Chapter 87: The Ancient Invocation of Verdant Wood |
“So-called invocations are chants used by the ancient shamans to commune with heaven and earth.”
“Legend says the ancient Shaman Gods relied upon these profoundly mysterious chants to stir the most primal forces of the world itself.”
“Even to this day, within the former lands of Xiang, fragments and strange remnants of shamanic arts are still passed down…”
Li Shun silently absorbed the flood of information surging through his mind.
“The Ten Shamans of Lingshan, each with their own inheritance.”
“Together, they are known as the Ten Primordial Invocations.”
“According to this inheritance, if the powers of all Ten Shamans were ever united, they would possess the ability to split heaven and earth apart. Whether that is true or merely self-glorifying exaggeration, who can say?”
“The invocation of Wu Peng is called Verdant Wood Invocation. It draws upon the vitality of heaven and earth and converts it for one’s own use.”
“That explains why merely donning Wu Peng’s armor caused such vast life force to surge through my body out of nowhere.”
“In simple terms, each inheritance of a Shaman God can only be cultivated by a single individual. Even if someone else somehow learns the path of that Shaman God, as long as the previous shaman has not fallen, heaven and earth themselves will not permit a new one to be born.”
“The Xiang Nation has been destroyed for many years. Even inheritors like Xiong Jin and Jiang Chongguang, who possess Xiang royal blood, can only practice fragmentary shamanic arts nowhere near the power of the Ten Primordial Invocations. It seems no one will be competing with me for Wu Peng’s position.”
Li Shun shook his head slightly, gathering his wandering thoughts and focusing once more on the Verdant Wood Invocation itself.
According to Wu Peng’s inheritance, the so-called Verdant Wood was the remnant root left behind after the severing of the World-Communing Divine Tree following the ancient severance between heaven and earth. It was the very foundation of the world’s life-force network.
By drawing upon the divine power of Verdant Wood, the efficiency of gathering vitality surpassed ordinary breathing techniques by hundreds of times.
Reading this, doubt rose in Li Shun’s heart.
‘The severance between heaven and earth. The Divine Tree. Verdant Wood.’
These were concepts so ancient they seemed to belong only in primordial myths.
This world had already passed through untold ages and countless upheavals.
“Does this so-called Ten Primordial Invocations still even work? Hasn’t it perhaps long since lost its effectiveness?”
Still, the Imperial Mausoleum’s sealed earth was clearly no suitable place for cultivation.
Li Shun could only suppress the urge to immediately begin practicing Wu Peng’s secret art and continue obediently waiting at Elder Mu’s side.
He had assumed that after countless years without the company of another living soul, the old man would feel at least some loneliness. Now that there was finally someone breathing beside him, surely he would say a word or two.
Yet contrary to expectation, Elder Mu truly behaved as though Li Shun did not exist.
He remained in that kneeling posture without moving, like a weathered stone statue.
In the blink of an eye, more than half a year passed.
During that time, Li Shun appeared outwardly just as silent and unmoving as Elder Mu, but internally, his mind never rested for even a moment.
Inside the Fangcun space, he tirelessly practiced that difficult and obscure chanting over and over again.
According to the Verdant Wood Invocation, every chant performed in the real world involved the forces of heaven and earth, meaning extreme caution was required.
One was supposed to bathe, burn incense, and ideally offer generous sacrifices.
Not only would this make cultivation smoother, it would also minimize backlash from errors in the chanting.
But Li Shun cared nothing for such elaborate formalities.
The Fangcun space was isolated from heaven and earth.
No matter how much he wailed, screamed, and blindly experimented inside it, the outside world would not react in the slightest.
Yet during this trial-and-error process, something unexpected occurred.
The Lengshan Grass growing in the spiritual fields within the space actually responded to his ancient chants.
The vitality within the grass seemed mysteriously stimulated, increasing its growth rate by more than ten percent.
The number seemed insignificant at first glance.
But it was already enough to prove something substantial.
“Merely the syllables and melody of the chant itself can interfere to this extent. That means in the outside world, this Verdant Wood Invocation may still remain effective.”
“If so, does that legendary fragment of Verdant Wood still exist somewhere in this world?”
“And Lengshan Grass originates from the Lengshan Soul. Could it be that the ancient Divine Soul said by Marquis Changle to have fallen at Lengshan is somehow connected to the Ten Ancient Shamans?”
No one could answer Li Shun’s doubts.
He could only bury them deep in his heart.
After half a year of cultivation, Li Shun had already fully mastered the thirty-six ancient melodies recorded within Verdant Wood Invocation.
He could now chant them in one continuous breath with flawless familiarity.
All he lacked was a chance to truly put them into practice.
Another half year passed.
Then, within that deathly silent world, a weathered voice suddenly echoed:
“Stop wasting away beside this old man. While your life still has its final moments left, go walk around and see the rest of this sealed land.”
As the voice spoke, a single withered branch pushed through the hard ground.
Then it twisted upward, coiling, intertwining, and weaving together until, in mere moments, it formed the shape of a wooden horse.
The tree-horse seemed alive.
It snorted, stomped its hooves, and trotted over to Li Shun.
Li Shun struggled to prop himself up, stretching his nearly petrified body. Just as he was about to offer thanks, he realized in shock that after sitting in silence for a full year without speaking, his throat had become dry and rigid as iron.
Not a single word could emerge.
He had become mute.
“Heh. Talk to the horse along the way. Don’t truly become a mute.”
The wooden horse obediently lowered its head, nudged Li Shun onto its back, then lifted its neck and released a harsh, hoarse neigh.
Then it broke into a gallop, carrying Li Shun into the vast unknown.
In the blink of an eye, fourteen springs and autumns passed.
During those long fourteen years, the wooden horse carried Li Shun across nearly every corner of the immense sealed Imperial Mausoleum.
Boundless desolate plains.
Rich black earth stretching for thousands of miles.
Towering mountain ranges rising like heavenly palaces.
Countless winding rivers spread across the land like the veins of the earth itself.
The bitter, frozen solitude of the northern reaches.
The hundred-thousand mountains and endless rainforests of the south.
Along the journey, Li Shun passed through cities of every imaginable style and scale, witnessing countless cultural wonders.
Within this sealed world of frozen time, he discovered eight completely different writing systems.
Of them, he could recognize only one.
The script currently promoted throughout the Great Qian Dynasty.
“That region should be the former lands of Yu Nation.”
“Though it occupies a plain surrounded by mountains, with great rivers and strategic passes as defenses, it is by no means the best central location in the world.”
“But according to what I previously knew, the homeland from which Great Qian rose to power lies in the Central Four Commanderies.”
“Could it be that since Great Qian’s founding, the very geography of heaven and earth has changed so drastically?”
The entire sealed world remained in suffocating silence.
Throughout those fourteen years of wandering, Li Shun never encountered another living soul.
Nor did he hear any of the strange voices from the past, like those he had once heard in Zhanghua City.
The entire world seemed to have frozen at some moment in history.
Then preserved forever as the resting place of the Qian Emperor.
And when the wooden horse’s pace finally slowed, bringing Li Shun back to the towering sealed wall where Elder Mu remained…
As he gazed upon that familiar yet strangely unfamiliar colossal wall, an indescribable feeling rose in his heart.
As though a lifetime had passed.
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