Chapter 1407 — Hostilities Have Begun

Thirteen thousand attended.

These must be the heads and leaders of every world, all of them members of the Heaven Alliance; the Heaven Alliance could well be called the most colossal power in this world!

Even the Heavenly Court was only the nominal ruler — the true sovereign of the myriad heavens and all worlds was still the Heaven Alliance!

A million years ago, when Shen Mu returned to the early years of Longhan and proposed to Ling Tianzun that they found the Heaven Alliance, what he had in mind was to overthrow the Heavenly Court, to let the later-born living beings — the human race above all — possess the right to live, so that tragedies like that of Yu Tianzun would never come again, and the people would no longer endure the wretched life of the Longhan age. Such too was the purpose with which Ling Tianzun, Yun Tianzun and Yue Tianzun had founded the Heaven Alliance. And today the Heavenly Court still stood, never overthrown, while the Heaven Alliance had hollowed it out and become the ruler in truth.

Only this age was no better than the Longhan age.

And the Heaven Alliance had evolved into a ruler even harder to contend with, harder to overthrow, than the Heavenly Court of Longhan! He put away the invitation.

Of the five founding elders of the Heaven Alliance, Yun Tianzun was dead; Yue Tianzun had barely recovered from his wounds, yet had already turned rebel; Ling Tianzun cycled between life and death; and Kaihuang had become a treacherous subject, a usurping traitor.

Only he, Mu Tianzun, could still show his face within the Heaven Alliance. "Therefore, whatever it takes, I must go!

" On the Heavenly River, tower ship after tower ship, great vessel after great vessel came sailing in from the myriad heavens and worlds, hastening toward the Heavenly Court.

Ever since Mu Tianzun devised the spirit energy translocation bridge, the Heavenly River had not known such commotion for a very long time.

The translocation bridges linked the myriad heavens and all worlds; every great heaven, down to the remotest Four Extremes Heavens, had translocation bridges to connect it, so that one might come and go from the Heavenly Court in the shortest possible time, saving untold hours. By devising the spirit energy translocation bridges, Mu Tianzun had raised the Heavenly Court's dominion over the great heavens to heights never seen before!

In the past, whenever the Heavenly Court's divinities descended upon another heaven, it was a devastation for that place: their mighty divine might crushed the world's barriers and bled away the heaven's spiritual power and qi. Now they need only descend through a translocation bridge, and far more swiftly, leaving the great heavens almost no chance of rebellion.

Travel among the great heavens grew more intimate as well, and in a mere dozen years or so trade had reached a prosperity once beyond all imagining.

It could be said that in the seventeen years since Mu Tianzun ascended to the Heavenly Court, the total commerce of the great heavens had matched the commerce of the hundred-odd thousand years before.

This time the lords of the myriad heavens and all worlds came to the Heavenly Court by ship upon the Heavenly River rather than straight through the translocation bridges, chiefly to flaunt their rank and standing.

After all, those qualified to sit in the councils of the Heaven Alliance were the lords of heavens; naturally they wished for a grand, clamorous show.

Yet it was precisely the frequency of that trade that had brought about a concentration of currency.

Especially in recent years, resources and wealth had begun to gather into the hands of the deity clans that commanded trade in each great heaven.

And the wealth of the myriad heavens and all worlds as a whole had begun to gather into the Origin World.

In the Heavenly Court, in the Yao Pool, at every holy site, boats came and went; divinities of every rank laughed and talked, delicacies of every kind flowed to the tables like water, wine cups crossed and clinked, beauties gathered like clouds. Every grand gathering of the Heaven Alliance in ages past had been held upon the Yao Pool, and the Hall of the Heaven Alliance likewise stood on an island in the Yao Sea.

Rumor said that was where the Heaven Alliance had been founded — that in those years, after Ling Tianzun took his leave of Mu Tianzun and Shen Tianzun, he met Yue Tianzun and Yun Tianzun upon the Yao Pool, and there the several of them founded the first Heaven Alliance and drew up its most ancient laws.

At this moment, in a side hall of the Hall of the Heaven Alliance, the Second Heavenly Master, Meng Yungui, was going through the dossiers sent in from the great heavens. Below him sat tens of thousands of Daoists of the Heavenly Court's Daoist order, each with dossiers piled mountain-high at his side; every heaven had two or three Daoists well versed in the arts of calculation to tally the trade records the heavens had sent over the past decade, sorting and reckoning them, then passing the tabulated results up to Meng Yungui for review.

The dossiers around Meng Yungui had piled up until they all but buried him.

Suddenly the Heavenly Master split into eight, becoming eight bodies; then with a shake each body grew three heads and six arms — four heads and eight arms apiece — palms flying, eyes racing across the pages. Tens of thousands of Daoists of the Heavenly Court's Daoist order and Meng Yungui shut themselves in that side hall and spent more than ten days before they had gone through the trade records sent from the myriad heavens and all worlds.

Meng Yungui clapped his hands and said in a low voice, "My thanks to you all, colleagues.

You have worked hard; go down and rest. " The Daoists bowed to him and filed out, until only the old Daoist Master of the Heavenly Court's order and Meng Yungui remained in the hall. The old Daoist Master, kindly of face and eye, smiled: "What has the Heavenly Master Meng discovered?

" Meng Yungui rubbed his crimson eyes, stretched himself, and said with a grave face, "A great calamity. " The old Daoist Master was astonished, and smiled: "The Taixu is pacified now; Wuyou Township and the Creator are pinned in the Void on the Far Shore at the end of the Void Bridge, with no chance of rising again.

The situation has never looked better. Why does the Heavenly Master speak such mournful words?

" Meng Yungui glanced at him and said sternly, "Teacher, you were the first to instruct me, and your mastery of the arts of calculation reaches to heaven.

If even I can see it, could you not?

" With a flick of his sleeve, countless dossiers flew up into the air and unrolled with a clatter.

The old Daoist Master of the Heavenly Court looked at those dossiers, and saw that on countless of them were marks Meng Yungui had drawn in cinnabar red.

He looked closely, and saw that the places Meng Yungui had marked were all trends in the flow of heaven coins among the great heavens. Heaven coins were the currency of the Heavenly Court, issued by the Heavenly Court's Heavenly Palace of Commerce; every heaven coin bore a unique Heavenly Court imprint that none could counterfeit.

The total stock of heaven coins was not fixed.

Especially in recent years, as trade among the great heavens flourished, the Heavenly Palace of Commerce issued more heaven coins, buying from the great heavens all manner of divine materials, divine metals and divine ingredients, spirit elixirs and wonder drugs, divine arms and keen weapons, tower ships and great vessels — even slaves.

And the trade among the great heavens themselves was conducted in heaven coins as well.

"Teacher, what do you see?

" Meng Yungui asked.

The old Daoist Master of the Heavenly Court smiled and shook his head. "In the flow of heaven coins through the myriad heavens and all worlds, most show one and the same phenomenon: heaven coins flowing out.