Chapter 1657 — By Nature, a Wild and Unbridled Guest
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 2 of 4
He touched the traces of the heavenly palaces in Huotian Zun's reincarnated body and examined the kinds of palaces they were. "Of these thirty-five heavenly palaces of yours, most duplicate your other thirty-six, but their order and their primary and secondary ranks differ, and so they yield different effects in cultivation. I take it this is because your wisdom is insufficient."
Haotian Zun laughed heartily, as though he had heard the most absurd thing in the world. "My wisdom insufficient?"
"You are a little short of it."
Xing An nodded. "The ordering of the heavenly palaces in your two Great Heavenly Court arts is not the optimal solution; hence both arts contain flaws. This must be because your attainments in the arts of number do not come up to the mark."
He raised his palm, and the chest opened.
Haotian Zun's pupils shrank sharply, and a chill ran down his back. From the chest flew out, one after another, the brains of gods and devils. The thought and consciousness within those brains still remained; the brains were still operating of themselves, and one could see countless divine lights flowing across their surfaces.
"These brains are ones I collected. You needn't worry—they are all dead men."
Xing An glanced at him and explained, "Cult Master Shen is forever wanting to dispose of me, but he is a man who insists upon principles. If I killed people at random, he would stop at nothing to do away with me. So I chose only those gods and devils who had already fallen in battle; they were dead, and keeping their brains served no purpose, so I took them out. In life they were plagued by all manner of distracting thoughts, but after death the distractions were gone, and they became my finest computing soldiers. To use the brains of living beings as computing soldiers is faster than the most advanced computing soldiers in Jingping."
He sighed with regret. "In truth, what I want most is Cult Master Shen's brain. Unfortunately, he will certainly never give it to me. Once I have studied you thoroughly, your brain will appear among them too."
His spirits lifted, and he flicked his sleeve. In the air, countless god-devil brains arranged and combined into a vast array of biological cerebral nerve clusters, performing calculations of inconceivable complexity, divine light flowing through those nerve-cluster arrays with incomparable swiftness.
Haotian Zun stared, spellbound, and murmured, "Some of them were very stupid men when alive. You say that joining their brains together can surpass me? Impossible."
Xing An said, "In life they may have been stupid, but it was not their brains that were stupid—it was their various notions. Those had to do with their upbringing and their living environment, not with their brains."
He explained patiently, "After they died, those notions were gone. So long as a person's brain keeps its activity, it can be called the fastest of computing soldiers. I merely put waste to use, employing these brains to make myself cleverer. I can easily find different sequences of heavenly palaces and arrive at the optimal solution of a Heavenly Court art. But someone like you, who is not clever enough, cannot find the optimal solution."
Haotian Zun gazed up at the brain matrix in the sky and sighed in admiration. "You remind me of someone: Shi Qiluo, Palace Lord of the Zaofu Heavenly Palace of the Heavenly Court. And also my mother, Lady Yuanmu—she too has a chest, and in it she keeps all manner of strange and curious things."
"Shi Qiluo?"
Xing An thought for a moment, then lightly raised his hand, and out of the chest flew a tousled head. "Is it this man? I found this head on the battlefield at Xuandu. His Dao is too lowly; he merely makes use of the Way of Creation and the Way of Guixu. Compared with me, he falls short by..."
He considered a moment and drew a line in the air with his hand. "Short by a hair. A hair of Cult Master Shen's."