Chapter 412 — Soul and Spirit as the Guide

"They can be put back. It's only that some of the optic nerves have withered. I must first treat you for a few days, Grandpa Blind. With luck, medicine can stir those nerves back to life..."

Shen Mu looked up and smiled. "Set your heart at ease, Grandpa Blind. My medical skill may not match Grandpa Alchemist's, but I am at least second best under heaven."

He thought a while, then prepared his ingredients and began refining medicine for the Blind Elder. The nerve clusters of the eye are more intricate even than the heart, and as fragile as the brain; Shen Mu had no choice but to proceed with caution, striving to make every medicine utterly free of impurity, utterly free of side effects, its potency gentle and yet able to rouse the nerve clusters to life.

For him, this too was a tremendous test.

Shen Mu devised several means of boosting the activity of the ocular nerve clusters. Besides oral doses and topical applications, he built a small contraption to cover the eyes, containing a decoction that heated itself and turned to steam, moistening the Blind Elder's eye sockets.

Beyond that, repeatedly refined medicinal liquid was injected through hollow silver needles into the half-dead muscles around the old man's eyes — attacking the problem from every angle at once.

After days of such treatment, the Blind Elder felt both sockets burning, as though countless fine tentacles were about to sprout inside them. Only then did Shen Mu set to work, joining the nerves of the two eyes. Then he bound the old man's head with silk ribbons holding crushed spirit pills, covering his eyes.

"Grandpa Blind, leave the ribbons on until the muscles and nerves of your eyes have healed completely."

After giving his instructions, Shen Mu called over a tree demon and bade it change the Blind Elder's medicine on time. The tree demon nodded and nodded, took root before the Blind Elder, and waited for the hour of the next dressing.

Shen Mu let out a breath and checked the dragon lair. To himself he thought, "If you pieced together all these body parts of Xing'an's, you could assemble the body of a god. A pity we don't know what strange art Xing'an practices. He must still be keeping his own body, or at least his primordial spirit, or he could never have survived. Odd — what exactly are the parts left over from his original body?"

In their battles with Xing'an, that dreadful being had swapped out his own head, and his brain with it; his divine blood, his heart, his legs and feet, every part of him had been exchanged.

More dreadful still, he possessed different primordial spirits. It seemed that even his primordial spirit could be swapped!

When he fought Yu Zhaoqing, he had used his own primordial spirit; different primordial spirits assailed Yu Zhaoqing and dealt him grievous wounds.

Some part of his original body must still remain, never swapped away. His life must be lodged in that part; every other piece of him could be cast off, but that one part could not be.

That place was his life gate!

Only by destroying his life gate could he be slain!

"Every part of him, from head to toe, has been exchanged — but his soul and spirit he could never exchange."

Shen Mu's eyes lit up. He sought out Granny Zhu, and the two of them studied the matter. Granny Zhu's understanding of soul and spirit ran deeper than Shen Mu's, and she said, "Soul and spirit divide into soul and spirit. The soul is threefold: the heavenly soul at the brow, the earthly soul at the tailbone, the living soul at the navel. The seven spirits are the Corpse Hound at the crown, the Hidden Arrow at the brow chakra, the Sparrow's Shade at the Adam's apple, the Thief-Swallower at the heart, the Non-Poison at the navel, the Filth-Remover at the perineum, and the Stinking Lung in the pulmonary chamber. By rights, if those places are swapped out, his soul and spirit can no longer be whole — and yet his soul and spirit are plainly whole."

Shen Mu racked his brains. By Granny Zhu's reasoning, Xing'an's head, dantian, spine, neck, lungs, heart, and bowels would all have to be preserved — otherwise he would have to lodge his soul and spirit parasitically in whatever body he had seized.

And yet the Blind Elder and the others had joined hands to destroy Xing'an's heart, to flatten his skull, even to knock his spine loose from his body, and his soul and spirit had taken no great hurt from it; he could still mend his flesh.

"Which means that the head, dantian, spine, neck, lungs, heart, and bowels of Xing'an's original body are all still there. His soul and spirit remain in that original body, and only lodge in the bodies he steals when he has need of them! Then that original body of his must be hidden in..."

He and Granny Zhu looked at each other and blinked in unison. Xing'an's box!

The original body in which Xing'an kept his soul and spirit must be hidden inside that box.

The Butcher had split that box open — whether he had also slain Xing'an's original body, no one could say.

"So he does have a weakness after all."

Shen Mu steadied himself and thought, "Even if Grandpa Butcher cannot kill him, we need only see whether he turns up next time still carrying a box. That will prove whether my guess is right!"

Granny Zhu nodded. "If he appears again with that box on his back, it means his original body is hidden inside, and he is not invincible! Killing him will be far easier then!"