ndpa Butcher had taught him today was different from before. In the past they had trained him in blade arts and fist arts; but this time they had both spoken the same word. Divine ability! The word was strange to him. It was the first time he had heard it. Shen Mu unleashed the Eight Techniques of Thunder Roar and attacked Old Ma. Though Old Ma had only one arm, every attack Shen Mu made was casually blocked, without the slightest effort. He was not like the butcher. The butcher, mad as he seemed, always kept measure when crossing blades with Shen Mu and had never once hurt him; but Old Ma held nothing back. The moment there was a flaw in Shen Mu's form, a fist came at him—and though the blows were not heavy, it was not long before Shen Mu was bruised and swollen about the face. Only when Shen Mu could fight no more did Old Ma let him rest. "The legs are wind, are earth, are the root of strength." Lame Elder leaned on his crutch. He had only one leg left, yet it was he who taught Shen Mu legwork. In the old days Shen Mu had thought Lame Elder the most normal person in the village—always smiling that simple, honest smile, giving one a feeling of utter dependability. But ever since Lame Elder had, by the riverside, smiling his honest smile, stabbed to death the woman who crawled out of the ox hide, Shen Mu was no longer quite so sure. Lame Elder's smile was a smile that hid a knife. No one knew whether it was real or false. Smiling, he said to Shen Mu, "Mu'er, the butcher boasts of his blade, Old Ma boasts of his fist—but the true divine ability is in the legs. If you cannot cut your enemy down, if you cannot beat him in a fight, what then? You run, of course. Life is the thing that matters most! Life is not only poetry and far horizons—there is also scraping by. So to live is to win! So long as you can run fast enough, you can run up walls, run over water, run even across the sky! Run fast enough, and everything is flat ground—flame and air, all flat ground! When you can run so fast that even sound cannot catch up with you, trailing behind your ears, then you will have begun to master the divine ability of legwork. Mu'er—come. Onto the iron ingots."