荒墟牧神 - 第11章 神音裂壁開靈藏 - 雲海書庫

Had Granny Zhu or the village headman been here, they would have raged at him for his folly, for gambling with his own life. After all, the divine sound that came when the wall was broken was not the same as the divine sound the maidens in the ruins gave forth. To use the demonic sound that countered the maidens' divine sound against the divine sound of the wall-breaking—that the medicine did not match the illness was the least of it; the true peril was that if divine sound and demonic sound should shift into some other uncanny transformation, then it would be no mere loss of his life, but perhaps the scattering of his very soul to the four winds. But Shen Mu had no one to guide him and no clear understanding of the dangers within, and the moment he had learned the demonic sound he set about testing it. When his qi came to the point between his brows, that divine sound—faint and far, as though it drifted down from beyond the ninth heaven—rose again as if by appointment. His qi fell back of itself at the touch of it; Shen Mu silently recited the demonic sound, and at once the two locked together, clashing and warring, each assaulting the other. Shen Mu seized the moment to drive his qi at the Spirit Fetus Wall, but now and again the divine sound broke through his demonic sound and forced his qi back. He failed again and again, yet never once lost heart, rousing his qi to strike without cease, and after several hundred failures his qi at last smote the Spirit Fetus Wall. Yet the wall remained; it did not break. "I was harried by the divine sound and could not gather the whole of my qi for one full-strength blow, and so I could not break the wall." Shen Mu took brief stock of his mistake and straightway made the next attempt. After failure upon failure, he at last brought his qi against the Spirit Fetus Wall a second time. That time, too, the wall held. Before long he struck a third time, then a fourth, a fifth... In the days when he had learned pill-refining under Master Dan, he had already cultivated patience of a high order. Refining pills tested patience, wisdom, discernment, and technique, and of these patience was the most essential of all; without it, no good pill could ever be made. After countless failures, at last Shen Mu suddenly heard a faint crack from between his brows. That small sound was as sweet and lovely as immortal music, and though Shen Mu's composure was strong, he could not keep down the excitement in his heart. A crack had appeared in the Spirit Fetus Wall, a crack shaped like a lightning bolt. The Spirit Fetus Wall was a formless wall, an invisible wall, known only by feeling; yet when that crack appeared, Shen Mu felt a light shining out from between his brows, like the symbol of a lightning bolt. The sensation was wondrous. When you close your eyes, all that lies before you is a dim darkness without any light at all; you cannot see the point between your brows, you cannot see the Spirit-Soul Divine Palace, and you cannot see the Spirit Fetus Wall. But when qi has broken a crack in the Spirit Fetus Wall, you can see a lightning-shaped radiance piercing out of the gloom. Then, and only then, can you see the Spirit Fetus Wall. Shen Mu saw not only the Spirit Fetus Wall but, through that lightning-shaped crack in it, the Spirit-Soul Divine Palace as well. Within the Spirit-Soul Divine Palace light hung thick and swirling, a splendid golden light, and abundant, rich qi was spilling out through the lightning-shaped crack to merge unceasingly with his own qi. The qi within that divine store was purer and more powerful; yet like the qi he himself had cultivated, it had no attribute at all. Shen Mu was firmly convinced that the qi he had cultivated was the qi unique to the Overlord Body—Overlord Body qi—and so he gave the matter no further thought. The Spirit-Soul Divine Palace held not only qi but stranger things besides, hidden within; yet he had blasted open only a single lightning-shaped crack and had not w