"Do you speak the Desolate Tongue?" Wei Yuan asked.
The formal name for the language of the Strength Shamans was the Desolate Tongue. It contained an immense vocabulary unique to them; there were hundreds of words just to express rage, violence, courage, and invincibility. Without clearly distinguishing between them, it was impossible to grasp what a Desolate Shaman truly meant.
The tongues of Nether Shamans and Spirit Shamans each had their own characteristics as well, while the language of Sacred Shamans was completely different.
Their linguistic structure was extraordinarily intricate, filled with archaic and arcane phrasing that was nearly indecipherable. Every sentence was remarkably long, like an exquisite palace of architecture, leaving ordinary folk completely at a loss as to which room its true meaning was hidden in.
The most frequently quoted maxim in the Sacred Shaman tongue was: *If you believe you have understood what I said, then I can assure you that you have not.*
Thus, even though they were all of the Shaman race, when a pure Desolate Shaman met a pure Nether Shaman, they might very well fail to understand each other at all, having to rely on transmitting their true intent to communicate.
"I am a Strength Shaman. How could I not know the Desolate Tongue?" The shaman looked deeply insulted, widening his round eyes and on the verge of erupting, until he suddenly remembered who was the master here. His tone softened at once. "...Naturally, I do."
"Then teach me. We'll start with half a shichen."
Half a shichen later, Wei Yuan had mastered thirty-six gradations of anger and seventy-two different ways to say "beat the crap out of you." Adding in all the other miscellaneous vocabulary, he had learned over eight hundred words in total and was already capable of speaking in full sentences.
Clearing his throat, Wei Yuan barked, "Me, strong shaman. Give money!"
The booming roar that shook the surroundings was not merely because Wei Yuan had naturally loud vocal cords; volume was an intrinsic part of expression in the Desolate Tongue. For instance, with "I'll butcher you," if yelled loud enough, it was meant literally; spoken at an ordinary volume, it meant "everything's open to discussion."
Wei Yuan then looked at the shaman with an expectant gaze and asked in the Desolate Tongue, "How was that? Is my Desolate Tongue spot-on or what?"
The shaman praised loudly, "Too spot-on! Even more authentic than mine!"
Wei Yuan understood; the shaman had yelled it loudly enough, so it was meant literally.
Seeing that the shaman was sincere and knew how to play along, Wei Yuan finally let his killing intent subside. "What is your name?" he asked.
"My name is Jidao Zhengang! ...You may just call me Jidao, or Little Ji. But we need to find somewhere to hide from the sunlight. If we bake out here any longer, today will be a loss."
While learning the Desolate Tongue over the past half-shichen, Wei Yuan had actually been observing Jidao all along, paying special attention to how he locked in moisture and dissipated heat. To his surprise, the shaman actually shed heat by emitting light.
When all three suns were in the sky together, it wasn't very noticeable, but once one sun was blocked by the massive celestial body, Jidao Zhengang became the brightest shaman around. When bathed in his glow, even Wei Yuan felt a slight stinging on his skin, as if he were being sunburned.
In this bizarre world, the sun did not burn the skin—it simply roasted a person from the inside out. Yet a shaman could actually sunburn someone.
After observing for half a shichen, Wei Yuan finally confirmed that Jidao's heat-dissipation efficiency was inferior to his own fire-breathing.
Now that Wei Yuan had a grasp of the Desolate Tongue, communication was much smoother. Pointing at the ox, he asked, "I just butchered an ox. Do you know how to process it?"
Jidao's eyes widened, and he growled in a low voice, "What do you mean, *your* ox? It's clearly mine... If you don't believe me, I'll carve it up and show you right now! Stand back so you don't lose your life!"
Wei Yuan felt deeply ill-suited to the culture of the Desolate Tongue. At first blush, he felt an intense urge to run this fellow through with a spear; he had to make a mental detour before he could grasp the shaman's true meaning.
Jidao drew a short knife. Just as he was about to start, Wei Yuan casually plucked it from his hand, inspected it closely for a moment, and then returned it to him.
The blade's material was peculiar, bearing clear signs of smelting and forging. Yet the smelting temperature seemed to have been insufficient; the iron inside had barely melted, and its purity was lacking. Even the raw ore produced from a top-grade iron mine of Ningzhou's Xu family had a higher iron content than this knife.
