荒墟牧神 - 第39章 赤日凌空煉陽魂 - 雲海書庫

The old monk's white brows twitched, and in the next instant he knew what flaw the boy meant. In his early years of training he had once overslept and missed one of Tathagata's lectures, and that very lecture had covered the move known as the Myriad-Arms Vajra. Buddhism speaks of fated encounters; having missed this one, the old monk could not consult Tathagata on the essence of the Myriad-Arms Vajra. He could only learn it from his fellow disciples, and it was, after all, not Tathagata's true transmission. His Myriad-Arms Vajra did indeed conceal a flaw no one could detect; he himself had found it, and had tried to patch it, only to discover that the more he patched, the more leaks appeared — the more holes he mended, the more he opened. To solve a problem one must first locate it. The Myriad-Arms Vajra is an exceedingly complex move, demanding the coordination of eye, ear, nose, tongue, body and mind in every dimension; its transformations are beyond counting. No single minute flaw can ever arise from a single cause; very likely it springs from several, or even a dozen, causes that seem wholly unrelated. Ever since his youth the old monk had been searching for the cause of that flaw, and he had still not found it by today. A flaw had appeared in his Myriad-Arms Vajra; as his disciple, Mingxing's Myriad-Arms Vajra would naturally suffer the very same defect. The flaw was so minute that it could be exposed only when striking speed was unimaginably fast. It lay in this: as the arm rose past the point an inch below the throat, the vital force within it thinned slightly. Under a swift attack, that slight thinning made the arm rise a hair slower, and that single hair's delay left at the throat a fleeting opening, there and gone in a flash. The old monk's cultivation was too profound; few people could ever force out that sliver of a flaw. Mingxing, however, was different. In depth of cultivation Shen Mu stood even above Mingxing, and Shen Mu used his hand as a blade, impossibly swift; in the space of a few short moments he had already slashed a hundred times at Mingxing's throat! On the sixty-eighth strike, the golden light bell over Mingxing's body shattered for the first time. Mingxing gathered his vital force again and the golden bell reappeared — but Shen Mu's blade had already cut into Mingxing's throat. Blood streamed without cease from Mingxing's throat, and soon dyed his pure white monastic robe blood-red. The old monk sighed. "Foolish boy, your Myriad-Arms Vajra cannot hold his blade. Will you not change techniques?" Mingxing woke to himself. He had thought only of catching Shen Mu's blade and had forgotten that by caring only for defense he would fall into nothing but the posture of taking a beating, whereas his golden light bell could hold Shen Mu's blade off for a few moments and hand him the chance to defeat his opponent. It was Shen Mu's madness that had frightened him, making him forget his own strength! He changed his technique abruptly, clenched his fist and shook it in midair, and the fist blazed like the great sun's golden light, blindingly bright! The Sun Illumines the Yang Spirit, Refined in Midair! In that instant a Buddha-voice actually flowed forth from his seal-art, soaring and far-reaching, and together with the palm-thunder it burst in a crash of thunder loud enough to refine and slay a soul! His Sun Illumines the Yang Spirit, Refined in Midair differed in power from Shen Mu's version of the same move — it exceeded Shen Mu's by several times over! Struck by this move, Shen Mu went instantly dizzy and reeling, all three souls stirring, all seven spirits shaken. Tap-tap-tap! Shen Mu raised his fingers and, in a dazzling flurry, pressed a series of finger seals upon his own brow, tailbone, navel, crown, throat, heart, perineum and lung chamber, locking his three souls and seven spirits in place! Nether Demon Rebirth Art! The Nether Demon Rebirth Art that Granny Zhu had taught him was, in its original purpose