Chapter 1350 — Half a Chance of Victory

"If Grandfather Alchemist cannot manage it, there is still Taishi. So long as Taishi can dissolve the dao wound upon Celestial Venerable Yue, then healing the injuries of her mortal flesh and body will pose no difficulty at all for me!

" Shen Mu comforted himself thus. Though the Alchemist's conduct always gave one a rather unreliable feeling, the Alchemist was, after all, the strongest master of the healing dao under heaven; and apart from his repeated failures in testing new medicines upon Shen Mu's own person, he had no other misdeeds to his name. Shen Mu packed his gear and made ready to set out.

He went to look for Shu Jun, but Shu Jun had taken the Grand Emperor's head in the treasure seal and left the Great Black Mountain, no one knew where. The First Ancestor Human Emperor, leading a great many Human Emperors, was also preparing to go out, and all those Human Emperors turned their eyes upon Shen Mu in unison, every one of them wearing a look of hostility. "I hear a Taipu beast has appeared nearby. Such giant beasts are exceedingly rare; in those years they were the mounts of the Three Kings of the Primordial Age.

We mean to go and subdue that Taipu. " The First Ancestor said to Shen Mu: "Shen'er, will you come along?

" The hostility in the eyes of Qi Kang, Yi Shan, and the other Human Emperors deepened, and they said one after another: "First Ancestor, why call him along?

With him there, will there be any share of the Taipu left for us? " "Once we have subdued the Taipu, every one of us will ride it a round when we return, and give Human Emperor Shen a good thrashing!

" Shen Mu laughed heartily and waved a hand at the crowd; then he turned his face away, and his expression became incomparably dark, giving the Alchemist quite a start.

"Subdue a Taipu and you think you can beat me? Patriarchs of every generation, you are still far too young!

" They boarded Jingping's swift ship and sailed out of the Hundred Thousand Black Mountains.

Scarcely had they departed when Xu Shenghua and Lan Yutian, at the head of three thousand god-men and giant beasts, arrived at the so-called Holy Mountain. Xu Shenghua and Lan Yutian, with the three thousand god-men and the hundred-odd giant beasts, stood at the outer edge and gazed at the dark, dark expanse of the Hundred Thousand Great Black Mountains; for a long while none of them spoke.

"That old fellow called Taiyi is a liar," Xu Shenghua murmured. Lan Yutian nodded again and again.

Dragon Qilin and Yan'er hurried out to welcome them; at the sight of them they could not help but rejoice, and yet felt some regret as well.

Yan'er said with a smile: "The Hierarch left not a moment ago, and you arrive right on his heels.

Had you come a little earlier, you would have met them! " Lan Yutian opened his mouth and caught, right on cue, the food she tossed him, and said in astonishment: "My brother has left? " Dragon Qilin nodded and said in a low voice: "It is just as well you did not run into the Hierarch, or he would have tricked you into digging mines again, and without paying you any wages either.

" Lan Yutian said quietly: "Does he at least feed you?

" "Feed you? You flatter yourself!

" Dragon Qilin curled his lip: "You see to your own meals.

My meals are all cooked for me by Yan'er.

" The crowd poured into the Great Black Mountain.

Lan Yutian hesitated a moment, then said: "I had meant to ask my brother for a few mountain peaks, but now he has gone. .

. " Dragon Qilin's eyes lit up at once, and he said with a smile: "There are peaks here in plenty, more than you could ever claim! Whichever peaks take your fancy, go and take them for yourselves; only you must build your own palaces and houses. I have here a piece of Taichu divine stone that I can lend you, to visualize dwellings and palaces with.

" Xu Shenghua said with a smile: "No need. It is better that we build with our own hands.

Since we are living in the Hierarch's land, it is only right that we dig a few mines and put in some labor for him. " Dragon Qilin hesitated a moment, and did not tell them that these Great Black Mountains sometimes split open at night, and that terrifying powerhouses of the prehistoric era would crawl out from within.

"They will understand well enough after one night.

" Dragon Qilin thought to himself: "Come the next day, Taiyi will appear and explain it to them, and then have them patch up the Great Black Mountains. " That said, Dragon Qilin still spoke with earnest gravity: "When night falls you must be careful.

These Hundred Thousand Black. . .

Hundred Thousand Holy Mountains are fine in every way, except that once night comes you must not step outside the black mountains.

In the darkness there is great terror. " Xu Shenghua said in surprise: "Do not go out after dark? This place is rather like the Ruins of old.

" Dragon Qilin thought to himself: "A hundred thousand times more terrifying than the Ruins, and more! Heaven be thanked, the Hierarch has at last tricked two clever men into guarding this domain. Before this, I alone was the clever one here, holding the whole situation together, and standing against beings like the Ten Celestial Venerables.

I was rather outnumbered and outmatched. .

. " His tail shot up with a swish and quivered with a whir, and he was exceedingly pleased with himself: "To think that I have stood against villains as savage and vicious as the Ten Celestial Venerables for so many years, and they still could not take the Hundred Thousand Holy Mountains from me. I really am something! " Jingping's swift ship, though not slow, was after all no match for the speed of Celestial Venerable Yue's lantern; it took Shen Mu and the Alchemist more than a month to fly from the Hundred Thousand Holy Mountains to the Rift in the Heavens.

Throughout that month and more, the Alchemist pondered all manner of elixirs and wonder drugs aboard the ship: now propping his chin on his hand in deep and bitter thought, now writing furiously with flying brush, now setting out in detail the composition of this or that miraculous medicine, now transforming his vital essence into the dao patterns hidden within the various elixirs, snipping apart one dao pattern after another to piece together new ones. Though outwardly he brimmed with confidence, as if going to heal Celestial Venerable Yue's wounds would be no more than a matter of lifting his hand, in truth the pressure in his heart was great.

After all, it was his first time coming into contact with a Celestial Venerable, and what he had to heal was a Celestial Venerable's dao wound, the first such case since he had achieved mastery in the healing dao, and the most intractable of his life! Shen Mu, for his part, busied himself aboard the ship sorting out the Taishi divine stones, burying them one by one in the Taishi ore veins of the divine treasury of his own primordial embryo.

The Taishi Egg hopped out of its nest on the altar and bounced about, directing him to the exact position for burying each divine stone. Shen Mu, like a diligent little squirrel, under its direction put the divine stones properly in place; then he took out the Taisu divine stones, intending to bury them too in the Taisu ore veins.

When he had buried most of them, he suddenly came to his senses: "The Taisu Goddess has already been born into the world, and she bears a grudge against me. What am I burying these divine stones for?

She cannot very well go back into the egg and hatch inside my spirit embryo! " He dug out one divine stone, took out the Taisu eggshell, tilted his head back and drank a mouthful of the egg liquid from the shell's rim, and at once began refining Taisu primal liquid with the aid of the Taisu divine stone.