Chapter 532 — The Braided Girl and the Shadow Boy

The braided girl fought on up the altar, speaking rapidly. "Father says that in many respects your body already rivals those young divine ability users with the makings of true gods—your palms, your heart, your dantian, your legs, your eyes have all reached extremely high attainments. But your hands are just hands, your legs just legs, your heart just a heart, your dantian just a dantian. Taken separately, the attainments are very high, but joined together in your body, your body has not unified them. So you have not reached the makings of a true god, and compared with a young true god, you come up somewhat short."

Even as she spoke, she had killed several more, ferocious beyond measure, pressing step by step toward the top of the altar.

The other divine ability users, heartened by her breaking the formation, fought like mad toward the top of the altar as well. But more demons poured in, blocking them and beating back their charge.

Shen Mu took the form of the Star Lord of Zhen, sweeping the Gate of Heaven's Mandate before him. The demons struck by the gate lost their souls at once and fell in droves.

He looked around and nodded to himself. The braided girl was right—the divine ability users of the Taihuang Heaven did possess advantages the divine ability users of Jingping lacked.

Their divine abilities were not especially refined, yet their power was greater and grander; their moves could not match Jingping's in variation, yet because their bodies were mighty, the power of those moves grew mightier still.

This must be the work of their cultivation methods.

Even the powerful ones—the Cook, the Silent Artisan, the Lame Elder, Granny Zhu, the Blind Elder—each had their own strengths, having cultivated some single aspect to the divine realm, but none could reach the divine realm in every aspect.

Even a freak like the Imperial Teacher of Jingping, a sage who appeared once in five hundred years, could not reach the divine realm in every aspect.

Yet the divine ability users of the Taihuang Heaven had higher-grade cultivation methods; every aspect of their bodies was tempered and developed in full, and so their fighting strength was higher than Jingping's as well!

"No wonder the divine ability users and the demon race of the Taihuang Heaven are so strong!"

Suddenly he felt as though the clouds had parted and the sun had broken through. He had come on this journey to find a way to defeat the First Ancestor Human Emperor, and now he saw a glimmer of dawn.

"But your mana is powerful and your divine abilities refined, so even with all these shortcomings, you can still reign on the battlefield. In all the Taihuang Heaven, those who can surpass you at the same realm are few."

The braided girl shouted battle cries as she fought, and in the midst of it all went on relaying her father's assessment of Shen Mu. "Your cultivation method is too scattered. You temper the eyes for the eyes, the hands for the hands, the heart for the heart—each in isolation. If you could unify every aspect of your body—tempering the flesh, the mana, the primordial spirit, and the divine abilities all at once—then you would rise to terrifying new heights! But precisely because your method is so scattered, unifying it all would be unimaginably difficult."

Shen Mu let out a turbid breath. What the braided girl said was her father's assessment of him; she could not possibly have such insight herself. Yet she had indeed put her finger on his shortcomings—or rather, on the shortcomings of all Jingping.

In recent years the divine ability users of Jingping had reached attainments in certain aspects that were enough to make them the envy of the world, yet they had never unified those attainments; their achievements in cultivation methods were still unsystematic.

This was because they were all descendants of people who had fled here twenty thousand years ago; their inheritance of cultivation methods had a massive gap. Later generations cultivated diligently and sages delved into divine abilities, but they could never break through the shackles of their methods.

Just then they finally fought their way to the top of the altar. Hundreds of divine ability users held off the demons attacking from below, while the rest surrounded the demon commander.

"A pack of clay chickens and earthen dogs!"

The demon commander laughed aloud, his primordial spirit standing behind him and radiating a towering aura. His four heads swept their gaze around, and the great banners on his back flew up with a whoosh. He sneered, "Killing you lot is easier than turning my hand!"

The long-braided girl and the others looked grim. The demon commander's fighting strength was extremely high; even Shen Mu dared not take his attacks head-on. A single move might well take one of their lives.

"It seems Jingping's next round of reform should begin with cultivation methods..."

Beside the braided girl, Shen Mu mused, then took a large jade eye from his Taotie Pouch and fiddled with the back of it.

"Do you think I could build a bridge connecting Jingping and your Taihuang Heaven?"

Shen Mu asked. "I want the divine ability users of Jingping to come here and temper themselves, to broaden their horizons."

The braided girl was frantic, cold sweat streaming down her forehead. "Why do you have so many questions? Stop asking! The enemy is right in front of us—if we don't kill him..."

A beam of light burst from the jade eye. The demon commander leaped high, then suddenly split in two in midair.

Shen Mu shut off the jade eye, took out a great pile of calculating tools, and began rattling through computations. He took out stack after stack of thick paper, crouched on the ground, and kept jotting down numbers and symbols. Then he took out a pile of measuring instruments and drew on the paper, all without raising his head. "I want to build a bridge that can connect the two worlds, but it requires an enormous amount of calculation. Do any of you have masters of arithmetic? I think that if we can maintain an energy balance between the two worlds, it could be done... What? Why are you all looking at me so strangely?"