荒墟牧神 - 第43章 妖靈踏月疾行 - 雲海書庫

Granny Zhu warned, "If you go begging him, he'll be even less willing to teach you. Only when he comes round on his own will he teach you! Right now you carry several supreme arts on your shoulders, and you have mastered none of them. Wait until, at the same cultivation realm, you can punch Uncle Ma, cleave the butcher with a blade, spear the blind elder off his feet, and outrun the lame elder — then think about how to hone your swordsmanship! When that day comes, if he won't teach you, we'll make him!"

The blind elder yawned and said mildly, "He has the keenest insight and the deepest cultivation. Over the years he's grown ever more terrifying. The lot of us tied together might not be able to beat him."

"So you've decided to wake up?" Granny Zhu raged, and jabbed another needle into his backside.

The blind elder slid down from Shen Mu's back and leaned on his cane. "All in all, this is something you'd explain better than I could. I can't manage it. The killing of the night watchman, though — that I can explain. His Phantom Shadow Demon Art was formidable. He had already achieved the exchange of man and shadow: his body was not his true self — his shadow was. In a duel with him, if you attack only his body, his shadow kills you. When he tried to kill me, I nailed his shadow to the ground with my bamboo cane and pinned him dead there."

Shen Mu thought it over. "Then what was he cultivating by keeping serpents and using the innate essence and souls of infants?"

The blind elder said, "Granny, you know demon-path arts best. You explain."

"This art is called the Natural Innate Art."

Granny Zhu said, "This art is a method by which the Dark Demon Cult advances from the postnatal to the innate. But he had only a fragment from who knows where, and practiced it awry — actually using unborn infants to cultivate. The true Natural Innate Art, though a demonic art, is upright and honorable; it disdains such despicable means. Instead it breathes in and out the spiritual energy of heaven and earth and draws on the essence of sun and moon to cultivate."

A shadow of worry crossed her face. She said in a low voice, "Disciples of the Dark Demon Cult appearing nearby — it seems the Wasteland Ruins will know no more peace. These fellows tend to swarm out all at once..."

The three returned to Granny Temple, where the gathering was still going on. By afternoon, the people of the various villages began to leave for their own homes. Shen Mu drove the ox cart back to Yincan Village once more.

"Mu'er, from now on you may go out hunting on your own."

Uncle Ma sat on the ox cart, his body rising and falling with the jolting road. Suddenly he said, "You've grown up."

Warmth filled Shen Mu's heart. He turned and smiled — the cowherd boy of Yincan Village smiling bright as the early spring sun.

"But you're only allowed to hunt strange beasts. You are not allowed to challenge strange beast lords."

Granny Zhu added, "And every evening you must come back to tend the oxen, and let them eat plenty of grass."

The cowherd boy's face went black at once, and the two oxen silently pulling the cart let out a furious bellow, their eyes brimming with tears, looking deeply aggrieved.

Seeing this, Shen Mu asked suspiciously, "Granny, are these two oxen also people?"

"Guess," Granny Zhu said with a chuckle.

Shen Mu did not want to guess.

A gust of wind swept up from behind. It set the youth's heart rippling. Suddenly he strode forward, leaped from the ox cart, and ran after the wind. He would catch this wind and tread its edge, walking through the sky!

He was fast. He burst from the pine woods, racing over the treetops, faster and faster, until at last he caught the head of that wind. He sprang up and leaped into the air. Though he was in midair, a strange upward lift came at once beneath his feet.

The youth let out a cheer. His steps flew, dancing through the air, treading the wind's edge as he ran through the sky.