Chapter 99 — The Way of the Sage

Shen Mu came walking over, splendid in bearing; as the saying goes, clothes make the man and gold adorns the Buddha, and this robe fit him perfectly, finer by far than that beast-hide garment he had worn. Incense Master Qu laughed.

"The young master's craft is superb — even I am tempted to keep you in the cloth shop as a tailor. " Shen Mu laughed.

"This is the Granny's handiwork; I only sell what I have just learned.

" Incense Master Qu laughed. "Young master, though this cloth turns blade and spear aside, it will not stop weapons such as needles and thread.

Pray be careful.

" Shen Mu nodded and thanked him for his kindness. Incense Master Qu clapped his hands and summoned a shop boy, to whom he murmured a few words. The boy fetched a money pouch and handed it to Shen Mu.

Incense Master Qu laughed. "Young master, the coin in this pouch is not much, but it is a token of this subordinate's heart.

" Shen Mu took only a handful from the pouch — some hundred coins or so — and laughed. "I have already taken the treasure that guards your shop; my heart is content and satisfied. Take the rest of the money back.

" Incense Master Qu assented, saying, "As they say, rouge goes to the beauty and a good sword to the hero.

These Dragon Fang Shears have long been enshrined here with me and seldom used. The young master cuts cloth so masterfully — why not keep them? " Shen Mu hastily declined, and Incense Master Qu had no choice but to let the matter drop.

Feng Xiuyun escorted Shen Mu back to the inn, then took her leave as well.

"Young master, tomorrow the sluice gates open at the wharf and the merchant caravan will depart Mishui Pass. Be sure to keep with the caravan — these days are truly far from peaceful. " Shen Mu thanked her.

When night fell, Snow Fox lit the oil lamp, and Shen Mu raised his palm in the candlelight. A thread end on the glove poked out like a nimble snake, then slowly thickened, and before long he could make out the characters of the Great Nurturing Dark Demon Scripture and pored over them.

The Great Nurturing Dark Demon Scripture was a canon by which one might become a god or a demon. When Shen Mu set out, Granny Zhu had given him this scroll, yet she had not taught him how to cultivate it; she left him to fathom it himself. "The Granny said the Great Nurturing Dark Demon Scripture was first brought down from heaven by a sage who meant to use this art to teach and transform all living beings; but the art was all too easy to practice awry, and so it came to be called the Heavenly Demon Scripture.

" Shen Mu examined the general principles of the Great Nurturing Dark Demon Scripture. This demonic canon opened its general principles with words to shake the deaf and enlighten the blind.

"The way of the sage is nothing other than what the common people use in their daily lives; whatever differs from this is heresy. To act as one's nature moves one, following nature purely and freely — that is what is called the Way.

"① Shen Mu was startled. What these words meant was this: any principle that cannot be of use to the common people — whether the way of gods, the way of demons, or the way of buddhas — is heresy!

Only what can serve the common people in their daily lives is the true Way.

And what is the true Way?

To act as one's nature moves one, to let things follow their own course.

To open so ferociously — no wonder men called it a demonic canon!

This was the homely song of the village green, while the ways of gods and buddhas were the lofty strains of high art.

Yet Shen Mu felt there was no small sense in the general principles of the Great Nurturing Dark Demon Scripture — only that they were indeed easy to misread. The arts recorded in the Great Nurturing Dark Demon Scripture were immensely varied: strange powers and wondrous feats beyond counting, conceived as no one else had conceived them, fantastic in a thousand ways, until Shen Mu's eyes blurred and his jaw hung slack.

But when Shen Mu drew the glove out into a single thread and read it from beginning to end, his brow knit deeper and deeper — this Great Nurturing Dark Demon Scripture contained not one art that ran through the whole of it! Cultivation arts are divided into root art and method.

Shen Mu's Mystic Body Three Elixir Art, for instance, is a root art, the inner driving force; methods, then, are the Butcher's Blade Art, the Heaven-Stealing Leg Art, the Eight Thunderclap Formulas, and the like — the ways by which the power of a root art is brought forth. For a method to unleash its full power, it must have a matching root art. Take the Eight Thunderclap Formulas: only with the Great Vehicle Thunderclap Sutra can their full might be drawn out.

Though the Great Nurturing Dark Demon Scripture held many root arts and methods, there was not one root art capable of commanding all the methods — and so it could never deserve the name of a demonic canon that makes gods and demons!

"The Great Nurturing Dark Demon Scripture is incomplete!

" Shen Mu grasped the crux at once. For all its all-embracing scope, the scripture lacked a unifying root art.

There were too many arts and powers within it; each was fine, each was formidable, but mastering any one of them consumed enormous effort, and so it was impossible to perfect the whole of the Great Nurturing Dark Demon Scripture.

In the scripture the kinds of root art and method ran to a thousand, and almost every method answered to a root art of its own. No single root art could marshal and command them all. There was only one explanation: the Great Nurturing Dark Demon Scripture was incomplete. "But the Great Nurturing Dark Demon Scripture cannot be incomplete.

The Dark Demon Cult treasures this art above all — a canon that upholds their whole sect. There must be some art that can unify all these arts and powers.

Otherwise the Dark Demon Cult would never have spent forty years hunting the Granny.

. . " Shen Mu's heart stirred. He read the Great Nurturing Dark Demon Scripture through again from first to last, and still saw no thread to follow.

Then he searched it from back to front, and again found nothing. "Where is the secret of the Great Nurturing Dark Demon Scripture?

Perhaps even the Granny never discovered its unifying art. " Shen Mu sank into thought.

Among the nine elders of Yincan Village, Granny Zhu's cultivation was the shallowest; likely she too had failed to marshal the scripture's all-embracing arts into one. She must have chosen to practice only a few of them, lest practicing too many should squander her time and strength to no purpose.

For one person in a single lifetime to learn all the thousand-odd root arts and methods in the scripture and bring each to mastery was all but impossible. "Could it be in that jade box sealed by the patriarchs of past generations?

" Shen Mu rummaged through his bundle and found the jade box. Granny Zhu had tucked this in as well.

He tried to open it, but the box bore many talisman seals, and Granny Zhu, when she ran riot through Jianglong City, had said these talismans were the seals of the Dark Demon Cult's successive leaders.

Shen Mu pinched one talisman and peeled it gently away — and it came off in his fingers with the greatest ease. He stared for a moment, turned the talisman over, and found a few words written on the back: "Fake. Hee hee. " "The Granny does love her jokes.

.

.

" Shen Mu shook his head, peeled off the other talismans, and opened the box.

There was nothing inside. "With no unifying art, who could ever master the Great Nurturing Dark Demon Scripture?

" His head ached at the thought.

He pondered a while, then said to himself, "My cultivation art is the Mystic Body Three Elixir Art; I already have a root art. Why seek a unifying method in the Dark Demon Scripture? Why not use the Three Elixir Art to command them all?