荒墟牧神 - 第34章 荒神古廟拜慈尊 - 雲海書庫

orderlands, and the swords it forged had a character all their own. Hidden within this sheathe was a mother sword, and the mother sword could not be brought out — it had already fused with the small crocodile's hide. Every blade drawn from the sheathe was a daughter sword. Shen Mu tried it: twenty-eight daughter swords could be drawn in all. Add the seven he had severed with his butcher's knife, and there had been thirty-five in total. As for how the Lanjiang sword sect had hidden thirty-five swords inside so small a sheathe, he had no notion of the secret. Twenty-eight swords were no great burden to Shen Mu. He carried a good many iron ingots on his person, wore iron shoes on his feet, and had iron ingots tucked at his chest and waist as well; all together they weighed over a hundred jin, much the same as the sheathe. Shen Mu treated carrying the sheathe as a form of training — it spared him the iron shoes and other weights and made it easier to move about — but to ride a flying sword with his vital essence, that he could not manage. The Chengjiang Sword Art was fine-grained and venomous, and his sword control was nowhere near that standard. "If only I could learn the Chengjiang Sword Art," Shen Mu sighed inwardly. The Chengjiang Sword Art was a thing of rare subtlety, and its chain-sword technique in particular was superb beyond compare. Among the villagers, Old Man Ma, the Butcher, the lame old man, the Alchemist, and the blind old man were none of them skilled in swordplay; the mute had a chest of things like Myriad Blade Sword Souls, and Grandma Zhu had silver pellets of much the same kind — if those silver pellets were indeed Myriad Blade Sword Souls, then they too must be masters of the sword. But when Shen Mu asked Grandma Zhu, she would not teach him, and the mute waved his hands again and again, as though he feared something. In secret the mute told him in sign language that if he did not learn now, a finer sword art would be waiting for him; but if he learned now, it would be lost to him, and that person would never teach him. Shen Mu did not know who the mute's "that person" was, and so he had to let it go. He had not yet fully mastered the marvel of moving his vital essence; Old Man Ma's boxing, for instance — he still could not bring his vital essence coursing through his whole body at the instant he struck. To send vital essence through the whole body could raise every quality of the body to its utmost: strength, agility, speed, reaction, all at their peak! When the Eight Thunder Roar Formulas are cultivated to a profound realm, one can send thunder from the palm and strike with thunder from the fist; he could achieve palm thunder only by means of the Demon God's Divine Power Seal, and the Eight Thunder Roar Formulas could not yet do it. If he could reach that step, then meeting a martial artist like Qianxun again, he would be able to catch the blade bare-handed without having his palm sliced open! "You lack real combat." Old Man Ma came to Shen Mu's side and said lightly: "Your cultivation surpasses that disciple of the Lanjiang Sect. The boxing, the legwork, the saber work, the staff work you have learned are all stronger than his Chengjiang Sword Art. Yet when you crossed blades with him you were tied in knots and could not bring any of it to bear." Shen Mu nodded again and again; he had felt it too. Qianxun's sword art was superb, his chain-sword technique beyond all expectation, but his own reactions had been shabby — he had actually seized the blade with his hand. Thinking back now, Qianxun's strength had not truly been so great. Shen Mu had severed seven of his swords with a single cut, and with one move — the Nether Demon Unfettered Seal — had dragged his soul into his palm. That showed that Shen Mu's vital essence cultivation far exceeded his! Old Man Ma went on: "Without the whetstone of real combat, it is hard to bring your strength out of you. That is why the Five Elders of Lanjiang took their discip