荒墟牧神 - 第7章 眉心一壁鎖靈胎 - 雲海書庫

The underworld ape flew into a fury. It sprang up and gave chase to Shen Mu, but after a few strides its body proved too heavy, and its speed fell far short of his. Maddened beyond measure, the beast reached out and tore up one great tree after another; a single pass of its hand stripped each trunk clean of branch and leaf, leaving a spear of immense size, which the ape flung out with a flick of its wrist. "Little runt, die!" The blow carried full force, full savagery, terrifying speed — only its aim was somewhat lacking, and it shot past more than ten zhang wide of Shen Mu. The ape grew even more furious. It stripped another tree and made to hurl again, but Shen Mu had already run far off, and it could only beat its chest in helpless rage. Senior Brother Qu said in a low voice: "That little fiend's cultivation is far below ours. His wounds must be worse than mine. He cannot go far." He forced himself to rise, but gave a stifled groan; his chest hurt so badly that he feared many of his ribs had been cracked by the ape's blow. Yet if even a little fiend like Shen Mu could withstand the ape's savage strike, then surely he could hold out too. What he did not realize was that Shen Mu's cultivation was not weak at all — not in the least; it was only that his vital qi had no attribute, and so its power could not be brought out. If one truly measured cultivation, Shen Mu, young as he was, was no weaker than any of them, Senior Brother Qu included. The five skirted the ape's territory and again picked up Shen Mu's trail. It was indeed as Senior Brother Qu had said: Shen Mu had been wounded by the ape, and badly. Once he fled the ape's territory he had been forced to slow down, which gave them their chance to close in. But as they pressed the chase, they found that his speed kept rising, as though his wounds were steadily healing. "That little fiend must have some wondrous medicine for wounds!" The five grew heavy of heart. Senior Brother Qu had already taken his own sect's wound medicine, yet its effect was nothing like that of Shen Mu's "medicine." Judging by how fast his speed climbed, his wounds must be healing at a rate visible to the naked eye. Such medicine set all five of them burning with envy. "Our sect's wound medicine is hardly of the highest grade. If we could get the recipe for a superior wound medicine from this little fiend, Master and the elders would surely be delighted and reward us richly!" At that moment, however, Shen Mu was not taking any wound medicine as they supposed. He was running while breathing in and out, circulating what the village headman had taught him as the Profound Body Three Elixirs Art — which was in truth the most ordinary of qi-guiding arts, though he did not know it. This time, driving the Profound Body Three Elixirs Art while fleeing at a run, Shen Mu made a new discovery: his vital qi was livelier when he ran, and circulated faster. But this differed from what the headman had taught. In teaching him the Profound Body Three Elixirs Art, the headman had always required him to sit in stillness, regulate his breath, inhale and exhale slowly, gently nourish his vital qi, move it through its courses, and use it to moisten and nourish the body. Shen Mu had cultivated for some ten years, always practicing the art as the headman taught, and only now discovered that it might work better when practiced on the run. At a full sprint, the Profound Body Three Elixirs Art ran faster, nourished his vital qi faster, and moistened his body far faster too. More than that, wave upon wave of vital qi scoured his five viscera and six bowels, scoured his four limbs and hundred bones, even scouring along the fascia between bone and muscle, again and again. The ape's palm had injured his organs and bones, but under that scouring of vital qi the cracks in them kept mending. Senior Brother Qu and the others thought he relied on a superior wound medicine; it never occurred to them that he relied on that unreliable "Prof