be of no use to them; the complete Nine Dragons Emperor's Art could be seen only when the true dragon entered its nest.
After Shen Mu retrieved the Jade Register of the Heavenly Emperor from the dragon nest, the pressure on the flood dragons and dragon-kylins vanished at once. They rose one after another, and the look in their eyes as they regarded Shen Mu held a trace of awe.
Shen Mu ordered them to continue on toward the Heavenly Dragon Star Palace. He glanced at the dragon nest, and something stirred in his heart. Smiling, he said, "For cultivating the Nine Dragons Emperor's Art, I happen to know an excellent place. Sister Yuxiu, come with me — let us jump into this dragon nest." With that, he seized Ling Yuxiu's hand and leaped toward the nest.
Ling Yuxiu's heart lurched. She was just wondering how they could possibly jump into a potted landscape so small when suddenly the "potted landscape" beneath their feet grew larger and larger, and their bodies plunged downward at a furious rate, as though falling from a height of several thousand zhang.
And the "potted landscape" had become a vast space over twenty li across!
The circumference of the ninth level of the dragon nest alone was more than ten li!
The two had barely landed when a startled cry came from the air — Si Yunxiang had jumped down as well. Only after she landed in the space of the True Dragon's Nest did she discover that it concealed a whole other world, and she could not help but be astonished.