Chapter 16 — Deep in the Old Temple a Young Girl Hides
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 1 of 3
Behind the jade pendant lay a pair of eyes, bright and limpid as spring water. Shen Mu was only eleven, yet he already understood a great many things.
Once he had gone with Granny Zhu to another village, where a woman was about to give birth. The delivery went smoothly, and the sight of that family of three, so loving together, moved him deeply.
So Shen Mu asked Granny Zhu how he himself had been born, and where his father and mother were. Granny Zhu could not answer, and had no choice but to tell him that he had been picked up, and that when they found him, this jade pendant had been hanging at his neck.
And so Shen Mu treasured the pendant greatly, hoping that one day it would lead him to his parents, so that he might ask them why they had thrown him away.
After a long while, the boy put the pendant away, hanging it at his chest as before, his face calm, the strange thing that had just happened to it buried deep in his heart. Behind him, Granny Zhu returned to her room as well.
The next day, Grandpa Ma, the Blind Elder, the Lame Elder, and the Mute went out hunting again, bringing back more spirit beasts to be refined into blood that would build Shen Mu up. Within a few hundred li around, the four spirit beasts had been all but cleaned out by those four villains, until the four of them had no choice but to travel farther afield to catch any.
The Headman could scarcely move about; the Alchemist was forever out gathering herbs; the Butcher despised the world and flew into rages from time to time; and the Hard-of-Hearing Elder cared for nothing but painting and calligraphy. In the ordinary run of days, the only one who could keep Shen Mu company as he trained was Granny Zhu.
But Granny Zhu was often away from the village too. She was a seamstress and a midwife both, and the villages roundabout were forever calling on her to make clothes, and now and then to deliver a child.
That day Granny Zhu had gone out at dawn, and the Alchemist had gone out for herbs as well. The Butcher and the Hard-of-Hearing Elder carried the Headman out and set him down at the village gate as usual — the one practiced his demon blade, the other painted.
Shen Mu, bored to death, went off alone to the riverbank. Ever since the milk cow had turned into a woman and been stabbed to death by the Lame Elder, there had been much less for him to do.
At the water's edge, the boy drew a long breath; his chest swelled up as though being inflated, fuller and fuller, then his vital essence began to circulate, and his chest slowly deflated again.
He did not let the breath out. Instead he let his vital essence nourish his lungs, making them extraordinarily tough, and compressed the air within them, from full measure down to a single tenth.
Shen Mu kept drawing breath, and still his chest did not swell. He drew until he reached his limit; then the boy paused, and shot out a step like an arrow loosed from the string.
On the river's face, two wakes parted to either side, and between them Shen Mu ran upon the water, hurtling forward at breakneck speed.
Suddenly a blade-light kindled upon the river. Running, he drew the hog-butchering knife; the blade flashed and whirled up and down like a flood dragon. That was the Butcher's blade art.
A blade art is like the man: the Butcher's hog-slaughtering blade carried all his contempt for the world, a wild, overbearing spirit that bowed to neither heaven nor earth. The blade-light rolled and churned, crushing its way across the river's face.
Then all at once the blade-light snapped shut. Shen Mu slung the hog-butchering knife back behind him, and instead brought out Grandpa Ma's fist art: vital essence coursing to both arms, gathering at the tips of his fingers, his fingers curling into fists, his body like the long river rushing to the sea, bearing the highland torrents to smash through the empty sky, unending, inexhaustible.