The Divine Martial Stars

Wobbling like an old man, Li Mu finally picked up the book with both hands and turned a page. After he flipped through it, he felt a chill down his spine.

“This is truly the cultivation method of Somersault Cloud!”

Although he had not practiced it yet, given Li Mu’s quick wit in martial arts, he could basically ascertain that it was indeed a book on the technique of speeding across the sky after he skimmed through the pages. The method could enable him to travel at an incredible speed. He was unsure if it could really allow him to cover more than 108,000 miles with one somersault, but it would absolutely be a faster way to travel than using the Broadsword-commanding Skill that he invented… It was a cultivation method that outstripped the most advanced martial arts on that planet!

Indeed, it was an extremely powerful secret method.

When Li Mu finished reading, he was more appalled than ever.

“What on earth is going on?

“When I saw the stone plate that said Spiritual Fangcun Mountain, Crescent and Three Stars Cave, then the abandoned Taoist field and the halls named Arts Gate and Action Gate, I was repeatedly reminded of the lecture field of Master Puti in The Journey to the West. If that was merely my wild guess before, now it has been verified by the presence of the book on the secret technique called Somersault Cloud!

“Everything here is truly associated with that world depicted in the Journey to the West!

“Are Master Puti and Sun Wukong real characters?

“Is everything from the Journey to the West real?”

Li Mu felt his brain went dull.

Anyway, at least the secret method called Somersault Cloud was something that he could practice.

Covering 108,000 with just one somersault!

How fast that was!

Although it could be quite funny for a human being to do somersaults every time he traveled through the sky, it did not matter as long as he could move really fast. It was certainly the best method to make an escape. In that case, he would be able to travel between galaxies by dint of just a score of somersaults, wouldn’t he?

Li Mu quickly put that book into his storage space before diving into other books and bamboo slips on the shelf.

“Sea Inhale and Mountain Exhale Technique? It looks like a method about breathing…

“Authentic Chapters on Sword Techniques? Well, it’s illustrations of sword-using methods!

“Spear Illustrations? The author seemed really unwilling to give some thought to the title, didn’t he? Well, it’s a secret manual on spear techniques.

“Genuine Interpretation of the Universe? It seems to be… Oh, astrology!

“Maddening Cudgel Method… Well, it’s about combat techniques.”

As Li Mu looked through the books and bamboo slips on the shelf, he realized that those were all about cultivation methods and combat arts.

The latter was in the majority.

At the sight of those books, another issue suddenly occurred to Li Mu.

Most people attributed Sun Wukong’s invincible combat ability to his Somersault Cloud and Seventy-two Metamorphoses, but they all neglected one thing: even when he did not resort to the two marvelous skills, the Monkey King was still almost invincible whether it was a fight one-on-one or at close quarters. Even a hundred celestial soldiers in the heavens failed to block him. And the Huge Spirit, the devil Nezha, and the third son of the Dragon King proved to be no match for him in head-on battles, either. Perhaps the Third-eye God was the only one who could rival him.

That evidenced that the Monkey King did not only have marvelous secret skills but also top-level martial arts.

“Other than the amazing strength he was born with, all the abilities that the Monkey King had were acquired from his master, Master Puti. That’s to say, Master Puti’s combat ability was also formidable. All the manuals about combat and cultivation left here perhaps belonged to Master Puti. So, they can’t be ordinary books.” Li Mu combed through his thoughts and came up with a clear idea.

He put away all those books on martial arts.

Although he preferred the broadsword among all kinds of weapons, that did not mean he was not interested in studying and using other weapons.

He had to grasp the arts of all the weapons before becoming a thorough master of martial arts with outstanding broadsword-using methods.

“Didn’t the Monkey King go through the same period?”

He once attained tons of weapons in the secular world and found that he could use any of them. It was only because those were too light for him that he refused to take any. Later, when he went to the Dragon Palace, he also easily wielded the massive broadswords or axes there, but they were still too light. Only when he utilized with the Sea-stabilizing Rod as a cudgel did he find a weapon that suited him. But if the Monkey King had no knowledge of cudgel-using methods, even though he found the Sea-stabilizing Rod, what could he use it for?

Perhaps some of those books seemed useless for Li Mu, but he decided to put them in his collection all the same.

It would be a shame not to take them after he had paid such a huge price to get to the stone chamber.

Therefore, Li Mu swept more than 10 books and bamboo slips into his Storage Ring.

Afterward, he strode to the center of the hall, dropped to his knees on that pouf, and paid his obeisance to the bookshelf deferentially.

He felt obliged to express his gratitude after taking so many treasures.

The moment his forehead touched the floor in front of the pouf as he was kowtowing, a ripple suddenly shone on the stone floor, as if a pebble had just been thrown into a smooth lake. The ripple rapidly expanded across the length of the entire hall and stretched to the doors of the other rooms. Like a swelling bubble, it grew at a breakneck speed but then disappeared in a trice before Li Mu fully registered what was happening.

He thought his eyes were dazzled momentarily.

“What’s that?”

As he was still in a daze, all of a sudden, a dignified but very kind voice sounded in the stone chamber—

“Kneeling down to thank me permits you to be my disciple. Once you take me as your master, you voluntarily bear all the blessings and curses.”

The voice appeared to be ringing right beside his ears but also seemed to travel from the heavens far away. It was really odd.

Li Mu was sort of stupefied at that moment.

“What? What? What?

“I already took you as my master with a simple kowtow?

“Hold on a second, bro! I don’t even know if you are Master Puti or not!”

Li Mu found the whole thing… a bit unsettling.

He jumped to his feet and looked around. Not a shadow did he see, nor did he detect any trace of tactical deployments or the fluctuation of spiritual energy… “There can’t be a sound recorder concealed in this f*cking stone chamber, can there?

