Chapter 1535 — Alone into the Imperial Capital

Shen Mu nodded. "Tai Yi is lost within the Jade Capital City, and bade me follow a map to save him. But the map he spoke of, I have never understood what it means. I must go to the Ancestral Court myself and see exactly what is there. And I want to see with my own eyes what the Jade Capital City truly has to do with the Jade Capital realm. Until I see it with my own eyes, I can never be at ease."

He paused, and explained to them, "I have already cultivated to the Nine Hells Terrace realm. To advance further, I must step into the Jade Capital trap! Otherwise, in dharma power I can never catch up with the Ten Heavenly Venerables. Even if I cultivate the thirty-six heavens of the dao realm, in dharma power I still cannot be stronger than the Ten Heavenly Venerables. The Jade Capital City, I must go."

Granny Zhu was faintly worried. "You leave the Ancestral Ground of the Dao Fire on the Holy Mountain; what if Heavenly Venerable Fire comes out of the Jade Capital City and comes to seize it?"

Shen Mu smiled faintly and said softly, "Rest easy, Granny. If he and I meet in the Jade Capital City, I will make him realize that the Ancestral Ground of the Dao Fire no longer belongs to him, and that the Great Black Mountain of the Ancestral Court is forbidden ground he may not set foot upon."

His words brimmed with immense self-confidence, and it was as though he had returned to the man he once was.

"Then at least you should take Tai Yi's staff, surely?"

Granny Zhu thrust Tai Yi's staff into his hand. "You have the Tribulation Sword, but Tai Yi's staff is, after all, the dao weapon of one who has attained the dao. Carrying it can do no harm."

Shen Mu thought it over, and put the staff away. He waved his hand, watching Granny Zhu and the others walk into the Holy Mountain and on toward the World Tree, and said silently in his heart, "Granny, I will not let what happened to Lame Grandpa happen again, to any of you. I have grown up. In the past you protected me; now it is my turn to protect you."

He spread his cloak and turned away.

"Junior Brother!"

Wei Suifeng came flying after him, holding up a great cauldron, calling loudly, "Junior Brother, wait for me!"

Shen Mu halted, and frowned. "Eldest Senior Brother, I cannot take you with me. The Jade Capital City is too dangerous; I cannot spare the attention to protect you..."

"Bah, bah!"

Wei Suifeng was beside himself with fury. "I am the Emperor Yunluo, who roamed and commanded for a million years, and I need your protection? What I mean is, I have been to the Jade Capital City. I followed Tai Yi across sixteen Chaos Rivers, and I left a map behind. If you go there, using my map will save you a great deal of trouble."

Shen Mu thanked him.

Wei Suifeng set the great cauldron down, and the star-sand within rose into the air, assembling into a map of the Jade Capital City.

But the places marked on that map were only those Wei Suifeng and Shujun had walked; the places they had not walked remained blank.

Shen Mu studied it closely, and committed it to memory.

Just then the star-sand abruptly changed, revealing another map, utterly unlike the one before, seamed with thousands upon thousands of lines and paths, exceedingly complex.

Shen Mu was astonished, and studied this map closely: the terrain in it he had never seen at all!

He looked at Wei Suifeng, who was equally bewildered, murmuring, "This is not a map drawn by my divine power... Ah, yes! Tai Yi once said that it was by seeing the map I left outside the city that he learned the position of Shujun and me, and only thus was he able to find us! Could it be that Tai Yi, knowing he might not return, tampered with my cauldron, and used my cauldron to record his own footprints?"

"That is possible."

Shen Mu memorized it with all his mind, and said, "Brother Tai Yi said to save him by following the map, so this map must have to do with him. Is this map a map of the Jade Capital City?"

He set it against Wei Suifeng's map, and found that the two had not the slightest resemblance; plainly, the map Tai Yi left was not of the Jade Capital City.

Wei Suifeng then brought out two mirrors, saying, "Shujun and I went to Miluo Palace, the deepest place in the Jade Capital City, and took a rubbing from the palace wall of a dao-pattern imprint belonging to the master of Miluo Palace. Look at it on the way; it will let you understand him a little."

Shen Mu put away the two mirrors. He glanced at them briefly, and his expression changed drastically.

Wei Suifeng hesitated a while, then at last made up his mind, turned and left, shaking his head. "Much as I would like to go with you into the Jade Capital City again, on reflection I really might drag you down. That cursed place is far too dangerous..."

Shen Mu called out, "Senior Brother, cultivate hard!"

"I know!" Wei Suifeng waved his hand irritably.

Shen Mu laughed heartily, then stirred the Mystic Body Three-Cinnabar Art, with the Zaiji Heavenly Palace as its chief, crossing a thousand mountains and ten thousand rivers in a single step, rushing toward the Jade Capital City of the Ancestral Court.

A day later, he at last arrived at the Jade Capital City of the Ancestral Court. He halted outside the city and looked toward it.

He saw that the whole ancient divine city was now fully revealed: towering, magnificent, ancient, ruined. This divine city gave one a feeling both true and untrue, as though it stood deep in the ancient reaches of time and space, and was not in this universe at all.

Or as though it had already descended into this universe, giving off a sense of suppressing every great dao of heaven and earth.

And the heavy death-qi that filled its surroundings and its interior gave Shen Mu an extremely uncomfortable feeling, as if the city were still shrouded in the great kalpa of the universe's destruction, and had not escaped it.

It seemed that so long as one entered the city, one would be entangled in the kalpa of destruction, in the utmost peril.

Shen Mu steadied himself, took the scabbard of the Tribulation Sword in his left hand, and strode into the city.