Qin Mu ran at a lightning pace, his primal qi growing stronger with every step. Who knew how many li he had covered, yet the villagers kept pace; even the Blind One moved as over level ground.
Just as he burst into a stretch of forest, a pitch-black figure rose from the trees, roaring: "Little runt, die…"
It was the demon ape. Old Ma cast one glance at it, and the ape gave an involuntary shudder — territory forgotten, it turned and bolted, quailing as though death would come the next instant.
None of them paid it any mind. Qin Mu kept dashing on, and only when he returned to the Village of Broken Elders did he wake from that trance — finding himself caked in grime, whether black blood or greasy fat, he could not tell.
Grandma Si gave her orders: "Mu'er, wash in the river. Blind Man, go with him — mind you don't let a river monster drag him off."
Leaning on his bamboo staff, the Blind One followed Qin Mu to the bank. Qin Mu stripped naked at once and leapt into the water. The Blind One lightly tapped the river with his staff, and a great fish lurking near Qin Mu took fright, leaping clear across scores of zhang — a huge green carp more than two zhang long, its whiskers like eight tentacles.
As Qin Mu finished washing, his gaze fell on the rippling emerald river, and a surge of heroism rose in his chest, blazing like fire. His primal qi stirred, rolling up into his throat as though an immortal's treasure-house of melodies had been flung open, and a heavy howl burst from him. He howled long over the forest, and the river's surface rippled!
Even as the howl rang out, Qin Mu sprang from the water and ran — his feet treading the very surface of the river! The instant his foot fell on the current, the strength in his sole merged with the primal qi sunk into him; the two forces fused and exploded, bursting the water outward. Before it had fallen, his body surged a zhang ahead and the other foot struck in turn.
Tap, tap, tap, tap — a string of crisp footfalls, and he trod his way across more than two li upon the water.
His howl grew freer and freer, wild and unbound, like heavenly music; his stride ran open and unshackled, sprinting madly as if in purest play. In no time he crossed from this bank of the Surging River to the far one, then trod back all the way.
The Blind One stood at the bank, the wind stirring his white hair. He heard the howl from mid-river, nodded, and broke into a smile. All at once he sang: "The apes cry back and forth upon both banks, the wind rustles and my crotch grows cold! Mu'er, you're tearing up and down the river with your bare arse — don't you feel the chill?"
A startled cry came from mid-river, and Qin Mu went plop, toppling into the water.
After a little while he swam to the bank, blushing as he dried himself and dressed — that sudden enlightenment had carried him clean away, and he had quite forgotten he was wearing not a stitch as he sprang forth.
"Good thing Blind Grandpa can't see…"
Qin Mu straightened his clothes and looked up sharply. In the woods by the bank stood Old Ma, the Mute, the Deaf, and all the rest — even Grandma Si, and the Village Chief on a stretcher.
"Grandma, when did you all come?"
Grandma Si burst out laughing. "Mu'er, we've seen your backside more times than we can count. We heard your howl, so full of primal qi, and came to see."
The Village Chief coughed: "Mu'er, you were hunted by five martial artists of the Spirit Womb Realm, and you may have hidden injuries. Let the Herbalist examine you."
The Herbalist checked him carefully, then shook his head: "Nothing serious, only flesh wounds."
The Village Chief examined him too and nodded for him to go. At once the Butcher called him over to train in his knife art — dissatisfied that Qin Mu had taken more than five thousand strokes to beat Senior Brother Qu, and more so that he had finished the fellow with a sword.
"The Village Chief has found something?" The Herbalist went to the stretcher, his eyes on Qin Mu sparring with the Butcher, and asked low.
"His primal qi has advanced at a pace that terrifies me — faster than imagination. Just now I heard his howl: a sound only possible when primal qi and throat resonate together, and within it I caught the tone of gods and demons. He has not yet broken the Spirit Womb Barrier — even a martial artist of that realm could never achieve a god-and-demon resonance! Were I an ordinary man like him, reaching his level would take me twenty years."
Qin Mu had howled across the river without knowing it, yet without realizing he had blended into the cry that demonic sound he had heard in the canyon ruins. More curious still, all last night, while pondering that dark demonic sound, he had also been memorizing the divine sound of the ruins' goddesses — so his cry had absorbed that divine sound as well.
That was nothing to other ears, but the Village Chief heard it clear and true.
"God-and-demon resonance?" The Herbalist started: "How did he manage it? And to gain in a single night the power an ordinary man takes twenty years to build — could it truly be the Four-Spirit Blood?"
The Chief shook his head: "It may strengthen his body and primal qi, but it could never raise him so quickly."
The Herbalist mused: "Could Mu'er be a heaven-born genius, born already as material for cultivation?"
The Chief frowned: "If he were a genius, why would his body remain that of an ordinary man? A genius ought to be a spirit body. And a god-and-demon resonance — what genius could manage it?"
The Herbalist pressed: "That resonance in his howl — good or bad? And where did its sounds come from?"
"I do not know. From his howl I hear divine and demonic sounds warring most fiercely, but whether good or bad, or where they came from, I cannot say. I do not know!"
The Herbalist's head ached, and the Chief's ached too. It had been long since either ached over something he could not understand, but ever since they had taken in this boy who had drifted down from upstream, the mysteries had grown ever more numerous.
Night fell, and the village soon plunged into darkness. In the middle of the night, a faint demonic sound came unbidden into Qin Mu's mind, then a divine sound rose, the two striking at each other; before long the din grew louder and raucous.
That god-and-demon resonance gradually turned, within his mind, into darkness and light locked in terrible slaughter. Qin Mu felt he had no body at all, that he was but a soul adrift above the strife, staring dully at the battle below.
After a while he made out what they truly were. Within the darkness were countless gods and demons surging toward the light like a tide, and the "demonic sound" was no mere sound — it was the battle-cry of hundreds of millions of demons! And the light was the same, a sea of deities in golden war-armor, locked in slaughter with them! He stood so high that all those gods and demons seemed tiny droplets of water — that was why he had first taken them for a war of light and dark — and now he was shaken and terrified!
Qin Mu woke with a start, drenched in sweat, his head filled with that divine and demonic sound until his skull seemed about to split. The jade pendant at his chest floated gently up, drifted to his brow, and settled there; a cool stream washed over him, and the clamor in his mind vanished at once.
He sat up abruptly, panting hard, his heart full of doubt. After a while he went outside and, by the faint glow the village's stone statues gave off, studied his pendant.
Beyond the village lay darkness, and the pendant gave off a glow of its own. Qin Mu stared at it in a daze, unable to tear his eyes from that little piece of jade.
Behind him, unknown to Qin Mu, Grandma Si had come out and happened to see this scene. Her heart ached: "We may have raised him, but Mu'er has never truly belonged to our village. He is but a child we brought up, and in the end he must leave…"
Her spirit rallied: "The world beyond is far more perilous than the Great Ruins! He has not yet the strength to face it!"