Chapter 23: Desecration and Blasphemy
Qin Mu’s heart shook violently. “Carrying a stone statue is like carrying a god on my back?”
The Blind Man said flatly, “Walking while carrying a god is immensely heavy. Back then, when Granny Si and the others went to save you, Old Man Ma carried a stone statue with Granny on his back to the riverbank. That short distance nearly broke even Old Man Ma’s strength.”
Qin Mu’s scalp tingled. Were the stone statues in this village really that heavy?
Then who carved these statues?
What gods were depicted on them? Why would carving them in their likeness make them so heavy?
When he was little, he had climbed onto the statues to relieve himself. Would the gods hold a grudge?
“Don’t worry. The god carved into these statues has long since died. Mu’er, when I show you the statues, I’m actually training your eyes. What I want you to see isn’t an ordinary stone statue—it’s a statue made by a god for a god!”
The Blind Man’s voice was thunderous, making Qin Mu’s eardrums ring. He shouted toward a bamboo basket beside the statue, “Mu’er, the Nine Heavens Eye-Opening Technique opens divine eyes. Since they are divine eyes, they must see gods! Use your eyes to see the god—see the god’s presence, the god’s rhythm, the god’s aura, the god’s form, the god’s divinity!”
Qin Mu’s mind trembled. “See the god? The god within the stone statue?”
“Let your primal energy enter your eyes and open the first heaven of your mortal, ordinary vision!”
The Blind Man’s bamboo staff lightly tapped Qin Mu’s chest, this time with uncanny precision. Qin Mu immediately felt his primal energy surge violently, rushing toward his eyes!
Training the eyes was extremely dangerous. Qin Mu’s primal energy had already begun tempering his body, refining impurities and excess fat, but the eyes were the hardest place to train—almost a forbidden zone. One misstep and he could go blind!
Qin Mu had once asked the Village Chief about training the eyes, but the Chief hadn’t said much, only warning him not to attempt eye tempering lightly.
Yet the Blind Man was forcing Qin Mu’s primal energy toward his eyes with a fierce, domineering momentum, defying all reason!
Qin Mu felt a piercing pain in both eyes as his primal energy surged into them. His primal energy reserves were immense, but under the Blind Man’s terrifying cultivation, they were compressed into an extremely fine stream.
How big were the eyes?
But at this moment, Qin Mu felt as if his eyes had become vast—vast as the sky!
His primal energy was like a dragon, a massive dragon entering eyes as vast as the sky. Then it suddenly erupted, shooting upward like a pillar that reached heaven and earth. The rolling primal energy spread across the sky, forming strange patterns on the celestial dome, weaving into a net like the laws of heaven, covering the heavens.
The earlier pain vanished abruptly, replaced by an unprecedented comfort.
“Mu’er, remember the patterns in the sky. That is the first heaven of the Nine Heavens Eye-Opening Technique—the Divine Firmament Heavenly Net Array Pattern.” The Blind Man’s voice came from beyond the sky, sounding distant and lofty.
Qin Mu quickly committed it to memory. His primal energy, driven by the Blind Man, formed the Divine Firmament Heavenly Net Array Pattern inside his eyes. He could clearly see the flow, structure, and details of these patterns, but the Heavenly Net Array Pattern was too intricate and complex to memorize in a short time.
The Blind Man drove his primal energy over and over again. After a long while, Qin Mu’s primal energy was nearly exhausted, and the Blind Man finally removed the bamboo staff from his chest.
“How much did you remember?” the Blind Man asked.
“Sixty to seventy percent.”
The Blind Man showed a hint of satisfaction. “To remember that much in such a short time is no small feat. Restore your primal energy.”
Qin Mu began to run, activating the “Overlord Body Three-Dantian Technique” to quickly recover his primal energy.
When his cultivation returned to its peak, the Blind Man said, “Now activate the Heavenly Net Array Pattern I taught you and look at the stone statue again. See if it’s any different from before.”
Qin Mu immediately channeled his primal energy into his eyes, constructing the Divine Firmament Heavenly Net Array Pattern. He had only learned sixty to seventy percent of the pattern, so it was incomplete, but as his primal energy spread through his eyes, that cool, penetrating comfort returned.
He looked up at the stone statue of the old man with the dragon head, and his mind shook. The statue that had once seemed so ordinary to him suddenly burst into dazzling color!
