Chapter 6 — A Lad Treads the Wind and Escapes the Ape's Jaws
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 1 of 4
Was she using this thread to control the sword? With a thread so fine, how could she make the sword turn? Shen Mu had no time to unravel the mystery. He turned and fled at once. With a sharp *duo*, the sword grazed past him and drove deep into the trunk of a great tree. The sword, as if alive, twitched twice in the wood, failed to pull itself free, and then the woman drifted over, closed her slender hand about the hilt, and drew the blade from the trunk, saying in vexation: "My White Tiger true vitality still is not strong enough. I cannot yet make the sword an extension of my arm..."
"Junior Sister Qing, being able to turn your true vitality into a fine thread and drive a flying sword against the enemy is already quite an accomplishment."
The man who had been treading the waves at her side came over and said with a gentle smile: "What you lack is not cultivation but tempering. This time Master has brought us to the Barrens to temper ourselves, precisely to make up this weakness. In the past each of us cultivated on our own, bereft of actual combat. Now this little fiend provides our chance for actual combat. You will soon master the qi-guided flying sword."
The other three youths caught up, and one of them laughed: "The little fiend transformed himself into a deer, and deer are by nature very swift, so it was only natural he could dodge Senior Sister's flying sword."
Much heartened, Senior Sister Qing once again drove her flying sword at Shen Mu, and said with a silvery laugh: "Senior Brother Qu, do not act for the moment. Leave this little fiend to your junior sister for a little sword practice."
Senior Brother Qu was the young and stalwart man who had been treading the waves with her. Hearing this, he nodded and smiled: "Junior brothers, shall we watch Junior Sister Qing's swordplay together?"
Shen Mu threw all his strength into dodging the sword-light flying at his back, and puzzled: "Qi-guided flying sword? Could the thread in that woman's hand be no real thread but her vital qi? Can vital qi reach such a level that it controls a precious sword? Could I do it?"
He had learned the butcher's cleaver from the butcher, who had only taught him to wield the blade with both hands, never to control it with vital qi. Of such arts he knew nothing whatsoever.
But seeing Senior Sister Qing drive a flying sword with qi had set his mind turning: since qi could drive a flying sword, could vital qi also be used to drive other things?
Yet Senior Sister Qing set her sword on him again, leaving him no time to mull it over. Besides, Granny Zhu had turned him into a deer; his limbs were clumsy, and the vital qi within him had sunk into a dead stillness, far less lively than it was in ordinary times.
*Chi—*
The sword-light flashed, came up from behind, and slashed across Shen Mu's back. He felt a chill on his back, then a fiery pain. He knew that Senior Sister Qing's sword had wounded him.
"Damn it. A deer is fast, but after all it is not as agile as my true body. Granny turned me into a deer, and now on top of that I am wounded—I fear there is no escaping doom this time..."
No sooner had he thought this than he suddenly felt his mouth split open.
This was not a real split: the mouth of the deer hide was coming away from his body!
Shen Mu remembered at once that when Granny Zhu told him to run, she had quietly taken a needle from 'his' brow—the very needle that had been pinning down his heavenly soul!
Soon his head parted from the deer hide.
Behind him, sword-qi tore through the air with hissing *chi chi* sounds and chopped down at him. Shen Mu hurled himself forward with all his might, burst out of the deer hide completely, tumbled and rolled, and landed more than ten zhang away, then sprang to his feet and fled at a full run.