Chapter 1337 — All Living Things Are as Livestock

The Four Heavenly Venerables were of one heart and one strength, and the mighty void seemed not to exist before them. Common gods and demons would be assimilated by the void the moment they entered the first layer of it; even a Creator of formidable cultivation could not press deep into the many-layered void.

Only a Creator Elder whose cultivation had reached a certain realm could, after death, entrust his divine consciousness to the depths of the many-layered void and become a Fore-Spirit. As for gods and demons of other races, only those whose divine consciousness had entered the Way, who had comprehended the existence of the void patterns, could go deep into the many-layered void.

Figures like Shen Mu, who plunged directly to the thirtieth void, were exceedingly rare; even in the age when the Creators ruled the cosmos, such beings were few.

Shen Mu relied on the fact that he had comprehended the Innate Primordial Qi and the Way of Divine Consciousness, and had already begun to touch upon the Way of Taichu; and so entering the void gave him little trouble. But the Four Heavenly Venerables relied on their own mighty flesh.

Their bodies were so strong that not only could the void fail to assimilate them — it was crushed into ruin by the pressure of their flesh instead! This was the terror of beings at the Heavenly Venerable level!

Yet the Great Emperor knew that even Heavenly Venerables had a limit! That limit had long since been sounded out by Heavenly Venerable Yun, Heavenly Venerable Ling and Heavenly Venerable Yue.

The Void Bridge within the Great Void was a bridge thrown across the thirty-fifth layer of the void; it had been forged by the three Heavenly Venerables together with the Creators of the Great Void, and at the far end of that bridge Heavenly Venerable Yue had built three rooms.

The bridge was laid in an exceedingly perilous fashion; to cross it one must endure the grinding annihilation of thirty-five layers of void.

Even a Heavenly Venerable, careless for a single moment, would be worn away.

Heavenly Venerable Huo, Heavenly Venerable Xu and Kaihuang had all been trapped there, and had nearly been annihilated by the void. The thirty-fifth layer of void was the limit of a Heavenly Venerable; the Great Emperor need only carry the Void Mother Beast and flee into the thirty-fifth layer of void, and he could force the Four Heavenly Venerables to withdraw in the face of the difficulty!

From the depths of the void came faintly the sound of thunder, accompanied by lightning flashing deep in space; standing in the Ancestral Court, one could even see, when the lightning flashed, enormous shadows lit up in the depths of space. Those bodies were monstrously vast, and as they moved, cracks crazed the space around them, spreading in every direction like a spider's web! They moved swiftly, too; when a shadow was lit, dimmed, and lit again, they had already traveled who knew how far.

On this day, blood suddenly flowed out of the sky. Gurgling divine blood poured down like a great waterfall from the depths of the heavens, forming a cascade of blood that hung suspended in midair.

Shen Mu had not gone far; seeing this bloodfall, he also noticed something falling from the sky, like a planet smashing into the earth, raising gusts of wild wind and a rain of meteors. Where that thing fell, the ground shook and the mountains swayed, volcanoes erupted; even the Ancestral Court, far more solid than outer lands, could hardly withstand such an impact.

When Shen Mu arrived there, more firelight burst forth in the sky, one enormous fireball after another trailing long flames and plunging down from the void. Shen Mu looked into the first great crater: inside lay an enormous fist.

That was the Great Emperor's fist, struck off by some Heavenly Venerable, and it had brought down the mountains and split the earth.

"The Great Emperor's body is, after all, one of the mightiest bodies of the Primordial Age; the only one who could stand shoulder to shoulder with him is Heavenly Emperor Taichu.

This fist might be worth collecting, to be refined into a treasure.

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" Scarcely had the thought crossed his mind when countless roots flew out of the magma-like earth, dragged up the Great Emperor's fist, and fled with it!

"The Earth Mother! " Shen Mu immediately flew in pursuit, meaning to snatch the Great Emperor's hand, when suddenly the sky turned bright, turned white as snow, and a thigh fell from the heavens, more terrifying still than the fist's landing; the wild winds and giant waves it raised sent him flying with a fierce slap!

"The Great Emperor's thigh!

" Shen Mu halted.

From the sky more objects fell, boom, boom, boom, pounding a region ten thousand li across until the earth went soft and buoyant, the surface floating upon magma like a pot of braised pork, bubbles lifting chunks of meat, gurgling, gurgling, the ground trembling without cease. "The Great Emperor is truly pitiable, dismembered by the Four Heavenly Venerables.

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" He could not help feeling some compassion: the mightiest being of the Primordial Age, facing the Four Heavenly Venerables, had come to such an end. Then he cheered up again, crossing seas of fire, flying amid the flames, searching for the Great Emperor's body. Suddenly a monstrous body fell from the sky, crashing into the sea of fire and magma, tumbling and rolling.

Shen Mu flew forward: it was the Void Mother Beast!

The Mother Beast's head was gone, cut down by some Heavenly Venerable, and the corpse had tumbled down out of the void. "The Mother Beast is dead? Then are the Void Beasts to go extinct?

" He was struck dumb.

The Void Mother Beast had grown to its present state only by devouring every Void Beast in the Ancestral Court; the death of this Mother Beast at the hands of the Four Heavenly Venerables meant that the Mother Beasts of the Ancestral Court were extinct!

"Langwan still has a Void Beast.

I wonder whether that one is still alive?

If that Void Beast dies too, then the Void Beasts will truly be extinct!

" He ran toward the Void Mother Beast's corpse.

Suddenly something rolled out of the Mother Beast's body with a clatter — a Void Beast egg — and fell into the magma.

Shen Mu's heart stirred; his magic power surged out and coiled up the Void Beast egg, drawing it into the space between his brows. That Mother Beast had birthed its last egg; the corpse sank into the magma and vanished.

Shen Mu was about to fish the Mother Beast's corpse up when he suddenly stopped, his expression grave: the corpse was withering visibly to the naked eye, its beast blood draining away at tremendous speed! "The beings of the previous epoch — their sacrificial power has already reached even here?

" He could not help but shudder.

The vast corpse of the Mother Beast had, in but a brief moment, turned into giant bones amid the magma, and before long the energy within the bones too was exhausted, and they collapsed and crumbled!

His heart sank; he flew up and hurried toward the places where other fragments of the Great Emperor's body had fallen.

He came to where the Great Emperor's arm had fallen, but only a stretch of shattered bone remained! "The Great Emperor's bones have vanished too, flesh and blood all gone!

" Shen Mu's face was grave.

He raised his head and looked at the bloodfall in the sky, where the Great Emperor's divine blood had fallen. He roused his teleportation divine art, and the next moment crossed ten thousand li to appear where the bloodfall fell.

His robes flapped, the cloak behind him streaming, as he slowly descended; yet where the bloodfall had landed no lake or sea of blood had formed — the ground was instead exceedingly clean, without the least trace of blood!

"It seems the Ancestral Court is indeed unfit to serve as a battlefield.

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