That the knife had taken shape at all seemed primarily due to forging, blending iron and impurities evenly together into a single blade.
Gripping the knife, Jidao let out a loud shout first. The roar resonated through the blade, sending a distinct gleam of light skimming across it. Then, with a gentle slice, the ox hide parted as easily as cutting tofu.
Wei Yuan was astonished. When he had killed the ox with his spear earlier, it had felt like stabbing a colossal beast forged of premier refined steel, solid all the way through and reinforced with several defensive formations to boot. Even he had to exert tremendous strength to pierce straight through the ox's head with a single thrust. Yet Jidao had sliced open the hide with a mere flick of his blade.
"What is the secret of that knife? And what shamanic art was that roar just now?" Wei Yuan asked.
"You don't even know that? A vermin like you dares show his face before me..." Jidao's voice had dropped to a very low murmur. But catching the look on Wei Yuan's face, he scratched his hair with one of his thinner arms and said, "Perhaps I should learn some human speech from you instead."
"No need. Use the Desolate Tongue as much as possible, and transmit your true intent whenever you can't express it clearly." Wei Yuan needed to seize every moment to practice the Desolate Tongue so he could proceed to the second phase of his plan: posing as a shaman.
Jidao explained, "What I used just now was the Barbaric Battle Cry, a shamanic art that only works within the Desolate Realm. The battle cry can awaken the Ultimate Intent of the Desolate Dao residing in weapons and armor. How much of that ultimate intent one can awaken essentially determines victory or defeat in combat."
Hearing this long string of the Desolate Tongue stirred Wei Yuan's urge to kill several times. He simply allocated a thread of divine sense dedicated to translating it, listening only to the translated words, which finally quelled his irritation.
"What is the Ultimate Intent of the Desolate Dao?" Wei Yuan asked.
Jidao explained further. The so-called Ultimate Intent of the Desolate Dao was the Dao embedded within all things in the Great Wilderness Realm. Strength Shamans used specialized battle cries to activate the Dao power within them, thereby altering their physical properties. Otherwise, virtually anything in the Desolate Realm was as hard as a Scenery Command spiritual treasure; even a Scenery Command cultivator would be driven mad trying to damage them.
And Jidao Zhengang was merely a late Great Shaman, not yet having reached perfection. Theoretically, let alone butchering an ox, he wouldn't even be able to slice through an ox hair.
Having explained, Jidao made another cut, and the hide parted smoothly to both sides. Wei Yuan then discovered that the ox hide was three feet thick!
The ox's body was barely ten feet thick, yet the hide alone was three feet deep. The contents inside this ox... were rather meager!
Wei Yuan reached out to touch the cross-section of the hide; it felt slippery to the touch. But under Wei Yuan's vision, magnified over a hundred times, he could see uniform tiny pores throughout the hide, and within the substance forming their walls were numerous crystal filaments.
After acquiring knowledge of the otherworldly realm, Yu Zhizhuo had systematically researched the physical properties of various crystal structures and stored his findings in the Smoke and Fire of the Mortal World. Wei Yuan had occasionally flipped through a few volumes purely as leisure reading; if he had tried to read them seriously, he wouldn't have understood them.
It seemed the battle cry activated the knife, which then established resonance, vibration, harmonic coupling—some kind of relationship—with these crystal filaments, causing them to turn exceptionally brittle and shatter at the slightest touch.
Wei Yuan suddenly felt he was remarkably clever.
Jidao sliced the ox hide into square blocks, finally revealing a thin layer of beef within, along with several uniquely shaped organs that bore little resemblance to ordinary bovine innards.
He carefully removed several organs and set them aside, then shaved off a layer of beef barely a finger thick. Leaving most of the remaining organs discarded, he exhaled a long breath and said, "This ox is very plump. Today and tomorrow won't be a loss."
Wei Yuan looked at the barely seven or eight jin of usable materials and felt it hardly deserved the word "plump."
"Jidao, how many people are in your tribe?"
Jidao started. "Tribe? I'm an exiled criminal—where would I get a tribe from? I used to have a father, but not long ago he slipped up while hunting oxen and was gored to death by a molten ox. Ever since then, I've been the only one around here."
"Your birth father?"
"No. He was stronger than me, so I called him father."
This shaman named Jidao was quite a piece of work; Wei Yuan hardly knew what to say to that.
