荒墟牧神 - 第1796章 闢世洪鐘 - 墨香閣

Shang Jun's departure from the Ancestral Court for Jingping this time had been by Shen Mu's order: he had come back to the Yuan Realm to pass on his arts, and to take in the fruits of Jingping's reforms besides; he had not come out of any particular wish to visit Zhu Santong and the other four. Only just before setting out had he learned from Shen Mu's own lips that Dong Yang and the rest had already been reincarnated. That Zhu Santong, Dong Yang, and the others had been reborn without the memories of their former lives was something he had not known at first, and once he did know, he did not take it much to heart.

Zhu Santong had recovered a portion of his memories; his former life now seemed to him a thing of drifting mist and cloud, at once himself and not himself, and only when he thought of how Shen Mu had duped the five of them did the resentment rise in him and refuse to settle.

"If we had our memories of the past life," he complained to Shang Jun, "why would we ever have needed to take so many detours? " Shang Jun was ordinarily a man of few words, but before these five old friends his words could not help but grow plentiful.

"Dao brother," he said, "think it over. The techniques and divine powers you had in your former life, are they still of any use to you in this one?

" Zhu Santong carefully recalled the arts and powers of his past life, then weighed them against what he had learned since, and his mind went blank.

The techniques and divine powers of his former life were of an entirely different order from Jingping's present cultivation system. With some alteration the divine powers could still serve, though they now seemed crude by comparison, but the techniques themselves were wholly useless!

The methods of cultivation in Jingping today all followed the Great Divine Treasury system, and the Dao arts encompassed by each realm, from the Spirit Embryo to the Ancestral Court, were far grander than anything he had cultivated in his former life.

A cultivation system is a basket: however large the one who opens a realm makes that basket, that is how much later cultivators can put into it. Some cultivators cannot fill the basket, some can, and the latter travel farther than the former.

In Jingping's Ancestral Court Dao-realm system the basket was larger than the baskets of Zhu Santong and his companions in their former lives, and held more. Had he carried his former memories from the very beginning, he would have suffered a barrier of preconception, cultivating according to the experience of a past life and unable to set down the old basket, which would have been no kindness to him at all.

"In truth, the Seventh Young Master meant well in having you reincarnate. He only feared you could not accept it, and so did not tell you that reincarnation would erase your memories of the past life.

" Shang Jun said, "I rather envy you.

You can cast everything aside and begin again.

That you were able to reincarnate at all is because we fought and killed in the Ancestral Court and won for you the chance to grow. I have never been reincarnated, and I possess the realm of one who has attained the Dao, yet after years of struggling in the Ancestral Court I feel more and more how my strength is limited.

Once I have passed on my Dao arts and divine powers, if the chance comes, I too will reincarnate and begin again. " He was silent for a moment, then said, "And when I begin again, I do not wish to awaken the memories of my former life.

" Zhu Santong understood his choice. Shang Jun had lived too bitterly; the memories of the Sixteenth Epoch were a burden to him, and there had been few hours of joy in them. If there was a next life, he chose to live it more lightly. "You have come back from the Ancestral Court. Does that mean the fighting there has died down?

" Zhu Santong asked.

Shang Jun shook his head. "It grows ever fiercer.