The statue seemed to come alive, transforming into a towering deity!
He even saw fine, radiant light bursting from around the statue, each ray highlighting its sacred and solemn presence!
His spirit was instantly crushed by the statue!
In his eyes, the statue was no longer stone—it was a living god!
The god’s divinity, form, aura, rhythm, and presence overwhelmed his spirit, then began to crush his body, making his knees want to buckle and kneel!
“Keep looking. Don’t close your eyes, and don’t kneel.”
The Blind Man said coldly, “When you were little, you climbed onto the statue to relieve yourself. If you dared do that then, why would you kneel now? Mu’er, the Nine Heavens Eye-Opening Technique isn’t just about opening your eyes—it’s also about opening your spirit, letting you face the strength and danger of the world head-on!”
“A martial artist’s strength isn’t just in the power of their techniques. The strength of their spirit is even more important! If your spirit is defeated by a pile of broken stones, then no matter how powerful your martial arts, you will achieve nothing!”
The Blind Man stamped his bamboo staff on the ground and shouted, “If you resist the statue, withstand its pressure, your spirit will grow! To make your strength strong, first make your spirit strong. Be your own god, fearless!”
Cold sweat poured down Qin Mu’s forehead as he desperately fought the urge to kneel. The pressure from the statue was too overwhelming to resist.
The Blind Man said to be fearless, but he simply couldn’t do it.
Not opening the eyes and opening them were two completely different things.
Without opening the eyes, the statue was just an ordinary stone—climbing on it to relieve himself didn’t matter. But with open eyes, the statue was a god. Any action, even just looking at this god, was blasphemy!
The Blind Man said, “It’s easy to break a god in a temple, but hard to break the god in your heart. Do you know who said that?”
Qin Mu, his spirit shaken by the statue, couldn’t answer.
“The one who spoke this seemingly rebellious words was none other than the current State Preceptor of the Yanguo Kingdom outside the Great Wasteland, known as the number one under the gods!”
The Blind Man stood tall and imposing, shouting, “Mu’er, the gods in your heart are all false gods, alien gods! Break them, and only then can you erect your own statue! Don’t just face a stone statue—even if a true god stood before you, you must never kneel!”
He set his bamboo staff aside, undid his belt, and laughed heartily: “Not only should you not kneel, you should piss on it!”
“Piss on it?”
Qin Mu was stunned. “Piss on a god?”
The Blind Man urinated on the stone statue, laughing, “That’s right, piss on it! When you were little, you pissed on it no less than a hundred times. Are you afraid now?”
Qin Mu gritted his teeth, undid his belt, and a stream of hot liquid shot out, splashing onto the statue.
This act was no small thing. In Qin Mu’s eyes, the statue was still sacred and solemn, full of pressure, but the crushing urge to kneel vanished without a trace!
The old man and the boy looked at each other and burst into laughter, joyful and carefree.
The Village Chief was sunbathing by the door. Hearing their laughter, he turned to look and couldn’t help shaking his head. “The Blind Man is a strange genius, using this method to break the god in Mu’er’s heart and strengthen his spirit. No one else would think of such an odd approach, but Mu’er actually went along with it and pissed too—bold as the sky itself. By making Mu’er piss on the statue, he’s not only breaking the god in Mu’er’s heart but also the god in his own—the ‘god’ who gouged out his eyes… The God of the Spear has returned.”
He knew why the Blind Man did this.
The bamboo staff in the Blind Man’s hand was not a staff—it was a spear.
Back then, when the Blind Man entered the Village of Wizened Elders, both his eyes were destroyed, his body grievously wounded, miserable as a beggar, covered in filth.
But the Blind Man’s steps were steady, and the bamboo staff in his hand was steady too.
When he entered the village, the Village Chief felt as if an enraged dragon had swept in from all directions, crashing into the small village. In the Chief’s eyes, the Blind Man’s bearing was like a pillar holding up the sky.
In all the world, only the God of the Spear possessed such spear techniques and such spirit!
But the Spear God’s greatest strength was not his spear—it was his eyes, a pair of divine eyes that could see through every flaw in any technique!
And now, the Blind Man had passed on those divine eyes to Qin Mu.
To train the spear, first train the eyes. To train the eyes, first train the heart!
The Blind Man’s eyes were divine eyes. The stronger the eyes, the more clearly they saw the truth. And the more clearly they saw the truth, the greater the terror they revealed.