Chapter 23 — The Wilderness Village Boy Provokes Divine Might

Shen Mu was shaken to the core: "Carrying a stone idol on your back is the same as carrying a god on your back?

" The Blind Elder said flatly, "To walk with a god on your back is a weight beyond all measure. Back then, when Granny Zhu and the others set out to save you, Old Huo carried a stone idol on his back and brought the old woman all the way to the riverbank. For a stretch of road that short, even a man of Old Huo's strength was nearly broken by the burden.

" Shen Mu's scalp went numb.

Were the stone idols in this village really so heavy?

Then who had carved these idols?

And what god was carved upon them?

Why should carving them in that likeness make them so heavy? When he was small he had climbed onto the idols to shit and piss—would the gods resent him for it? "Set your mind at ease.

The god who carved these idols died long ago. Shen'er, the reason I have you look at the idols is to temper your eyes. What I have you look at is no ordinary stone idol, but an image that a god made for a god! " The Blind Elder's voice was loud enough to set his eardrums ringing, and he bellowed at a bamboo basket beside the idol: "Shen'er, the Nine Heavens Eye-Gazing Art opens the Sacred Pupil, and a Sacred Pupil must needs behold the gods!

Behold them with your eyes—behold the god's momentum, the god's cadence, the god's breath, the god's bearing, the god's divinity!

" Shen Mu's heart and spirit quaked: "Behold the gods?

Behold the god within the stone idol? " "Let your vital essence enter your eyes, and open the first heaven of your mortal, fleshly eyes!

" The Blind Elder's bamboo staff tapped lightly at Shen Mu's solar plexus—but this time it struck with uncanny precision, and at once Shen Mu felt his vital essence surge and come rushing toward his eyes! To temper the eyes is a perilous thing. Shen Mu's vital essence had already begun to refine his body, burning away its impurities and its excess fat, but the eyes are the hardest place of all to refine—a forbidden ground, one might almost say.

A single misstep and a man goes blind! Shen Mu had once asked the village headman how one refines the eyes, but the headman had not said much, only that one should not lightly attempt to temper them.

Yet here was the Blind Elder driving Shen Mu's vital essence at his eyes, fierce and overbearing, against all reason!

Shen Mu felt a drilling pain in both eyes as his vital essence poured in a mighty flood into them. His cultivation of vital essence was exceedingly deep, yet under the Blind Elder's terrifying power it was pressed thin as a thread. How big are a man's eyes?

But in that moment Shen Mu felt his eyes were vast beyond measure, vast as the heavens!

His vital essence was a dragon, and that enormous dragon entered eyes as vast as the sky, and then abruptly burst forth; the vital essence surged up into the heavens like a pillar propping up the sky, and then rolled across the vault of heaven, forming strange and uncanny patterns upon the firmament, woven into a net, like the warp and weft of the Way of Heaven, filling the sky.

The pain of a moment before vanished as suddenly as it had come, replaced by a comfort beyond all words, a comfort he had never known. "Shen'er, remember the patterns in the sky. That is the first heaven of the Nine Heavens Eye-Gazing Art—the Shenxiao Heaven Tiangang Array Patterns. " The Blind Elder's voice came from beyond the heavens, remote and high.

Shen Mu hurried to commit it to memory.

His vital essence, driven by the Blind Elder, arranged itself within his eyes into the Shenxiao Heaven Tiangang Array Patterns; he could see with perfect clarity the course of those patterns, their structure, their every detail—but the Tiangang array patterns were so intricate and manifold that memorizing them took time. Again and again the Blind Elder drove his vital essence; after a long while, when Shen Mu's vital essence was all but spent, he at last drew the bamboo staff away from Shen Mu's solar plexus.

"How much did you memorize? " the Blind Elder asked. "Six or seven parts in ten.

" A look of satisfaction came over the Blind Elder's face. "In so short a time, six or seven parts in ten is no small feat.

Recover your vital essence.

" Shen Mu broke into a run, driving the Mystic Body Three Elixirs Art to restore his vital essence swiftly.

When his cultivation had returned to its peak, the Blind Elder said, "Now rouse the Tiangang array patterns I taught you, and look again at the stone idol. Is it different from before?

" Shen Mu at once roused his vital essence into his eyes; the vital essence built the Shenxiao Heaven Tiangang Array Patterns—he had learned only six or seven parts of them, incomplete—but with vital essence spread through his eyes, that cool comfort that could see through all things came over him again.

He raised his eyes to the stone idol of the old man with the dragon's head before him, and his heart and spirit quaked. The idol that had once seemed so ordinary in his eyes was suddenly ablaze with color!

The idol seemed to come alive, as though it had become a deity propping up heaven and earth! He could even see fine rays of light bursting out around the idol, ray upon ray, setting off the idol's sacred solemnity! And in that instant his spirit was crushed beneath the idol!

In his eyes the idol was no longer a stone idol but a living god! The god's divinity, bearing, breath, cadence, and momentum bore down on his spirit, and then came on to bear down on his body, so that his knees ached to kneel to the ground!

"Keep looking.

Do not close your eyes, and do not kneel.

" The Blind Elder said coldly, "When you were small you even climbed up on the idol to shit and piss.

As a child you dared such things—why, grown, do you kneel?

Shen'er, the Nine Heavens Eye-Gazing Art is not only the opening of the eyes; it is the opening of your spirit, that you may face the world's power and the world's malice head-on! " "A martial artist's strength lies not only in the might of his techniques—the strength of his spirit matters more!

If your spirit is defeated by a heap of broken stones, then even with the greatest martial power in the world you will accomplish nothing!

" The Blind Elder stamped his bamboo staff on the ground and shouted, "If you contend with the idol, if you withstand its oppression, your spirit too will grow strong! To make your strength great, first make your spirit great. Be your own god, and fear nothing! " Cold sweat rolled down Shen Mu's forehead as he fought with all his might against the urge to kneel.

The pressure the idol brought to bear on him was too strong; he could not withstand it at all. The Blind Elder spoke of fearing nothing, but he simply could not do it. Eyes unopened and eyes opened were two entirely different things.

With eyes unopened, the idol was only a stone idol; a man could climb it and shit and piss on it without a care. But with eyes opened, the idol was a deity, and any act—even gazing upon that deity—was blasphemy! The Blind Elder said, "It is easy to break the gods in a ruined temple; it is hard to break the god in your heart.

Do you know who said those words? " Shen Mu's heart and soul were held in the idol's grip; he could not answer.

"The man who spoke those seemingly treasonous words was none other than the Imperial Preceptor of the Kingdom of Jingping beyond the Wilderness Ruins, teacher to the reigning Emperor Jingping—a being hailed as the first man beneath the gods!

" The Blind Elder, terrible in his dignity, shouted, "Shen'er, the gods that dwell in your heart are all alien gods, false gods.

Break them, and only then can you raise up your own idol! Never mind a stone idol—if a true god stood before you, you must never kneel! " He planted his bamboo staff to one side, undid his belt, and laughed aloud: "Not only must you not kneel—you must piss on it!

" "Piss on it?

" Shen Mu was dumbstruck.