“Is it karma that leads me here?

“If this is really Master Bodhisattva’s Taoist field, does it mean…”

An idea popped into Li Mu’s head.

“Does that mean that Sun Wukong is my senior fellow apprentice?

“This is rather mystifying!

“But it seems… kind of great, right?”

He willed himself to fight off the shock and stopped wondering about the reasons and consequences, for he believed things would eventually sort themselves out. Then, he turned around and headed straight for a room on his right side.

He was prepared for some tactical deployments or restrictions to spring up. But when he approached that room, nothing happened. So, he walked through the door without difficulty.

With a glance at the room, he knew that it was probably the place where the master of the stone chamber slept and relaxed. There was a stone bed glowing faintly, and a stone table and stone chairs. On the table were placed cups, bowls, water pots, and so on, which were all made of stone. At the side of the stone bed lay a square chess table, flanked by two stone seats… Those were just fine articles of daily use, all in simple styles and carved out of stone like whittled carrots.

In addition to all that, there was a stone lamp at the end of the stone bed. The wick in it had been burnt, and the oil had drained as well.

The design of that stone lamp was a little extravagant. The lamp holder was flat. A dragon holding a pearl in its mouth was engraved in it. The tail of the dragon draped to the floor, and the tongue of the dragon was replaced by the wick. It looked like a carefully made artwork.

Other than those things, there was nothing else in the room.

Li Mu was mildly disappointed.

Yet, he then examined those objects by noisily tapping and knocking, and found that the stone bed glowing in white was quite remarkable.

“In The Return of the Condor Heroes, the chilling jade bed that Little Dragon Maiden slept on was able to help her practice martial arts. The glowing stone bed seems to have the same function. It can help me pacify my mind, concentrate on meditation, and drive away distractive desires, can’t it?” Li Mu scratched his chin while racking his brain.

“That stone lamp doesn’t look like a normal lamp, either. If I just had the wick and oil, could it turn out to be… the Lotus Lamp?”

Devil Li deliberated for a while, then out of the principle of not leaving any regrets behind, he put the stone bed, stone lamp, as well as the chess table, stone seats, and tea table into the Storage Ring. The room with carefully arranged furniture was then turned into a vacant room.

Then, he walked out of that room with satisfaction and then visited the room at the other end of the hall.

It was totally empty. Not a thing was in that room but a faint, lingering smell of incense. Li Mu assumed that it was the room in which the master of the stone chamber prayed or meditated.

Feeling slightly disappointed, Li Mu made his way to the last room in the stone chamber.

The whole place consisted of one hall and three rooms.

That last room was also the largest one. In it stood a white jade sculpture, taking the form of an old man who looked wise, like an immortal. The old man’s face was benign. He was wearing loose robes with long sleeves. The old man was tall and emaciated and was standing with his hands folded behind him. His head was angled a little up, as though he was looking into the vast universe. His facial expression was inscrutable, not showing a sign of happiness or sorrow. The sculpture was so vivid that Li Mu felt like the old man would open his eyes and spring to life at any moment.

As Li Mu eyed that sculpture, his heart leaped into his throat.

“Could this be the sculpture of Master Puti?”

Considering that he had just taken all those things in the other rooms, including the bed, he was stung by a twinge of guilt at that moment.

He mused for a few seconds and reckoned that as he had already done the kowtow once, it would not hurt to do it once more.

Therefore, he respectfully got on his knees and touched the floor at the foot of the sculpture with his forehead three times while thinking, “Please don’t get angry with me because I’ve taken all your treasures and secret books. When I become somebody someday and rise above the galaxies to rescue Earth, I will surely repair your place and open a new Taoist field for your sake…”

With that, he rose to his feet and went to explore the room for more treasures that he could take.

But as he looked up, he was scared out of his wits and almost let loose the howl of a startled pig.

“Holy sh*t! What the hell is this?”

To his disbelief, the white jade sculpture that was standing with two hands folded behind it a moment ago had moved its hands to the front over its belly. From each of the palms was draped a long, unfurled jade scroll, which were glowing dimly.

The jade scroll on the right presented six words in the ancient seal characters—Ultimate Yin and Yang Cultivation Method.

The one to the left said Five Emperors’ Immortality Scriptures.

Li Mu’s eyes lit up at once.

“Cultivation methods? Secret manuals?

“I can have them by just doing kowtows?”

Li Mu was quite familiar with the tales of the Ultimate Yin and Yang Cultivation Method.

According to the myth, it was the fundamental cultivation method of the Third-eye God, who successfully put Sun Wukong in custody after their first battle in the heavens. If he gained Full Accomplishment of that art, no weapons would hurt him, and his physical body would be like a Sage’s, not to mention that his soul could temporarily leave his body. In both The Legend of Deification, a great novel on ancient legends, and The Journey to the West, one of the Four Masterpieces of China, the Ultimate Yin and Yang Cultivation Method was always viewed as a top-ranked method of body refinement, which was also the most impressive cultivation method in Taoism.

Some people from later generations also deemed the Ultimate Yin and Yang Cultivation Method to be the Seventy-two Metamorphoses. The reason was simple: since the largest yin number is eight and the largest yang number is nine, eight multiplied by nine equals seventy-two.

Back on Earth, Li Mu had even devoted quite a lot of his leisure time to studying that.

In Li Mu’s view, aside from strengthening the corporeal body, the Ultimate Yin and Yang Cultivation Method could also help the practitioner complete various disguises. So, it was also a kind of sorcery. It was likely that the power of the Ultimate Yin and Yang Cultivation Method was more remarkable than that of the Seventy-two Metamorphoses.