荒墟牧神 - 第24章 一念斬破心中神 - 錦書坊

Not all things in this world are as simple as mortal eyes make them seem; what common folk see and what a martial artist whose eyes have been opened sees are two wholly different worlds! The stone idols in the village look ordinary enough, yet an opened-eyed martial artist can behold gods within them—relics left by gods and demons lie everywhere, and opened eyes can see the dreadful gods and demons; and as for the Buddha images in the temples, the common wretch sees a Buddha, while the opened-eyed martial artist beholds the Peerless Great Buddha, a Peerless Great Buddha that crushes the mind outright! If a martial artist's heart is not strong, sooner or later he will be frightened to death by the sights he beholds. That is why the Blind Elder, in teaching Shen Mu to temper his eyes, first taught him to temper his heart: only when the god in the heart is shattered will he cease to be terrified, and only then can he achieve anything hereafter. The Buddhists say that to keep a Buddha in the heart makes it hard to become a Buddha. The Imperial Preceptor of Jingping said it is easy to smash the gods of a ruined temple, but hard to smash the god in the heart. Those two sayings, and the Blind Elder pissing on the stone idol, all come to the same principle. The first two require grinding the heart, step by step demolishing the gods and Buddhas within; the Blind Elder's way is crude and violent, even somewhat extreme, even mad—and yet it works. When the headman first laid eyes on the Blind Elder, the aura the man carried was mighty beyond measure, still like a wrathful dragon lashing the eight directions—but by then the Blind Elder's eyes had both been gouged out, and the Blind Elder had collapsed. And now, that Lance God has come back. This must be counted Shen Mu's doing: ever since this boy with all his limbs intact appeared in the village, the rancor upon the villagers had slowly been scattered, and to teach Shen Mu the Nine Heavens Eye-Gazing Art the Blind Elder must first awaken his "Sacred Pupil"—yet his Sacred Pupil had been dug out, and only the heart's eye remained. While the Blind Elder was teaching Shen Mu, the headman sensed the awakening of the Blind Elder's Sacred Pupil; it was a Sacred Pupil of the Heart! His eyes were gone, and the heart took their place! Slowly the headman closed his eyes, basking idly in the sun, and said silently in his heart: "The Sacred Pupil of the Heart will surpass the Sacred Pupil, and the Lance God will surpass the Lance God of old. Blind Elder, when you walk out of the wasteland, your enemies will tremble..." After Shen Mu pissed, he shivered, feeling body and mind utterly at ease. The stone idol could no longer suppress his heart; and when he looked at it again, he saw much that he had never been able to see before. It was like a veil that had lain over his eyes, so that all he saw was blur and haze—and now the veil was peeled away, and the true colors of the world stood revealed. He gazed greedily at the colors all around him; a beauty he had never once discovered stirred him so that he wanted to weep. He went to the other stone idols in the village, and his heart was shaken again: the other three stone idols, like this dragon-headed old man, burst forth with thick divine light, gave off a transcendently refined divine charm, and possessed a sacred and uncommon air! Yet he could look upon them with an ordinary mind; these stone idols could no longer affect his heart. Of the Nine Heavens Eye-Gazing Art he had cultivated only the first heaven, and already he was wild with joy—to what heights would the later heavens raise his eyes, what beauties would they let him see? Shen Mu took out a bronze mirror and studied himself: in the mirror his eyes were somewhat different from usual, for deep in his pupils a ring had surfaced, and within that ring were strange veins and patterns, like woven lightning. The ring gradually dimmed and slowly vanished. Shen Mu closed his eyes, roused his vital essence