Chapter 1496 — The Omen of the Mind's Collapse

Celestial Venerable Huo's power was vast beyond measure. Having absorbed the might of the Southern Emperor Vermilion Bird, his power was mighty beyond compare, and his comprehension of Dao Fire had reached the twenty-fourth level of the Heavenly Dao Realm!

This blow was certain to burn Lan Yutian, Shen Mu, and God King Langwan all to ashes together, to leave the three of them dead with no place for burial!

He could not endure Shen Mu's blasphemy, nor could he endure God King Langwan using a divine-consciousness illusion to peel open his heart, laying his ugly and guilty side starkly bare before Lan Yutian. Even less could he endure Lan Yutian witnessing his betrayal with his own eyes, witnessing him slay Celestial Venerable Yu within the illusion!

Killing the three would not make him taller or more august, nor would it gain him anything, but it would ease his heart somewhat.

If Shen Mu died, if Lan Yutian died, if God King Langwan died, only then would the world never learn his secret, never know his heart.

For him, having his heart ripped out and shown to others was something utterly unbearable!

Just as his palm was about to close over the three, suddenly, behind God King Langwan's head, celestial palace after celestial palace swayed into being; her divine consciousness erupted, and that mighty divine consciousness bore Shen Mu and the others through thirty-five layers of the void!

Her divine ability burst forth, yet it did not strike at Celestial Venerable Huo. It blasted forward!

In the moment her divine consciousness blasted forward, Shen Mu's physical body swelled enormously, and his Primordial Womb Divine Repository Domain expanded outward.

The Mystic Capital soared into the sky, the Nether Capital sank into the earth, the Four Poles stood in the four directions, and the Origin Capital, the Ancestral Court, the myriad heavens, and ten thousand realms emerged one after another! In a single breath, he transformed into the four-faced divine form, in every direction, from every angle, it was the front.

His palm lay flat, and God King Langwan stood at the very center of that palm, cloaked by his Divine Repository Domain.

As the domain spread open, God King Langwan was immediately turned to face Celestial Venerable Huo, and the divine ability she had sent forward was immediately turned into a divine ability aimed at Celestial Venerable Huo!

Celestial Venerable Huo's colossal palm tore through layer after layer of the void, scorching it to a molten blur as Dao Fire blazed fiercely, but reaching Shen Mu and the others in so short a time was no easy matter. Meanwhile, Langwan's divine ability reached his chest in an instant and burrowed into his body.

This divine ability was divine consciousness, formless, having no substance. Moreover, since God King Langwan had been attacking forward, her form screened the ability from his sight, so before Celestial Venerable Huo had time to defend, the divine-consciousness ability had already surged into his body!

To see a divine ability from the front and to see it from behind are entirely two different things.

Had God King Langwan faced Celestial Venerable Huo directly and unleashed her divine-consciousness ability, every subtlety of that ability would have been grasped by him the instant it was cast. Destroying Langwan's ability was no difficult matter for Celestial Venerable Huo.

But just now, Langwan's ability had been launched along its forward course, and with her back turned to him, by the time he understood what was happening, the ability had already reached his chest. The divine consciousness exploded within Celestial Venerable Huo.

What Langwan had visualized were the Four Emperors of the Four Pole Heavens, the Azure Dragon, the White Tiger, the Vermilion Bird, and the Dark Tortoise swiftly taking shape within his body.

Dragon's roar, tiger's howl, the shrill cry of the Vermilion Bird; the Dark Tortoise, dense and ponderous, the Soaring Serpent, destruction began from within!

Boom, a violent concussion came from within Celestial Venerable Huo's body. The Vermilion Bird that God King Langwan had visualized was the first to tear open his chest, dragging sheets of flame out from his body as it spread its wings and soared aloft!

The Vermilion Bird cried out, devoured the Dao Fire, and lashed out its talons, hooking toward Celestial Venerable Huo's eyes. His back burst open; the White Tiger's head thrust out from the gash, gave a roar, and its claws shredded his back.

At the same time, the Soaring Serpent swam out of his mouth, its thousand wings vibrating, and wrapped itself about his neck with a series of rapid hissing sounds, nearly beheading him!

And the Dark Tortoise, solid and heavy beyond measure, swelled within his belly, pinning down his physical body! A dragon's cry rang out as the Azure Dragon split open the crown of his head and rose into the sky!

The creations of God King Langwan's divine consciousness were truly this terrifying!

Of course, much of the credit must go to Jingping. The Dao Ancestor had led the Daoist school of the Heavenly Court, deriving the great Dao of the Four Ancient God Emperors from beginning to end through macroscopic numerology, and establishing the ancient-god numerological rune system.

Thereafter, Lin Xuan, the sect master of the Jingping Daoist school, along with Xu Shenghua and others, had led Jingping's numerological masters in re-deriving the runes of the ancient gods' great Dao through microscopic numerology.

And so, the great Dao rune system was brought to perfection.

Even the Dao Ancestor himself had needed to travel to Jingping to study, to perfect his own Dao arts and divine abilities.

Where God King Langwan surpassed the other Creators, including Celestial Venerable Gong, in open-mindedness was that she had, early on, come into contact with the cultivation system of Carefree Township, had encountered the divine-repository celestial palaces, divine abilities, and Dao arts, and had absorbed the fruits of Kaihuang's Reform, merging them into the Creators' system of divine-consciousness cultivation.

By this time, the Creators of the Other Shore Void all cultivated the divine-repository celestial-palace system, and had converted their divine-consciousness abilities into runic great-Dao abilities.

What made her even more open-minded was that she had encountered and absorbed the fruits of the Jingping Reform even earlier than the Ten Celestial Venerables.

Whatever proved beneficial to the race of Creators, she would embrace and assimilate.

Jingping's great-Dao rune system, in turn, had been learned by her and used to enhance the Dao-art might of her divine-consciousness abilities. In the past, when the Creators visualized, they strove only to depict the object of their visualization with lifelike fidelity, without ever contemplating it from the angle of the great Dao. But with Jingping's great-Dao rune system, the power of their abilities rose in a straight line, growing mightier and mightier!

And for an existence like God King Langwan, whose attainments in divine consciousness were incomparably vast, she could gather terrifying strength in a single instant and visualize the Four Ancient God Emperors!

"I am not his match. " God King Langwan's strike had landed, gravely wounding Celestial Venerable Huo, yet her gaze did not fall upon him. It fell instead upon that enormous hand which had smashed through layer after layer of the void and was hurtling straight toward them.

She shook her head.

"This blow, we will all die. " Celestial Venerable Huo's palm grew larger and larger.

Driven by his heaven-reaching power, the force of this strike was not fading; it was still swelling!

His power could not match Celestial Venerable Hong's. A single stroke from Celestial Venerable Hong could shatter the thirty-five layers of the void and gravely wound the enemies within.