Chapter 113 — The Hand That Restores Spring
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 2 of 4
In the Palace of Averting Calamity he had seen the cultivation diagrams of the Mystic Body Three-Cinnabar Art — only the first two; the third was mutilated and incomplete. Shen Mu strove to recall that broken diagram; it did indeed hold stars, but besides the five stars there were five deities, each with its own design and its own pathways for the movement of yuanqi. Yet that diagram was for the most part destroyed; the specific pathways were blurred beyond clarity.
Shen Mu steadied himself; his consciousness drifted and drifted.
The starry sky was high and cold, and he meant to drift his consciousness onto one of the stars.
Yet as his consciousness flew, that star seemed to fly as well, and the distance to it remained always the same. Shen Mu frowned and tried flying toward the other stars; they too moved as he moved, and he could not draw near. "What is going on here? " Shen Mu was taken aback.
He wished to see whether those stars held the five deities of the cultivation diagram; now that he could not fly up, he had no choice but to give it up.
He left his consciousness within the Five Luminaries treasury and urged the Mystic Body Three-Cinnabar Art, and at its urging wonderful changes arose at once in the Five Luminaries treasury: one orange-red star abruptly began to tremble, and then a fiery red light shot straight from that star with a hum, landing upon Shen Mu's consciousness. Shen Mu immediately felt his consciousness filled with a blazing, fire-like energy, and that energy was actually reshaping the structure of his consciousness, giving his consciousness bodily form!
Under the direction of the flames his consciousness grew legs, grew arms, grew a head; in but a brief moment the consciousness fused with that strange energy and became a peculiar being with a human face, an ox body, and two feet! Shen Mu stared.
Looking down, he saw that his body was a great crimson ox, with an ox tail growing behind its rump, while the front was bare, with only a tuft of long hair at the tip of the tail. Shen Mu flicked the ox tail, and it lashed the plump ox buttocks, stinging fiercely.
His two legs were ox legs: the thighs mighty and powerful, thick as an elephant's, the shins very thin, and the soles were hooves.
Not only that — the light shot from the Fire Luminary star was still gathering, and at the soles of his feet it formed two fire dragons, fangs and claws bared! A Fire God!
Shen Mu's heart jumped. He had seen similar statues in the temples of Crimson Dragon City; the people of the Wasteland worshipped statues of this form as the Fire God. Yet the energy that poured from the Fire Luminary star was not strong; the body condensed upon his consciousness was only a faint, insubstantial shadow. "Is this the Fire Luminary treasury within the Five Luminaries treasury?
Then the other luminaries. .
. " Scarcely had the thought crossed Shen Mu's mind when another star, sky-blue, of a sudden began to tremble as well, and a water-blue light shot down from that star, landing with a hum upon his "body"! At the same moment the other three stars, each of a different hue, trembled in turn, each shooting down a ray of light that fell upon him one after another.
Shen Mu grunted. The Fire God form instantly began to collapse and crumble, while other forms began to grow; but the energies shot from these five stars were wholly different in nature — not merely different, but mutually opposed, mutually suppressing; they clashed within his consciousness, collided, and annihilated one another! Boom!
A violent explosion rang out.
Shen Mu's consciousness within the Five Luminaries treasury was extinguished in the blast; his eyes went black, and he fell senseless. When he woke he found himself lying on a bed, Xue Hu'er pressing a warm damp towel to his forehead, while his head ached as though it were a watermelon dropped on the ground, ready to split into four or five pieces.