Chapter 315 — The Ancestral Secret Art

This was the first time Shen Mu had ever encountered so strange a thing as walking into the world of a painting. This way of the brush was not the same as the Deaf Old Man's. When the Deaf Old Man painted, he applied the painting to reality: he would paint wind and rain, thunder and lightning, then shake the painting open, and in the real world wind and rain, thunder and lightning would abruptly burst forth.

He would paint the eighteen hells, and the whole of the Imperial City of Tiantu would suddenly collapse and be transformed into the eighteen hells.

That was what it meant to act upon reality.

The painting Shen Mu had walked into worked the other way round: it made reality walk into the painting. Shen Mu had entered the world within the painting and become a part of it; yet once inside, he found that the painting was not flat at all — on the contrary, it was three-dimensional, possessed of vast space. "This is another way of the brush!

" Shen Mu said to himself, surveying his surroundings.

If the Deaf Old Man's painting was a way of letting his own brushstrokes invade reality, then this painting was a world turned inward.

If the two could be merged, it seemed the way of the brush might be raised to an inconceivable height.

Shen Mu mused: if he could achieve such a step — lift his brush and paint, and wind and rain, thunder and lightning would sweep across the battlefield and crash upon countless enemy soldiers; then let that wind and rain, thunder and lightning open an inner world and draw those soldiers into the painting; then sweep his brush and erase the painting he had made — it would be a single stroke sweeping away tens of thousands of troops! The spirit of a scholar, directing and commanding — there was no more to it than that! Shen Mu reined in his wandering thoughts.

His attainments in the way of the brush were far inferior to the Deaf Old Man's; the Deaf Old Man was a mountain so high it could not be climbed, a peak that made men crane their necks.

He felt he ought to tell the Deaf Old Man of this idea, and let that supreme existence in the way of the brush study the two ways and fuse them together. Then he himself could learn from the Deaf Old Man, and would surely master both ways of the brush more quickly. The Deaf Old Man was the more accomplished; let him do the research, and let Shen Mu learn from him — that would save a great deal of time for other matters, and the Deaf Old Man's way of the brush could reach an even higher realm.

He looked at the man in white.

This man in white ought to be a portrait of his father, Qin Hanzhen, yet within the painting he had come alive. When he had been the man in the tree, Shen Mu could not make out his bearing or his grace; but in the painting, Shen Mu could at last see something of his father's elegance.

The only pity was that this was not the true Qin Hanzhen, merely a man in a painting. There was no sound in the painting. The Qin Hanzhen in the painting could not open his mouth to speak; he could only make certain movements, write characters, paint pictures.

He was not the true Qin Hanzhen, but a self that Qin Hanzhen had painted, a man in a painting given life — just like the Painted Elder.

Shen Mu came to his side and saw that he was painting: picture after picture of guiding diagrams. Shen Mu was slightly startled: "The Mystic Body Three Elixirs Art! " That a man in a painting should paint was strange enough in itself; and what the man in the painting was painting was precisely the Mystic Body Three Elixirs Art that Shen Mu cultivated!

Of the Mystic Body Three Elixirs Art Shen Mu naturally had a great many insights.

It was by the Origin-Guiding Art of this very method that he had been initiated, awakening his spirit fetus, and thereafter he had gradually come into his own achievements.

But the Mystic Body Three Elixirs Art painted by the man in the painting differed somewhat from the one he had seen and cultivated.

The painting began from the first realm, the Origin-Guiding Art, and already the Origin-Guiding Art differed from the one Shen Mu cultivated — simpler, more concise. The Origin-Guiding Art of the Mystic Body Three Elixirs Art that the village headman had taught Shen Mu had already been pared to the utmost simplicity; it could be called the simplest method of laying foundations under heaven, the practice best suited to ordinary people.

And the Origin-Guiding Art painted by the man in the painting was simpler still — simple, yet not crude.

Shen Mu's present vision and understanding were far beyond what they had been in his childhood, and he understood the principle that the simpler the foundation, the harder the cultivation, and the greater the achievement. It was like painting on a blank sheet of paper: the less one paints at the foundation, the simpler it is, the more likely it is that what is painted later can be more exquisite and more refined.

If one scribbles and smears at random on the blank paper, then even with a divine brush it would be hard to write fine prose or paint a splendid picture upon such a foundation. The Origin-Guiding Art of the man in the painting was simple to an inconceivable degree.

Shen Mu tried driving his vital essence according to the Origin-Guiding Art in the painting.

At first it was somewhat sluggish, but as the vital essence circulated it grew ever more joyful and mighty, penetrating the four limbs, reaching the hundred bones, with a feeling of seizing the creative power of heaven and earth. "If there were such a guiding diagram, I fear it would be all the harder to break through the primal fetus wall.

" Shen Mu sighed. When the village headman had taught him the Mystic Body Three Elixirs Art, he must have altered it slightly, making the Origin-Guiding Art's assault on the primal fetus wall a little easier.

But which was better and which worse was still a matter of two opinions. After the alteration, breaking through the primal fetus wall was indeed somewhat easier, but in terms of foundation it was not so deep as the Origin-Guiding Art of the man in the painting.

And at that time, what mattered most to Shen Mu was breaking through the primal fetus wall. The man in the painting painted a second diagram. The second diagram of the Mystic Body Three Elixirs Art Shen Mu had seen in the canyon of the Disaster-Quelling Palace; what he painted differed little from the wall painting in that canyon, only in small details was it somewhat different.

Shen Mu tried circulating it, and at once felt that as the method turned, his spirit fetus had a sense of bearing heaven and touching earth, and his heart stirred.

The Mystic Body Three Elixirs Art he had learned in the Disaster-Quelling Palace had given him no such feeling. The spirit fetus was the realm of a martial artist; only upon reaching this step did one truly cross the threshold of cultivation.

The foundation was of the utmost importance, but so was the crossing of the threshold. By Shen Mu's present understanding, the primal fetus sacred treasury was the opening of the heaven and earth within the body; as one cultivated and one's attainment deepened, the primal fetus sacred treasury came to be divided into heaven and earth — the high became heaven, the sunken became earth — and the spirit fetus stood at the center, beneath its feet the spirit platform, breathing in and out the five qi, and the five qi were metal, wood, water, fire, and earth.

The spirit fetus trod the great earth, its body commanding the six harmonies, and the six harmonies were heaven, earth, east, south, west, and north. He had cultivated to the Six Harmonies realm, and such was his understanding of these sacred treasuries and realms.

As for the Seven Stars, Heaven-Man, Life and Death, and Spirit Bridge that came after, he did not understand them much, though he had some views of his own.

At the Six Harmonies realm one could basically refine a primal spirit.