Qin Mu's heart shuddered. "Carrying a stone idol—does that mean carrying a god on your back?"
"To walk bearing a god is a burden beyond measure," said the Blind One calmly. "All those years ago, when Grandma Si went out to save you, Old Ma carried a stone idol on his back and took her to the riverbank. That was a short stretch of road, yet even with Old Ma's strength, it nearly broke him."
Qin Mu's scalp prickled. Were the village stone idols truly so heavy? Then who had carved them? What god had been chiseled into them, and why should they grow so heavy once shaped in that god's image? When he was a child he had climbed onto them to relieve himself. Would that not draw the god's wrath?
"Rest easy—the god who had these idols carved is long dead. Mu'er, I showed you the stone idol to train your eyes. What you must look upon is not a common statue, but the idol a god made of another god!"
The Blind One's voice rang out like thunder, setting Qin Mu's ears humming. He shouted toward a bamboo basket beside the idol: "Mu'er, the Nine-Layer Heaven Eye Art opens the spirit eye, and since it is a spirit eye, it must see a god! Use your eyes to see the god—its power, bearing, aura, countenance, its very godhead!"
"See a god? See the god within the stone idol?"
"Let your primal qi enter your eyes and open the first layer of heaven of your mortal fleshly eyes!"
The Blind One's bamboo staff tapped his heart, this time with uncanny precision. In an instant Qin Mu felt his primal qi surge mightily and rush toward his eyes!
Training the eyes was extremely dangerous. His primal qi had already begun tempering his body, burning away its impurities and excess fat—but the eyes were the hardest part to refine, practically a forbidden zone, and the least mistake could blind a man. He had once asked the Village Chief how eyes were trained, but the Chief only warned him never to attempt tempering his eyes lightly.
Yet the Blind One now drove his primal qi at his eyes with violent, overbearing force that defied all reason. A piercing pain shot through his gaze as the qi thundered into both eyes. His primal qi was massive and deep, but compressed under the Blind One's terrifying cultivation it had been squeezed into something exquisitely fine.
How large were the eyes, after all? Yet in that instant Qin Mu felt his eyes swell to an impossibility vast as heaven itself! His primal qi was like a dragon, a great long dragon coiling into eyes vast as heaven; then it burst forth, surging skyward like a pillar propping up heaven and earth, and a rolling flood of qi streamed across the dome, weaving strange patterns that interlaced into a net like the ordering of the Way, filling all the sky.
The pain vanished, replaced by a comfort beyond compare.
"Mu'er, remember the pattern in the sky. That is the first layer of heaven of the Nine-Layer Heaven Eye Art—the Shenxiao Celestial Array Pattern." The Blind One's voice came from beyond the heavens, distant and high.
Qin Mu hastened to memorize it. Driven by the Blind One, his qi laid out the array pattern within his eyes, and he could see the flow of its structure, its every detail—yet it was so dizzyingly complex that mastering it took time. The Blind One drove it again and again until Qin Mu's qi was nearly spent, when he finally lifted the staff.
"How much have you memorized?"
"Six or seven tenths."
The Blind One looked satisfied. "To learn six or seven tenths in so short a time is no small feat. Rest and recover." Qin Mu ran off, driving the Supreme Body Three-Dan Art to restore his qi. When his cultivation reached its peak again, the Blind One said, "Drive the array pattern I taught you, then look at the stone idol and see if it differs from before."
Qin Mu sent his qi into his eyes and built the incomplete pattern. That coolness that saw through everything returned. He raised his eyes to the dragon-headed elder idol—and his spirit trembled. The idol that had seemed so ordinary now blazed with dazzling color, as if it had come alive, transformed into a towering deity! He even saw slender threads of light bursting about it, lending it a sacred, august mien. And in that instant his heart was crushed beneath the idol.
In his eyes it was no longer stone, but a living god whose godhead, countenance, aura, bearing, and power crushed his heart—then threatened to crush his body, forcing his knees to bend in worship.
"Keep looking. Do not close your eyes, and do not kneel." The Blind One said coldly: "As a boy you climbed that idol to void yourself. If you dared then, why kneel now? Mu'er, the Nine-Layer Heaven Eye Art is not only about opening the eyes; it is about opening your heart, so you may face the strength and peril of this world directly. A martial artist's power lies not only in his forms but above all in the strength of his heart. If your heart loses to a pile of broken stone, no might of arms will avail you."
He stamped his staff. "Stand against the idol and hold firm, and your heart too will grow strong! To grow strong of body, first grow strong of heart—be your own god, and fear nothing!"
Sweat streamed down Qin Mu's brow as he fought the urge to kneel. The idol's pressure was simply too great to resist. The Blind One spoke of fearing nothing, but he could not manage it. Without open eyes, the idol was a common statue, and one could crawl upon it and relieve oneself without a thought. With open eyes, it was a deity—and any act, even gazing upon it, was blasphemy.
The Blind One said: "It is easy to break the god in a temple, but hard to break the god in one's heart. Do you know who said those words?" Qin Mu, overawed, could not answer.
"The man who uttered such seeming treason is the State Preceptor of Yankang, that kingdom beyond the Great Ruins—the one hailed as foremost beneath the gods!" The Blind One drew himself up, magnificent. "Mu'er, every god within your heart is a strange god, a false god! Break them, and only then can you raise your own idol! Let alone a stone idol—even if a true god stood before you, you must never kneel!"
He planted his staff, undid his belt, and laughed: "Not only must you not kneel—you must piss upon it!"
"Piss on it?" Qin Mu stood dumbfounded. "Piss on a god?"
The Blind One aimed a stream at the idol, laughing: "Yes! As a boy you pissed on it a hundred times. Do you not dare now?"
Qin Mu gritted his teeth, undid his belt, and let loose upon the stone idol. That act was no small matter—even as the deity in his eyes stayed sacred and oppressive, the suffocating urge to kneel flew away without a trace! The old man and the boy "looked" at each other and burst into merry laughter.
The Village Chief, sunning himself on the doorstep, turned and shook his head: "The Blind One is a strange genius of disorder, breaking Mu'er's inner god by such a device. Any other man would never have conceived it—yet Mu'er, rash lad, followed and pissed along with him. By having Mu'er piss upon the idol, he broke the god in Mu'er's heart and the god in his own: that 'god' who gouged out his eyes... The God of the Spear has returned."
He knew why. The staff in the Blind One's hand was no bamboo cane, but a spear. When the Blind One first walked into the Village of Broken Elders, both eyes were ruined, his body covered in wounds, so pitiful he looked a filthy beggar. Yet his steps were steady, and the staff in his hand steady too. He gave the Chief the feeling of a furious dragon sweeping the eight directions into a tiny village, his bearing a pillar holding up the heavens.
The only man under heaven with such spear skill and bearing was the God of the Spear! But that god's greatest strength was not his spear—it was his eyes, a pair of spirit eyes that could pierce every flaw in any form.
And now the Blind One had passed that spirit eye on to Qin Mu.
To train the spear, first train the eyes; to train the eyes, first train the heart!
The Blind One's eyes were spirit eyes, and the keener the eyes, the more truly one sees, and the more truly one sees, the more one glimpses the Great Terror.