Shen Mu said with the utmost reverence, "Rest assured, Senior. This junior has cultivated since childhood; my kidney-water is abundant and my primal yang full. My eyesight is excellent—I can see in the dark, so naturally I can see clearly." The figure on the wall swayed once, but made no further move; instead it went on revealing the mysteries of circulating vital essence. The third seal of the Great Perfection Seal was the Great Wisdom-Light Seal, and its circulation was far more complex. The paths of vital essence within that dark shadow moved faster and faster, and even with Shen Mu's Lingxiao Heaven Eye opened he could not fully catch the trajectories of their flow, which left him itching to step into the side hall. Shen Mu hesitated, then set one foot inside the hall's doorway while keeping the other outside, and at last he could just barely catch the routes of the vital essence. He memorized with all his might, but soon the figure on the wall had run through the Great Wisdom-Light Seal once. He tried to activate it, and though he could perform the seal, he kept feeling that something was missing. He had not fully memorized the circulation routes of the Great Wisdom-Light Seal. "This is the fourth seal of the Great Perfection Seal, and the strongest of them all. All the power of the first three seals will merge into this one." The figure on the wall seemed more and more feeble, the shadow smaller and smaller, the voice lower and lower, as it said, "But this seal is even more complex. I fear you will not be able to see it clearly." "Do not worry, Senior." Shen Mu showed a simple, artless smile. "This junior has had abundant kidney-water and full primal yang since childhood. My eyesight is very good—I can still barely make it out." The figure fell silent, its voice growing fainter and fainter, and sighed, "But I cannot hold on any longer. Come in. At the four corners of the hall there are four bronze spikes driven into the ground. Pull them up. They are pinned into my back. Once they are pulled out, I can catch my breath, and once I catch my breath, I can transmit the complete seal method to you." Its voice was soft. "You have not yet learned the Great Wisdom-Light Seal in full, have you? The Great Wisdom-Light Seal is very complex, but its power is also extreme. If you have not learned it completely, you cannot bring out its full might. And the strongest seal is the fourth—the Great Perfection Demon Seal! Pull out the spikes..." "Senior, I think I will not learn it after all." Shen Mu shook his head, drew his left foot back out of the hall, and said, "It is too troublesome. I am very stupid. Most likely I would not learn it." The figure trembled and coaxed him gently, "I can teach you a second time, as long as you pull out the spikes..." Shen Mu looked even more troubled and shook his head. "Senior just said you would teach only once. If I made you teach a second time, would that not make you break your word? This junior would feel even more guilty. I am so stupid—I would fail your expectations." "No, you are very clever." The figure's voice grew softer still, as if a kindly elder were instructing a junior, and said gently, "You learned the Demon-God Divine Power Seal and the Nether-Demon Freedom Seal after seeing them only once. The Great Wisdom-Light Seal, too, you learned seven or eight parts of in a single viewing. Your aptitude is extremely high; if you watch once more, you will surely master the Great Wisdom-Light Seal. I admire your talent and cleverness, and I can break my word once to teach you a second time..." Here the voice halted abruptly, then turned cold with a chilling edge. "You tricked me out of my cultivation method?" Shen Mu said, startled, "Why does Senior say that?" "You tricked me out of my cultivation method!" The figure on the wall flew into a sudden rage; the shadow grew larger and larger, soon covering the whole side hall, hideous and ferocious, and it snarled, "How dare you trick me out of my cultivation method! Little brat, I taught you out of the goodness of my heart, and you deceived me!" Shen Mu still stood outside the hall, letting the demon shadow rage before him, and shook his head. "Senior jests. Were you not also trying to trick me into going in to release you?" The side hall's doors gaped wide, its window lattice like eyes and its doors like a mouth, eerie and terrible, as it said chillingly, "You knew?" "We were never of the same clan to begin with. Senior first lied that we were, then used the Great Perfection Seal to lure me, drawing me step by step closer to you—all for one of two purposes." Shen Mu showed the simple, artless smile of the lame old man. "The first is to get me inside the hall and lure me closer and closer to the wall, so you can seize me and make me pull out the bronze spikes at the four corners. The second is to exploit my wish to obtain the complete Great Perfection Seal and make me pull out the spikes myself. If I pulled them, then Senior would not merely catch a breath—you would break free, and eat me just as you ate the silly roe deer. But..." He smiled even more artlessly. "I am not a roe deer. I merely turned your scheme against you and tricked you out of two and a half seals." The whole side hall shook without cease, and from its doorway came a world-shaking roar: "You son of a bitch, I will kill you! Once I break free, I will kill you with my own hands!" The cowherd of Hidden Remnant Village curled his lip, turned to leave, and shook his head. "These little tricks of yours—Grandpa Lame has played them more times than I can count. He fooled me from childhood to adulthood, even swindled me out of I do not know how many sugar figurines Granny bought me. And you want to fool me..." "I will kill your Grandpa Lame!" the figure on the wall roared. Shen Mu turned and said earnestly, "Do not provoke him. He will swindle you right out of your underpants." The figure on the wall suddenly fell quiet, a quiet that was somehow uncanny, and said softly, "You said just now that we are not of the same clan? Heh heh, little brat, you think too simply. How could you and I not be of the same clan... heh heh heh, young little devil..." Shen Mu shivered, and suddenly recalled the divine voice from beyond the nine heavens that had come when he broke through the wall, and then recalled how he had used the demon tongue to resist that divine voice; joined with the words of the figure on the wall, it gave him some ominous associations. He hastily shook his head, drove the jumbled associations from his mind, and turned to leave. "Heh heh heh, you and I are the same, exactly the same..." Behind him, the shadow on the wall laughed eerily. Shen Mu frowned and walked out of the Calamity-Quelling Palace. The Dark-Fanged Demon Ape hurried to meet him, glanced toward the side hall, and saw that the figure on the wall had shrunk back into it. Only then did it relax, and it said to Shen Mu with great seriousness, "Trust? Ghost!" Shen Mu nodded, feeling the same. "The wasteland is truly too perilous. Honest folk like us—if we do not learn to be a little clever, we will surely be swindled clean and eaten down to the last scrap." The Dark-Fanged Demon Ape shot him a glance, curled its lip, and said, "Trust. Ghost." Shen Mu's face reddened slightly, and he protested, "I am no swindler. I have suffered losses since childhood, and that is the only reason I am a little clever. But I am afraid you can no longer live in this place. The Calamity-Quelling Palace is falling apart, and no one knows when it will collapse. If it does, and that old demon breaks free, he will surely take it out on you." The Dark-Fanged Demon Ape shook its head, looked at the wild deer and wild oxen in the valley, and said nothing. Basically, the livable places in the wasteland were all taken, whether by humans or by other strange beasts. If the Dark-Fanged Demon Ape moved with these animals, it would probably find no place to settle for a time, and