Chapter 47 — A Third Guest Appears Unexpectedly in the Midst
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 1 of 3
Before them, a giant dragon coiled around the towering palace, ring after ring, its enormous head lifted high above the great hall, gazing toward them! It was a dragon skeleton—a colossal skeleton of bone and nothing more, and its teeth alone stood taller than Shen Mu!
Though the dragon had been dead for who knows how long, its fierce and extraordinary might was still plain to see; in life it must have been an exceedingly powerful being.
Shen Mu opened his Cloud-Soaring Heavenly Eye, and at once the skeleton before him seemed to come alive, divine radiance shooting into the heavens; in his eyes the dragon seemed to coil and glide. Though the dragon was plainly dead, its momentum and bearing made him feel as if it were still alive!
"Yongjiang Dragon Emperor—a true dragon. . .
" Looking at the dragon, Shen Mu's heart stirred as he remembered Grandpa Huo's fist art, the move Nine Dragons Commanding Wind and Thunder from the Eight Thunderclap Secrets.
In Nine Dragons Commanding Wind and Thunder, vital energy divided into nine layers of force: the first layer was Furious Dragon Charge, the second Twin Dragon Coil, and each layer's power carried one more dragon-force than the one before. Shen Mu had practiced boxing under Grandpa Huo since childhood and had trained this move who knows how many times, but he had never been able to grasp its essence. Only recently, as his cultivation had advanced by leaps and bounds, had the power of Nine Dragons Commanding Wind and Thunder soared.
Yet when he crossed blows with the young monk Chenghuai, he still came off the worse. Partly it was because he had not obtained the Thunderclap Mahayana Sutra of the Great Thunderclap Temple, but the greater reason was that his Nine Dragons fist-force merely resembled a dragon. To resemble a dragon without being a dragon—to have only the outward form and none of the reality—naturally it shattered at the first touch.
If his fist-force were a true dragon, then even without learning the Thunderclap Mahayana Sutra, his Nine Dragons Commanding Wind and Thunder would be the true transmission! For the martial principle of Nine Dragons Commanding Wind and Thunder was precisely to imitate a true dragon's mastery of wind and thunder: thunderbolts with world-shaking might, a divine dragon swooping out of the thunder to strike and fight.
If one could achieve that, learning the sutra or not made no difference!
"Nine Dragons Commanding Wind and Thunder, Nine Dragons Commanding Wind and Thunder.
. .
" Shen Mu studied the dragon skeleton bit by bit, his feet moving unconsciously.
His eyes held nothing but the true dragon's bones; he observed the dragon's form, examined its skeletal structure, studied its momentum, savored its rhythm, comprehended its vital breath, and meditated on its spirit. He grew more and more lost to himself, walking as he looked, all the while making strange motions with his arms and torso, unconsciously imitating the true dragon's every gesture. His vital energy, too, began without his knowing it to course through his body like a true dragon, again and again, enriching itself with ever more detail.
And in the divine treasury of his primal embryo, the spirit embryo was also moving in response to his movements, inhaling and exhaling vital energy, gradually undergoing a wondrous transformation. The vital energy it breathed out did not flow back into Shen Mu's body; instead it wandered over its own form and turned into a small dragon.
As more and more vital energy was breathed in and out, the small dragon slowly grew, eventually becoming taller than a man and coiling around the spirit embryo.