Chapter 1304 — Unearthing the Primordial

"Young Master Shen and that ancient god inside the egg don't seem to get along at all," the others thought to themselves.

Shen Mu unfurled his Divine Treasury Domain and let Silent Craftsman, Blind Elder and the Alchemist enter it, instructing them: "Stand within the chaos ore vein. Two eggshells lie there, the shells Taiyi cast aside; they will keep you safe.

" Being sheltered by him rankled Blind Elder and the rest, but they knew his divine powers were vast and far beyond their own, so each of them went to hide themselves well within the Ancestral Court of the Divine Treasury Domain. They descended the ore vein and came to that valley blasted out of the earth.

The valley was very deep, like a basin, and broken mountain ranges lay all around; as the others looked about, something stirred in Shen Mu's heart, and he rose into the air and came above a severed mountain to gaze down.

The peak had been sheared off clean and flat, as though someone had cut it away with a sharp instrument. Shen Mu drew out his broken sword; at a thought the sword grew, becoming a long blade whose light spanned several dozen li, and he swept it lightly across the severed mountain.

At once his divine sword met enormous resistance; the blade-light sank halfway into the mountain and could go no further, unable to cut it through.

"Whoever left this mark was far more powerful than I am, at the very least at the pinnacle of the Lingxiao realm.

And from the cut surface, it was not a Creator who left it.

" He withdrew his divine sword and said softly, "The Creators of the primordial age had crude powers, nothing so fine as this. And yet, by all reason, the Ancestral Court was sealed in the primordial age by the Heavenly Emperor Taichu and the ancient gods he led; no one after the Longhan era could have left these traces.

. . " The First Ancestor Human Sovereign came to a ruined cliff, riddled and crumbling, pierced clean through from front to back, shaped like the print of a palm and a hundred zhang tall; but stranger still, that palm print had six fingers.

The First Ancestor Human Sovereign roused the Heaven-Earth Heart Sacred Art and struck at a cliff nearby. With a thunderous boom, the cliff shuddered slightly and a palm print appeared upon it, but he did not punch through.

The First Ancestor Human Sovereign frowned. Yan'er came to the foot of the cliff and scraped at its wall, and a great deal of dark, heavy rubble fell away, like charcoal, or like petrified ash.

"What happened here?

" the Alchemist asked.

No one answered him.

They went on, and before long came at last to the bottom of the valley.

Here severed cliffs and broken mountains were even more numerous, as though the place had endured a most terrible battle; in that battlefield many mighty beings had fought until heaven collapsed and earth split, forming this strange sight.

Strangely, though, this place lay beneath the Ancestral Court — that battlefield was buried deep underground. They stood in the valley and looked up, and could see only a sky like the mouth of a well, its walls a thousand ren high.

The valley was not dark; ahead, light spilled from that divine bow, and the company walked on toward the glow, when suddenly divine lights stirred and came racing at them.

"Sword Heaven Palace!

" Shen Mu called out low. Those divine lights were like fish darting swift through the air, coming and going like light and lightning.

When the divine lights intruded into his Divine Treasury Domain, sword-light burst from the Sword Heaven Palace, and with a din of clashing — like pearls falling on a jade plate, like a rainstorm beating pear blossoms — an unbelievably dense clamor arose as the sword-light collided with those streaming lights!

The sword-light was like a swarm of bees, and like a flood, surging around the Divine Treasury Domain and crashing against those divine lights.

Behind the First Ancestor Human Sovereign a celestial palace surfaced, and at once heaven tilted and earth slanted around him, space spun, and one divine light after another was destroyed amid the collapsing of heaven and earth. Yan'er, for her part, held up her lantern; before those streaming lights could come near her, the lantern's glow fell upon them, and they were sent off to who knew where.

Of them all, she was the most at ease.

The deeper they went, the closer they came to the source of that divine light, and the more ferociously the lights flowing through the air assailed them.

Shen Mu's Sword Heaven Palace could no longer hold, and he was forced to summon his eighteen celestial palaces, even calling up the great daos of Xuandu, Youdu, Yuandu and the Four Poles Heaven in full, to withstand the onslaught of the divine lights.

Yet still many divine lights broke into his Divine Treasury Domain and came striking at his very person.

He stood firm upon the Ancestral Court; the vertical eye in his brow opened, and wherever his gaze fell, divine lights that flew swift past burst apart with a bang and scattered as wisps of yin and yang qi.

Silent Craftsman, Blind Elder and the Alchemist watched with their hearts in their throats, and resolved to hide meekly inside Taiyi's eggshells and not poke their heads out again. The First Ancestor Human Sovereign's Heaven-Earth Heart Sacred Art too could barely hold; he had no choice but to unleash his divine powers and pit himself head-on against the divine lights, and when he could hold no longer he lifted up the egg of Taishi to bear their brunt, drawing a furious curse from within the egg.

And Yan'er was still the one most at ease.

Moon Tianzun's lantern truly defied heaven; once its light shone, no art could touch her, and those divine lights could not come near at all. "No wonder Moon Tianzun is one of the few Tianzuns to have lived from the Longhan era to this day," Shen Mu marveled, eyeing Moon Tianzun's arts and divine powers with no small envy.

At last they passed through layer upon layer of divine light and came before that divine bow.

They raised their heads to look up, and every one of them was dazzled and shaken. There stood a long bow, some thousand zhang in length, blazing gold all over, with countless filaments of radiance spilling from it and bursting in every direction!

Beside the long bow lay a mass of mountain like a black dragon.

Shen Mu saw that this dragon-like mass must be a root of the Great Black Wood, only so enormously thick that its original form as a root could no longer be told.

And yet between the root and the long bow there was, astonishingly, a skeletal arm! That bony arm stretched out from the root of the Great Black Wood, clutching the back of the bow in a death grip!

It was as though the arm of dry bone had grown out of the Great Black Wood itself!

"Where did this arm come from?

" They were dumbfounded.

Shen Mu stepped forward, meaning to tear the divine bow down by force, when suddenly the bowstring quivered, and with a twang a shaft of sword-light flew at Shen Mu's brow! A broken sword appeared in Shen Mu's hand; he swept it upward and knocked the arrow aside.

The arrow-light grazed past the top of his head and shot away, and where it went it punched a great hole through the Azure Glazed Heaven Canopy; brilliant beyond measure and trailing fire, a full ten thousand li long, it scored a dazzling straight line across the sky of the Ancestral Court!

On the other side, the First Ancestor Human Sovereign stepped forward and, rousing the Heaven-Earth Heart Sacred Art, pressed his hand lightly upon the bow's body.

The bowstring was about to quiver again, but with his palm pressing the bow's body it could not draw back, and gave only a hum.

The space before the First Ancestor Human Sovereign was shaken by the bowstring and at once split into several hundred pieces, standing upright before him and slashing toward him — so fast that he could not react at all!