Chapter 1317 — The Old Haunt Grows Dark

Without Yue Tianzun's lantern, even with their teleportation arts they would need several days to return to the Hundred Thousand Black Mountains of Great Black Wood, so Shen Mu simply chose a divine mountain at random and settled down there. The Taishi in the egg began to teach him the Dao of Taishi as he himself had comprehended it: "Because I have not fully absorbed the power of the Taishi ore vein, even my understanding of my own great Dao is incomplete.

I am a god born of the Dao of Taishi, yet I am not the Dao of Taishi. Only when I have wholly absorbed the power of the Taishi ore vein and achieved true transcendence will I truly be Taishi. Otherwise, there is no difference between me and the other ancient gods.

" Even so, the Dao of Taishi that the Taishi in the egg had comprehended was far beyond the Dao of Taishi that Shen Mu had puzzled out for himself; the runes of the Dao of Taishi alone were more than Shen Mu had ever managed to arrange in order. The Taishi runes he had comprehended through the runes of the Unchanging divine art accounted for only one third of the true Taishi runes, and among them were many errors besides, and only through the instruction of the Taishi in the egg was he able to correct them.

The Dao of Taishi was exceedingly profound and abstruse, hard to grasp; wherever it was dark and difficult, even when Shen Mu spurred himself to enter the Dao in dreams and comprehend through countless versions of himself, his progress was slow.

In entering the Dao in dreams, he turned within the dream into countless dream worlds, and in those dream worlds were numberless Shen Mus who used their wit and wisdom to fathom hard questions.

This was a means by which he had never failed; even the Great Brahma Heavenly King Buddha could not envy it, nor learn it.

Yet in comprehending the Dao of Taishi he ran into a problem.

In comprehending the Dao of Taishi, the most dreadful thing was voiding.

If he let his guard slip and entered the state of enlightenment, form and spirit would all too often turn together into the Taishi state: possessing form but no substance, an empty shape without a true body.

Even his primordial spirit, his primordial qi, his consciousness and thought would all be voided, leaving only the form without the substance!

Even his divine consciousness would vanish utterly!

Changeless Matter restrained the Dao of divine consciousness, and the Dao of Taishi restrained Changeless Matter, and therefore the Dao of divine consciousness had no power of resistance at all before the Dao of Taishi.

His dream worlds, one after another, were destroyed in that uncanny enlightenment, turned to nothingness, until at last he could not even wake from those dreams, nor withdraw his divine consciousness.

He could not help but feel a lingering dread: if it had been his true body that comprehended, it too would likely have become nothingness, a drifting, ethereal thing without knowledge or desire or want.

He could only grope forward step by step through entering the Dao in dreams, comprehending with the utmost care; even within the dreams he had to arrange that some dreams did not comprehend the Dao of Taishi at all, but kept watch on the outer edges and woke him in time, lest matters slip beyond control and drag his whole being into the state of enlightenment. He comprehended for more than ten days; the progress was slow, yet his harvest was rich, and little by little he began to grasp where the mysteries of the Dao of Taishi lay.

One day, while he was still in his dream, tender green traces suddenly grew out from the rocks of that bare divine mountain: green grass and saplings.

The green deepened, and the saplings grew taller by degrees; something stirred in Shen Mu's heart, and at once he woke from the dream. The Taishi egg was beside him and had likewise turned alert; man and egg stood on the mountain peak and looked about, and saw the trees growing steadily taller, while on the wasteland around the divine mountain the grass and brush thickened as well. The green spread like a plague, at a speed visible to the naked eye, reaching to both banks of the rivers and climbing one mountain range after another.

Thick roots traveled beneath the ground like earth dragons writhing and twisting in the soil, and now and then a root of monstrous girth burst through the surface, then slowly sank back underground and hid its traces.

"Earth Mother Yuanjun!

" Shen Mu's face turned grim.

The corrupted Earth Mother Yuanjun had truly come to the Ancestral Court! Earth Mother Yuanjun had many enemies, but when it came to those she hated most, Shen Mu surely had a place among them.

"Her strength is far from what it once was, but after she was corrupted in the Battle of Xuandu she devoured the essence of countless gods and devils of Xuandu; her present strength is likely far above mine!

" Shen Mu drew a long breath, and was just about to slip into the void and hide himself when he suddenly saw the ground at the foot of the mountain quiver faintly, and countless trees on the ground grew with mad speed, the vines thickening until they crisscrossed like flood dragons and interwove with the trees! Soon the hundred-li forest at the foot of the mountain had become a tree altar of grand scale!

Shen Mu fixed his gaze upon it: every vein and line upon every leaf of that green altar formed a strange rune of the Dao of Yuandu!

And how many leaves went into the making of this altar?

Never before had he seen so complex and elaborate an altar!

Stranger still, what flowed within these trees and vines was not water but divine blood! The divine blood flowed through the branches, trunks and vines, shedding a divine radiance that made the trees all but transparent and lent the whole altar an uncanny atmosphere!

As the divine blood flowed, numberless runes surfaced upon the bark of branches, trunks and vines, growing ever clearer and ever brighter. Something stirred in Shen Mu's heart; he straightway put away the Taishi egg, sprang backward, vanished from the divine mountain, and slipped into the void with the Taishi egg.

His attainments in the Dao of Taichu were still far stronger than in the Dao of Taishi, so it was no great difficulty for his fleshly body to slip into the void.

Scarcely had he slipped into the void when the green altar split along a line, and a woman rose slowly forth.

The altar closed, holding her at its center, and that woman was none other than Earth Mother Yuanjun!

But this Earth Mother Yuanjun had wholly lost her former bearing as the Earth Mother whose great virtue bears all things; instead a baleful aura coiled about her, and killing intent rose from her in waves.

The blood-curse upon her was exceedingly dense, for too many wronged souls had died at her hands.

Those dead vengeful spirits were all deities the Heavenly Court had stationed in Xuandu, and the Earth Mother knew nothing of the Dao of Youdu, so she had no way at all to dissolve this baleful aura.

And the baleful aura would affect her judgment, and so affect her life.

Earth Mother Yuanjun stood upon the altar and at once began to work her art.

Shen Mu, hidden in the void, observed her for a while: Earth Mother Yuanjun's strength was far from recovered, and her fighting power should be comparable to a powerhouse of the Emperor Throne realm who possesses six or seven heavenly palaces.

Of course, she was still an ancient god, and still possessed part of her Yuanmu fleshly body.

But her strength could not be measured wholly by the Divine Treasury Heavenly Palace realm.

Watching closely, Shen Mu saw that Earth Mother Yuanjun's summoning altar was much like the Creator's summoning altar; the two were very similar, only hers was more complex.

"Earth Mother Yuanjun has delved deep into the Dao of Yuandu.