Chapter 23 — A Youth of the Desolate Village Touches Divine Might
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 3 of 3
on a god?" The Blind Elder pissed on the stone statue and laughed. "That's right, piss on it! When you were small you pissed on it a hundred times at least. Do you not dare now?" Shen Mu gritted his teeth, undid his belt, and a hot stream rushed out onto the stone statue. That piss was no small matter. In Shen Mu's eyes the god's image was still sacred and solemn, still filled with oppressive force — but that feeling which crushed his spirit and made him want to kneel had vanished into thin air! The old man and the youth locked eyes and burst out laughing, merry and delighted. The Village Headman was sunning himself in the doorway; hearing their laughter he turned to look, and at the sight he could not help shaking his head. "The Blind Elder is a ribald eccentric genius, to use a trick like that and make Mu'er break the god in his heart and strengthen his spirit. Anyone else would never have dreamed up such a bizarre method — and yet Mu'er actually went along and pissed with him. Bold as brass. In making Mu'er piss on the statue, he broke the god in Mu'er's heart, and he broke the god in his own heart as well — that 'god' who gouged out his eyes... The God of the Spear has returned." He knew why the Blind Elder had done it. The bamboo staff in the Blind Elder's hand was no bamboo staff; it was a spear. When the Blind Elder walked into Hidden Remnant Village, both his eyes had been destroyed and his body gravely wounded. He was a pitiful sight, like a beggar, filthy from head to toe. And yet his steps were steady, and the bamboo staff in his hand was steady. As he entered the village, he gave the Village Headman the feeling of a furious dragon sweeping in from all eight directions, charging into that little village; in the Headman's eyes the Blind Elder's bearing was like a pillar holding up the sky. In all the world, only one man could possess such spearmanship and such spirit — that God of the Spear! But the Spear Sage's greatest strength had never lain in his spear; it lay in his eyes. A pair of sacred pupils that could see through the flaw in any technique under heaven. And now the Blind Elder had passed the sacred pupils on, passed them to Shen Mu. To train the spear, first temper the eye; to temper the eye, first temper the heart! The Blind Elder's eyes were sacred pupils: the stronger the eyes, the more truly one sees, and the more truly one sees, the more terror one beholds.