Chapter 1486 — The Brat Churns the River, Startling the Fish to Leap

Palace Heavenly Venerable knew at once that things had gone awry: the Nether Heavenly Venerable's body was recovering at a flying pace, swiftly turning from an old man into a youth!

The Nether Heavenly Venerable of old had been like a man bent double with age; it was for this reason that men called him the Old Nether Courier.

He had kept to Youdu all the year round, his mortal flesh long since withered and sapless, and a dark, gloomy air hung about him. He always came forth in the night, standing all alone in the glow of a lantern, folding paper men and paper horses.

His name was infamous throughout the heavens and the myriad worlds. To speak of the Old Nether Courier was enough to strike silence and trembling into the boldest of devils and gods, enough to stop a child's crying.

And now the Nether Heavenly Venerable had turned back into a youth; that heavy reek of twilight had fallen away from him, as though he had become once more that rather solitary boy who shunned the crowd and loved to sit alone by the water, kneading a divine art in his palms and flinging it into Yaochi to blast the fish.

He was not one of those youths who, at the least exertion, bulge with knots of muscle and swagger with brute strength; on the contrary, he was very thin and frail, his face somewhat pale, giving no great sense of menace.

Yet compared with the days when he had blasted fish beside Yaochi, he was plainly far more open of heart, far more confident, and his pupils were filled with the will to fight!

"The divine art ages not, though the heart grows old—

returned at last, he is still a youth—"

The Nether Heavenly Venerable lifted his head slowly, and behind him that vast, measureless primordial spirit lifted its head as well.

Palace Heavenly Venerable looked up. The greatness of this primordial spirit was enough to stand on equal footing against beings such as the Heavenly Duke and Tubo!

For a long age, everyone had believed the Nether Heavenly Venerable to be in decline. He had lain silent in Youdu, never coming into contact with the divine arts and dao methods of the outside world; he had never undergone the Longhan Revolution, the Chiming Revolution, the Shanghuang Reform, the Kai Huang Reform, or the Jingping Reform. His dao methods and divine arts must surely be outmoded, unable to keep pace with the times.

Yet the ten Heavenly Venerables of the Heavenly Court had never overlooked him. The Heavenly Court had established Mingdu and put the Yin Son of Heaven in charge of it, to stand in opposition to Youdu, guiding the souls of the dead, and of gods and devils, into Mingdu.

The Heavenly Court's purpose, beyond weakening the strength of Youdu, had been to keep the Nether Heavenly Venerable from mastering the dao methods and divine arts of the world through these dead.

Only the Nine Heavenly Venerables of Longhan understood how terrifying the potential of the Nether Heavenly Venerable, one of their own number, truly was. That was why the Vast Heavenly Venerable and the Fire Heavenly Venerable would not grant him the chance to grow.

Yet everyone had overlooked one thing: within Youdu, the Nether Heavenly Venerable possessed a hundred million clones, scattered through all the heavens and worlds, guiding the dead onward.

Each of these clones was equal in strength to an ordinary god or devil.

True, the dao methods and divine arts the dead brought to Youdu had made him grow, but what had truly raised him to a height beyond anyone's imagining was his clones.

He was, by nature, the Nether Heavenly Venerable who had founded his dao upon the soul, the peerless prodigy who first broke through the boundary between life and death. After he came to Youdu, his primordial spirit had grown ever mightier.

A hundred million clones were the outward proof of the might of his primordial spirit.

And in this battle at Xuandu, Youdu had been emptied; he had recalled every one of his nether couriers. When all these couriers returned into his main body, his primordial spirit would be enough to shake the cosmos and the heavens and earth!

Before Palace Heavenly Venerable, in the brief moment when that primordial spirit raised its head, the deep, resonant Great Dao of Youdu burst forth with the sound of the dao — like the murmuring of countless souls, like mortals chanting scriptures in a temple, filled with unfathomable mystery.

Sixty-four different Daos of Youdu gathered behind his head. His primordial spirit, and the Dao of Youdu it harbored, stood against the Dao of Heaven here in Xuandu, carving Xuandu between them and forming a Youdu of its own!

"Perhaps... perhaps the Void Heavenly Venerable is not the most perfect heir to Tubo. Perhaps he is..." A terrible thought suddenly rose in Palace Heavenly Venerable's heart.

The Nether Heavenly Venerable's primordial spirit was so vast, so mighty, that it roused in her the same shudder she had felt when facing Tubo.

Though she was no longer a Creator, though she had long since remedied the Creator race's weakness in soul, still, facing the Nether Heavenly Venerable, that shudder surged up in her heart again, making her heart convulse, her muscles shudder, her bones shudder.

Even her primordial spirit shuddered!

"But the Nine Heavenly Venerables of Longhan are already past, and now the world belongs to the ten Heavenly Venerables!"

Palace Heavenly Venerable gave a shrill, ringing cry, and from the Heavenly Court formed of thirty-five heavenly palaces came the brazen blast of horns, setting her blood and qi seething and sending her battle power soaring. This woman was fierce beyond measure, one of the few who dared to cut at Tai Di and Tai Chu; even though the Nether Heavenly Venerable possessed the mightiest primordial spirit in history, she feared him not, and dared to do battle!

The Ancestral Court Divine Whip in her hand quivered, then went straight as a spear. She leveled it at the Nether Heavenly Venerable and charged in savagely to kill!

The Nether Heavenly Venerable might have the mightiest primordial spirit, but he had just fallen into the illusory realm of her divine consciousness, and under her storm-like blows he must surely have been badly wounded. His strength must be sharply diminished!

She was wielding the spear art of Tai Di!

As the spear thrust out, the treasure formed from the ancestral-court dragon vein came alive at once, like a dragon vein ten thousand li long, writhing and changing in the air, shaking space itself!

That mighty mountain body was like dragon scales; the dragon's body coiled and wound; the mountain's roots were like dragon claws, every inch of them ferocious!

That strike was magnificent and overwhelming, and with the vast, mighty dharma power of the great Heavenly Court formed by the thirty-five heavenly palaces, her strength had risen to the highest peak she could attain in all her life!

The Nether Heavenly Venerable's dharma power must be far inferior to hers — and that was the key to her victory!

With her own dharma power and her treasures, she would beat the Nether Heavenly Venerable from youth back into old age, from gladness back into gloom!

Hummm—

A tremor came. Fine wrinkles were shaken out upon Palace Heavenly Venerable's fair cheeks. Hummm, hummm — tremor upon tremor came, and upon her face they formed creases, creases that could not be smoothed away.

She saw an utterly horrifying sight. With each tremor, behind the head of the Nether Heavenly Venerable's incomparably towering primordial spirit, a second world of Youdu appeared — then a third, a fourth, a fifth!

World upon world of Youdu spread out, and Palace Heavenly Venerable's eye corners twitched violently. These worlds of Youdu were heavens, layer upon layer, like Kai Huang's sword-dao heavens.

But Kai Huang's sword-dao heavens were a posterior heaven dao, a domain no one had ever trodden, and Kai Huang had needed to perfect and open it up one step at a time, one footprint at a time.