He looked up at the suns' trajectories in the sky. Seeing that the hidden sun was about to rotate back into view, he said, "Do you have a place where we can take shelter from the sunlight? Let's go see where you live."
Jidao fell silent for a moment. Instead of using the Desolate Tongue, he transmitted through true intent: "I can offer up my dwelling, but may I make a request?"
"Speak."
"I want to follow you until we escape this region."
Wei Yuan pondered for a moment and nodded.
...
At the northern mountain gate of the Palace of Grand Beginning, Yanshi was sitting in his courtyard deep in thought when he suddenly sensed a summons. With a single thought, he ascended to Immortal Heaven.
Old Mistress Bao was waiting outside the courtyard gate of that small world. Seeing Yanshi open the gate, she said, "I plan to go see girl Yun. Would you care to accompany me? We can cross over through Immortal Heaven, and you can keep this old relic company for a chat along the way."
At present, the Realm Lord of Qingming had gone missing, news that was bound to spread sooner or later, making this a time of turmoil. For Yanshi himself to go, being the master in the Palace of Grand Beginning, was one thing, but for Old Mistress Bao to appear in Qingming carried extraordinary significance.
Yanshi replied at once, "Since Old Mistress has summoned me, I naturally have time. Let us depart."
Traversing from Immortal Heaven to Qingming took barely half a shichen. The two immortals strode as leisurely as if strolling through a garden, while ten thousand rivers and mountains flew past beneath their feet.
Old Mistress Bao said slowly, "Back then, less than a thousand years after Great Tang was founded, its decline was already fully evident. Everyone thought its reign would be short-lived, yet who could have imagined that the Martial Ancestor would burst onto the scene? He seized both the Immortal Dao and the Human Dao for himself, crushing his era underfoot, his word absolute law! Even we old fogeys had to yield three leagues before him, or face death and maiming.
"You were not yet born in those days and never witnessed firsthand his terror and ruthless resolve. These fellow immortals now are desperate to break the stalemate, and one can hardly blame them. None of us knows whether, when the game ends, we will all become sacrifices at the final curtain."
Yanshi's eyes instantly shone bright as stars, and he said clearly, "This junior has said before: if they want to break the impasse, let them rely on their own capability! Whoever dares sacrifice a disciple of my Palace of Grand Beginning, I will sever their lineage down to the last descendant!"
The Old Mistress smiled and said, "Why do you have such a fiery temper? You both cultivate the path of destiny, yet look at your Palace Master. Since ascending to immortality, he has never taken a single human life. By the way, do you still not know where Xiao Fang is?"
"You mean... the Palace Master?"
"Indeed. For over a hundred years now, hasn't the Palace Master of your Palace of Grand Beginning been Xiao Fang?"
"The Palace Master has always been in secluded cultivation. I have never seen him."
The Old Mistress said, "Go smash open his seclusion chamber, and I guarantee it's empty inside."
"The Palace Master isn't in the palace?! How do you know?" Yanshi was thoroughly astonished.
The Old Mistress sighed softly. "I have known him for centuries, so of course I know his style. He has always been secretive, forever trying to do impractical things, refusing to listen to reason."
Yanshi was silent for a moment before saying, "If you can contact the Palace Master, please ask him to return soon to take charge. These are turbulent times; even Tinghai has fallen. I have yet to achieve perfection and my means are limited; I couldn't even protect Wei Yuan. Relying solely on risking my life won't deter them for long. If this continues, we will have no choice but to squander the legacy left by our founders."
The Old Mistress said slowly, "You worry only because you do not know Xiao Fang. That man's heart is pitch-black. Back then, he declared that after ascending to immortality he would never kill a soul, and even swore a vicious oath. His enemies actually believed him and spared him. And what happened? Less than fifty years after he ascended to immortality, every single one of those enemies died in an 'accident' of their own."
Yanshi finally heard some good news, and his spirits lifted.
Seeing that the Old Mistress knew the Palace Master even better than he did, Yanshi could not resist his curiosity and asked, "You seem very close to the Palace Master?"
"More than close. We very nearly tied the knot."
Firm as Yanshi's Dao heart was, he was left dumbfounded. Only after a long moment did he manage to ask, "And... what was your fair age at the time?"
The Old Mistress looked slightly bashful. "Not that long ago, really—only about three hundred years back. That year, I was eight thousand three hundred years old, and my late husband had been gone for just a thousand."
Chapter 869