Whish— In the woods outside the Village of Broken Elders, Qin Mu struck out, and his qi surged from his arm like a dragon of fire, the air turning scorching as though set ablaze!
He moved his feet, his palm hammering down again and again. The air grew hotter and hotter, like a desert with ten suns hanging high. This was Old Ma's boxing, the fourth of the Eight Thunder Moves, Kuafu Chasing the Sun, Wind and Thunder Urgent.
All at once his footwork shifted, and his moves changed with them. Every stroke plunged onward like a river racing into the sea, for his qi had turned from a fire attribute into a water one. A water dragon of gathered vapor coiled about his arm, and between the linked moves swelled the boom of waves. Then, gripping the empty air, he turned the water vapor into a spear churning river and sea alike.
These past days he had been grinding away at driving the sword with qi. Yet still he had needed to watch the fire first, before his qi took on the fire attribute. But with drill after drill, that time had grown shorter and shorter. Now he no longer needed the furnace at all—the moment he thought of the flame within it, his qi turned scorching on its own.
The Butcher's Pig-Slaughtering Knife Art, being of the battle-technique school, had taught Qin Mu little for his art; the greatest gains came from Old Ma's Eight Thunder Moves and the Blind One's spear art.
So when he executed the fourth move now, it was as though a giant were striding; the palm center trembled, the air cracked open and burst apart—the might of qi! True, the fire-attribute Vermilion Bird qi could not bring out the full power of the Eight Thunder Moves; the qi that suited them best was the Green Dragon qi. Whereas the water-attribute Black Tortoise qi brought the Blind One's spear art to its fullest, most perfect fusion.
After a long while Qin Mu stopped, swallowed two Qi-Foundation Pills to make up the spent qi, and pondered the flaws in his handling of it. Before, a single pill had been enough to stuff him to madness. But ever since his Spirit Womb woke from its sleep, two pills no longer did him any great harm—they merely gorged him. "Can the demon ape eat the Qi-Foundation Pill? Probably not. Grandpa Herbalist said it holds four attributes, and to anyone but a Supreme Body it is poison. I'll brew a vat for the ape one day."
A thought of that great fellow who sparred with him stirred his heart. He had not seen the beast these past days, nor known how far it had carried the Supreme Body Three-Dan Art he taught it. He sprang up and set off toward its territory. He was still a youth; the village held only elders, and no friends. The demon ape had been his companion in blows—"friends for all the fighting"—and a few days apart left him missing it.
At the valley's mouth a figure rose from the forest—the ape itself, more stalwart still. It beat its chest in wild joy and signalled him onto its shoulder, then sprang like flying, bearing him into the depths.
This was the first time Qin Mu had entered the demon ape's den. Wild deer and wild horses were everywhere, and musk deer and foolish roe deer as well. At the valley's heart sprawled a crumbling ruin—a palace already collapsed halfway, before which stood a broken half-beast, half-human stone idol. Qin Mu opened the Shenxiao Heavenly Eye, and his heart shook.
This idol matched the stone idols of the Village of Broken Elders. Within the Heavenly Eye, its divine bearing was that of a beast god thrusting to the heavens—dreadful, ferocious, its aura towering like a storm. No doubt the ape relied on it every night to ward off the invading dark. "Such a bearing—was this image too carved by a god for a god?"
Qin Mu leapt down. A foolish roe deer trotted up, sniffed at his hem, and chewed it as though food. The ape pinched it up, set it carefully aside, then waved for him to follow. This ape ruled the valley and protected it, guarding these animals and showing its fangs only to invaders.
Qin Mu followed it into the crumbling palace and knitted his brows; the place stank of beasts, for the valley's creatures of a night slipped in too, to flee the darkness.
"Little runt, look!" The demon ape pointed at a wall. On the palace walls ran broken murals, faded and mottled, only a few still passably whole. They showed men cultivating, and arrows within their bodies marked the course their qi took.
He looked them over a few times, then his heart skipped a beat—he saw the path of qi guidance in the Supreme Body Three-Dan Art! The ape must have cultivated it, felt it matched the mural's pattern, and so led him here!
Yet Qin Mu soon found something amiss. The first mural was indeed the guidance chart of the Three-Dan Art, but the second was different—still following the same path, yet more complex. Its path of qi guidance ran into the Spirit Womb Divine Treasury at the brow!
Once the qi entered the treasury, the third mural took over: the path of qi within it. The qi was not directly breathed in and out by the Spirit Womb; rather, beneath its feet it knit a wondrous array pattern of qi, exceedingly complex, surpassing the Shenxiao Celestial Array Pattern the Blind One had taught him. Qin Mu examined it, committed it to memory, and marshaled his own qi to imitate it.
The moment he finished the array pattern, he felt a mysterious binding connect him to his Spirit Womb! He breathed, and it breathed with him. He moved, and it made the selfsame motion. He drove the Supreme Body Three-Dan Art, and his Spirit Womb drove it too!
He stood dumbstruck a moment, then blazed with joy: "If so, wouldn't it be like two of me cultivating together?" But he at once found that when his Spirit Womb drove the art, it did not add to his cultivation—it ground the qi down. His qi ran through the array pattern, absorbed the golden light within the sea of gold, entered his Spirit Womb's body, and was breathed out once fused with that light, tougher and purer. Before, his Spirit Womb had absorbed golden light faintly, yet never with such swiftness.
"Could this be the Spirit Womb stage art of the Supreme Body Three-Dan Art?" His heart pounded. The Village Chief had said even he did not know the later arts of the Supreme Body. Yet here was the Spirit Womb stage art!
He looked at the fourth mural and knitted his brows. Only half remained; it should have recorded the Five Elements stage art. Some claw marks scarred it. The fifth was badly broken too, and the sixth had come off for the greater part.
"This palace has crumbled so. Who knows how much longer its murals can hold." He sighed, then committed the second and third murals to memory and ran them through his head a few times more. Even if destroyed, they would live on in him, to be taught to the next "Supreme Body"!
Of the walls' murals, whole ones were few indeed. Besides the Three-Dan Art, one other was fairly complete: a map. Qin Mu studied it and found the position of the Yong River, his heart stirring: "Could this be a map of the Great Ruins?" He searched up the Yong bit by bit until at last he found the Village of Broken Elders.
"Hm? Why is a dragon drawn here?" His gaze fell upon the stretch some hundred li upstream. There, upon the Yong River, a dragon had actually been drawn! "The Dragon King of the Yong River!" His heart shook. Beside it stood four characters of that name, which he did not understand.
This map held more than one strange place. Some thirty li east of the village was drawn a well, and beside it: Dragon King of the Sky Well. There was yet another well, bearing the words Dragon King of the Sea Eye. And further off, a ship with a sun painted upon it—the Sun Ship—near a place called the Sun Well; while far away rode another vessel with a moon, the Moon Ship, beside a strange place called the Moon Well.
His gaze swept on, but did not find the ancient temple that held Wu Nu at the river's heart, nor the city of Xianglong a thousand li downstream. He searched a little longer, and his heart skipped a beat—the gorge ruin he had once chanced upon while fleeing the darkness, yet the map marked it not as any ruin but as the Goddess Pass!
"It truly is a map of the Great Ruins before the Cataclysm."