Chapter 1427 — The Chance to Grasp the Dao

The Demon King Dutian roused his magic power and first moved the divine ability practitioners and gods that dwelt within the Hutian Bottle out of it. The divine ability practitioners and gods of Jingping had brought with them many spiritual herbs and seeds of grain, and thereupon they flew to and fro among the black mountains, scattering the seeds. The practitioners wielded the divine ability of Creation, making the seeds grow swiftly.

A hundred thousand black mountains, though every one were planted with crops, could not sustain a population of hundreds of millions; for this Great Black Wood to support ten million would already be straining the heavens.

And besides grain, there was livestock to be raised as well. In the Ancestral Court the ancient giant beasts could be tamed, and powerful giant beasts hunted; but that too required powerful divine ability practitioners and gods to break new ground.

On the front side of the Ancestral Court the ancient giant beasts summoned by the Earth Mother Yuanjun still bred and multiplied, growing stronger by the day; on the back side Long Xiao had likewise left behind many giant beasts, which had not migrated with the rest into the Beast Realm.

The ancient giant beasts were exceedingly fierce and terrible; to say nothing of the naturally frail human race, even gods and demons, facing an ancient giant beast, seemed utterly insignificant in both strength and physique. "We must also expand our territory and build greater divine cities.

" The Demon King Dutian marshaled the divine ability practitioners and gods of Jingping, moved more people out of the Hutian Bottle, and said to Yan'er, "Our present territory cannot hold so many people, and the several hundred divine cities of Jingping are all too small in scale. Against one giant beast it would be well enough, but two or three giant beasts could bring a city down.

" Yan'er was building a bird's nest; hearing this she laughed and said, "Lan Yutian has many giant beast disciples under his command. We can have them lend a hand.

" "Giant beast disciples?

" The Demon King Dutian was dumbfounded; it was hard to picture giant beasts sitting beneath Lan Yutian listening to lectures. "Giant beasts can understand Sage Lan's lessons? " Yan'er carried over several dragon sparrow eggs and set them in the nest. These eggs were strange of appearance; the veins that surfaced on their shells were not wholly those of the dragon sparrow, but bore qilin markings as well.

The surface of the shells was rough, and from the outside they looked like qilin eggs.

Qilin eggs were rather coarse, whereas dragon sparrow eggs bore exceedingly fine veins.

Yan'er wove garlands and slipped them over the eggs, painted a few smiling faces on them, and said, "The young master says that the heads of giant beasts are big, but they are not clever. Yet if they can cultivate under Lan Yutian and have their wisdom opened, in time they may well found a civilization of giant beasts.

Some giant beasts have already learned to use divine abilities! My husband went with Long Xiao, the head of the Beast Realm, to the Beast Realm to make preparations for that very matter, this civilization of giant beasts.

The Cult Master says Long Xiao is a man without foresight and cannot found a giant beast civilization, and so he had my husband make the preparations.

" The Demon King Dutian looked over these dragon sparrow eggs, when he saw Yan'er bring over a huge Void Beast egg and set it in the center, then transform into a great dragon sparrow and sit upon it. "That fat dragon actually took a wife before the Cult Master did. " Dutian thought to himself, "When did he marry? He never even told his old friend. Ah, that is it, they anticipated the marriage; the deed was done before the wedding. And what will hatch from the child of a dragon sparrow and a dragon qilin?

And why is there such a big fleshy egg here as well? " The Void Beast egg was a fleshy egg, its shell a layer of flesh, unlike the eggs of ordinary birds; he had never seen such a thing, so naturally he did not know.

In Langxuan's fleet the tower ships grew fewer and fewer; one after another they came down to land, and the places they chose were all lands of plenty.

Aboard the flagship, the God-Emperor Langxuan humbly sought instruction from Shen Mu, laying out one by one the difficulties his reincarnation body had met with while studying in Jingping. Shen Mu answered everything he knew, but he too came upon many things he could not grasp, and whenever that happened, Langxuan began to suspect that Shen Mu was deliberately holding back. Yet he wronged Shen Mu there.

Though Shen Mu often returned to Jingping to study the fruits of the Reforms, Jingping changed with each passing day; all manner of divine abilities and Dao arts were being developed, and from them many new Dao arts and divine abilities had branched out, opening up different lines of growth, a veritable hundred schools contending and a hundred flowers blooming.

After returning to Jingping, the time Shen Mu could spend on study was far too short; he generally picked out only those fruits that would benefit him, and other results, however fine, he had to cast aside.

In the Jingping Reforms the most advanced fruits were concentrated in the Palace of Learning and the academies, while the very foremost were gathered in the Institute of Hearing the Dao; merely studying the fruits of these few places already took a very long time, to say nothing of the new results that emerged at every moment.

The God-Emperor Langxuan said, "Emperor Yanxiu has gathered the gods of the world who are masters of the Dao of the Primordial Spirit and the Dao of Creation to study the art of creating the Heavenly Palace, intending that once the Heavenly Palace is damaged it may swiftly be restored.

Emperor Yanxiu and the gods of Jingping created three doctrines in twelve scrolls, called the Treatise on the Creation of the Heavenly Palace. There is a passage in it, the chapter on the Creation of the Heavenly Gate, that leaves me somewhat perplexed. " Shen Mu had never heard of the Treatise on the Creation of the Heavenly Palace either.

"Show me the Treatise," he said. The God-Emperor Langxuan hesitated a moment, the two horns on his forehead flushing faintly red, and brought out the Treatise on the Creation of the Heavenly Palace, three doctrines in twelve scrolls, of terrifying thickness.

The Ten Heavenly Venerables nominally suppressed the Jingping Reforms, yet they had long since slipped silently into Jingping to steal the fruits of the Reforms; they had even copied down the new cultivation arts and peerless techniques Jingping had created. Thick-skinned as Langxuan was, to bring out Jingping's cultivation arts in the presence of Shen Mu, one of the three heroes of the Reforms, still left him somewhat ashamed. After all, he too had been one of the Heavenly Venerables who suppressed the Reforms; during the Jingping Calamity his forces had invaded Jingping and caused enormous casualties.

Shen Mu pored over the Heavenly Gate chapter in detail, brooding long and hard, and Langxuan could not help but grow suspicious; the shame in his heart was flung away clean, and the horns on his forehead returned to their normal color. "Is this fellow truly unable, or only feigning? The way he looks, it is not as though I am seeking instruction from him, but rather as though he were stealing the Jingping Reforms from me. .

.

" When he was ashamed his face did not redden, but his two horns would flush. Shen Mu tried his hand at an answer, and the God-Emperor Langxuan swiftly found several flaws in it; the two stared wide-eyed at each other, and Shen Mu looked rather embarrassed.

After a moment the God-Emperor Langxuan sighed. "Heavenly Venerable Mu, let us each set forth what we have understood and exchange it with the other.