Chapter 731 — Possessed by the Martial Soul

At last Shen Mu led the others out through the Southern Heavenly Gate. The pressure lifted all at once, and everyone felt as though a great weight had been taken from their shoulders.

"Where does Senior Brother hail from?"

A man who looked the most human of them all stepped forward and asked, "I am Hu Bugui of the Three-Eyed God Clan. I have never seen you in the Bull-Fighting Realm, Senior Brother. Just now I saw you speaking with the Heavenly Master, so I did not dare come forward."

"Shen Mu. Shen Fengqing."

Shen Mu sized up this man of the Three-Eyed God Clan. His hands and feet were large, his shoulders broad; the muscle at his shoulder caps was bunched into knots, yet his upper arms were disproportionately thin. At the elbow, where the forearm began, the muscle swelled thick and powerful again, only to thin out once more at the wrist, where there was scarcely any flesh at all.

His waist was the same: a tiger's back and a wasp's waist, back and waist forming a triangle. His thighs were massively muscled, then narrowed at the hollow of the knee; the upper calf was thick, then tapered to nothing at the ankle.

He had trained his muscles into a terrifying capacity for explosion, quite unlike Shen Mu.

Shen Mu's build was well proportioned. Hu Bugui had forged his muscles into a single mass, so that the power of his body erupted in an instant, a sudden burst of frightening force.

Shen Mu's muscles, by contrast, had been forged into clean lines, gaining in resilience rather than in that exaggerated bulk. Every time he exerted force it was like bending a bow and drawing the arrow, storing power to its limit before releasing it in a single instant.

In terms of marshalling power, Hu Bugui was faster; his strikes would surely come like linked thunderbolts, countless blows in the span of a breath. In terms of sheer force, though, the power that Shen Mu's lined muscles released after storing it up would be somewhat greater, only his reactions were slower.

"I come from the Barren Ruins. This is the first time I have met any of you, senior brothers and sisters."

Shen Mu asked, puzzled, "Hu Bugui means 'why not return home.' Does your name have some story behind it, Senior Brother Hu?"

Hu Bugui walked on with the group. After a moment of silence he said, "My parents left the Bull-Fighting Realm and had me out there. They were trying to find a way to break through, to solve the affliction of our clansmen having no Divine Bridge, but they never succeeded. Later they wanted to come back, and found that they could not. Even if they returned, their hearts were no longer here. So they named me Hu Bugui."

He smiled. "'Why not go home?' When my parents gave me this name, they were really giving their own hearts a place to rest. The senior brothers and sisters of the Bull-Fighting Realm always laughed at me for it. But now they all call me Eldest Senior Brother."

Shen Mu nodded. He had noticed as much a moment ago: among these Life-and-Death Realm warriors, Hu Bugui's cultivation was the highest. Beneath the Southern Heavenly Gate, his body had stood taller than the rest.

Shen Mu had united everyone's spirit into a single wall to hold back the pressure of the Southern Heavenly Gate, and Hu Bugui had been the first to recover his body.

In the Bull-Fighting Realm, it did not matter if one started late, for in the end everyone would be trapped in the Life-and-Death Realm, just as in Jingping of old, where every divine-ability user was trapped at the Divine Bridge Realm, unable to break through.

That Hu Bugui could come from behind and become Eldest Senior Brother here spoke volumes about his talent and his diligence.

The people ahead had already entered a palace. The roads of the Bull-Fighting Heavenly Palace were strange indeed: they ran through one palace after another, and from those palaces led straight to the Jade Pool, the God-Slaying Terrace, the Jade Capital, and Lingxiao.

Shen Mu and Hu Bugui fell to the rear, Shen Mu asking about the methods of cultivating the Martial Soul.

Shen Mu knew very little about the Martial Soul. He had only heard from the old farmer that to cultivate the spirit through martial arts was the Martial Soul, and that when the Martial Soul entered the Dao it became the Martial Dao. How exactly the Martial Soul came to be, he had no idea.

"The Martial Soul is in fact the Martial Dao Primordial Spirit."

Hu Bugui hesitated, glanced around, and lowered his voice. "I cultivate the Martial Soul by methods from the outside. There has always been an unwritten rule in the Bull-Fighting Realm: it is strictly forbidden to learn the divine abilities and Daoist arts of the outside world. But I learned some of those arts while following my parents out there, and my understanding of the Primordial Spirit differs somewhat from that of the people here."

Shen Mu was deeply curious. "What is the difference between a Martial Dao Primordial Spirit and an ordinary one?"

"Do not awaken the Spirit Fetus; forge the Martial Soul first."

Hu Bugui said, "You do not awaken the Spirit Fetus. You temper your own soul until it is like steel, like iron. In boyhood you slay a fierce tiger with your bare hands, cut down a horned python, kill a flood dragon! Few youths in the Bull-Fighting Realm can pass such a trial. Many die young."

Shen Mu was startled. Even in his own boyhood he had never undergone such brutal training!

The elders of Hidden Maimed Village had trained him cruelly enough, but never to the point of staking his life on it. And here the people of the Bull-Fighting Realm sent their children to pit themselves against fierce tigers, horned pythons, and flood dragons. They truly did not treat a child's life as a life at all!

Suddenly a violent crashing came from the great hall ahead, like ten thousand thunderbolts galloping. It was the thunder-sound of a martial powerhouse's body in motion. Though he had not yet stepped inside, Shen Mu could already picture it: bodies of sinew forged by a thousand hammerings colliding in an instant, sweat scattering like rain!

Hu Bugui was used to this. Walking on, he continued, "Once you have tempered it to a certain point, the soul fuses with the body. The martial spirit is forged into flesh and blood and marrow; in motion it is like galloping thunder, at rest like frozen lightning. When a martial divine ability carries your own will and spirit, the Martial Soul has taken possession of the body. Only then do you break the wall of the Spirit Fetus. The Spirit Fetus serves as support, nourishing the body with vital essence. Because I lived outside with my parents, by the time I returned to the Bull-Fighting Realm my Spirit Fetus had already awakened, and forging the Martial Soul afterward was far harder. I suffered more than any of my fellow disciples."

He spoke lightly, as of a breeze and thin clouds, but the hardships involved were clearly immense, beyond an outsider's imagining.

Shen Mu thought it over. In his own cultivation he had once walked this same road; but once his Mystic Body Three Elixirs Art came to fruition, he broke through the Spirit Fetus Realm and did not continue along it.

Who would have thought that the Bull-Fighting Realm had truly followed this road to the end, forging the Martial Soul and carving out a path unlike any in the outside world.

"When a martial divine ability carries your own spirit and will, the Martial Soul has taken possession."