荒墟牧神 - 第35章 荒城集市風雲起 - 雲海書庫

"Eat it, Zhuang!" In the valley of Zhenyang Palace, Shen Mu took out an Essence-Condensing Pill he had refined himself, the size of a fist, and gestured with it at the nether ape. "Zhuang. Sturdy!" The nether ape scratched its head, took the pill, and swallowed it. Nothing happened. Puzzled, it said, "Zhuang?" Then all at once the beast went berserk. Hair burst wildly from every inch of its body, and a sapling sprouted from its head, which then grew into a great forked tree. — A tree seed must have fallen into the nether ape's fur, and the pill had goaded it into frantic growth. Its bulk was growing wildly too, muscles swelling, bones thickening and strengthening, until the nether ape was stretched so taut it howled without cease and smashed at everything around it. Shen Mu rushed in to stop it and was hammered to the ground by a single punch. The ape's second blow struck the earth and shook him up out of the soil, and then a punch sent him flying. Shen Mu charged back. The nether ape roared on and on, and man and ape went at each other again in the valley, battering the rocks into flying shards. After taking the Essence-Condensing Pill Shen Mu had refined, the nether ape had grown bigger and stronger, its strength rising by a great margin. When Shen Mu faced it head-on, his own strength was crushed by it; he simply could not match the ape's power. Left with no choice, Shen Mu converted his vital essence into the fire attribute. The scalding essence coursed through his body, and on the skin of his back a dragon pattern faintly emerged, the dragon's four limbs joined to his own four limbs, its claws falling exactly where his palms were, overlapping his fingers. A five-clawed fire dragon! Fire-attribute vital essence belonged to the Vermilion Bird, yet Shen Mu was no Vermilion Bird spirit embryo but a human-shaped one. The dragon pattern that surfaced on his back was not the work of his vital essence but the effect of practicing the Eight Thunderclap Arts that Old Man Ma had taught him. Old Man Ma's Eight Thunderclap Arts, the circulation of vital essence, was wondrous beyond measure: the essence traced a dragon pattern through the body, spreading over the whole of it. If a man like Old Man Ma, with an Azure Dragon spirit body, were to perform the Eight Thunderclap Arts, his essence would carry the attributes of wood and thunder, and the dragon pattern on his back would be azure, woven through with lightning. But Shen Mu had not cultivated Azure Dragon essence and could only use Vermilion Bird essence, so beside the dragon pattern on his back there were blossoms of fire cloud. Only when he roused the Eight Thunderclap Arts did the dragon pattern and fire clouds surface on his body; so long as he did not use them, those strange markings slowly dimmed and vanished. As Shen Mu circulated his essence, his strength surged, and at last he could stand against the nether ape head-on. But the ape was in a frenzy and fought by no rule at all, willing to take a beating in order to give one, and in the end man and ape alike were black and blue, lying flat on their backs, gasping, unable to move. The great fork on the nether ape's head had grown into a full tree, thick as a water bucket, hung with bright red fruit. The pill's potency faded, and the tree stopped growing. There was indeed something wrong with that batch of Essence-Condensing Pills Shen Mu had refined: the potency was too strong, too fierce, not balanced and mild. Only a body as powerful as the nether ape's could withstand the shock of it; any other martial artist at the spirit embryo realm would likely have been blown apart. Now that the potency was spent, the nether ape's body began slowly to shrink, though it was still much taller than before, and far more robust, which made Shen Mu suspect that his pills had indeed gone a little wrong. Yet judging by the ape's behavior, the problem was not serious; and even if there was a problem, it was a good one. He picked a fruit from t