Chapter 1536 — The Seventy-Two Palaces of the Imperial Capital

The instant he entered the city, Shen Mu felt that his span of life—which had once been coeval with heaven and earth—had at last found an end.

Practitioners who had cultivated to the realm of the Life-and-Death Divine Treasury could already sense when their years would run out; but once one had cultivated into the Divine Realm, a deity felt his life span stretch on without end, sharing the longevity of heaven and earth. This Jade Capital City, however, must have been touched by the Great Annihilation Tribulation, so that even the Great Dao had an end to its days, and cultivators likewise had an end to their days.

Shen Mu pondered a moment, then set in motion the Profound Body Three-Elixir Art; his primordial qi flowed through the World Tree, and that sense of a finite life span vanished at once. The World Tree was like an immutable substance threading through cosmos after cosmos—no matter how universes were destroyed or born, the World Tree never changed.

Though Shen Mu's World Tree was but a seedling, weak as yet, it still partook of that quality.

And since the aura of the Annihilation Tribulation within the Jade Capital City was not overwhelmingly strong, and he had not truly stepped into the tribulation itself, the World Tree in his Divine Treasury was able to withstand it. Were it the true Great Annihilation Tribulation, of course, a sapling World Tree could not have held; the young tree was still small.

Shen Mu made his way into the city, carefully skirting the places of peril. The cold-still wind and the heat-still wind here were the most uncanny of all: the heat-still wind burned hot enough to melt the Dao chains and domains of the Great Dao, while the cold-still wind froze everything, snapping the Dao chains and rendering every divine art useless.

They were extremely dangerous.

"This cold-still wind," Shen Mu murmured as he stood beneath a withered Dao Tree, watching it sweep past the trunk, "is like the Ultimate Void. " A look of surprise crossed his face. The cold-still wind shared some resemblance to his divine art of Gathering Circles to Perfection in the Great Luo Heaven, but it was far more formidable.

He caught the tail of that cold-still wind and followed it with care, observing closely, seeking to fathom the mysteries hidden within it.

After who knows how long, the cold-still wind dove into a field of chaos qi.

Shen Mu abruptly raised his head and looked around, only now realizing that he had strayed from the geographic chart of Wei Suifeng—he knew not where in the Jade Capital City he had run to.

The place was even more desolate. Withered Dao Trees stood everywhere, forming a forest; withered Dao Fruits hung from their branches, and here and there fruits had fallen beneath them.

The ground was strewn with the withered leaves and branches of Dao Trees, and as he trod, branches cracked and leaves rustled dryly. He stepped on something hard, and brushing aside the dead leaves, found a dried skeleton buried underneath.

These should be the remains of a Dao-Achiever, dead here for some unknown reason. "In the Great Annihilation Tribulation of the universe, even Dao-Achievers are but ants.

" Shen Mu surveyed the grove, then suddenly raised his hand; the withered leaves whirled up into the sky and lifted from the ground.

There, all through this forest of withered Dao Trees, lay the bones of Dao-Achievers everywhere—a sight to shake the heart!

Shen Mu raised an eyebrow and examined them one by one; after a long while he let out a turbid breath.

These Dao-Achievers had not died natural deaths—they had been slain!

Every skeleton bore wounds inflicted by all kinds of sharp weapons!

"Who was it that killed you?

" He paused before one skeleton and knocked upon it, trying to awaken it, but the skeleton did not stir; there was no spirit left within the bones.

He stood up, frowning, and scanned the grove.

This withered forest was like a charnel mound, entombing two or three hundred Dao-Achievers!

"Do the Dao-Achievers of the Jade Capital City also nurse old grudges?

Can it be that they butchered one another here? " He was about to let the leaves and branches settle again when his eyes suddenly brightened, and he strode quickly deeper into the forest.

There, in the midst of the withered Dao Trees, stood a deep well, at one time buried beneath dead branches and leaves, now exposed to view.

Shen Mu came to the edge and peered down; inside, chaos stretched dim and vast, fathomless.

"What was this well used for? " Even as he wondered, the chaos qi within the well began to churn, and something was climbing out from below.

He opened the vertical eye between his brows and stared hard.

In the well, some colossal shape was clambering up the walls on all fours.

He watched for a while before he saw clearly that it was a bizarre creature, not the behemoth he had imagined.

The strange creature carried a Dao Tree upon its back and was striving with all its might to scale the well wall, trying to climb out of the well. Yet all around it surged the waves of the Great Annihilation Tribulation, battering it down again and again; its flesh had been ground away until only bones remained, and still it clawed outward, unrelenting.

Shen Mu watched for a very long time; that Dao-Achiever never managed to climb out.

Shen Mu drew his sword, stabbed more than a hundred times around the well mouth, and then drifted lightly away. A few days later, the shattered crown of a Dao Tree rose above the rim of that chaos well.

The Dao-Achiever within had been so worn down by the Annihilation Tribulation that he had almost no dharma power left, and the Great Dao he had cultivated was largely erased as well.

Yet the mouth of the well was right before him!

This chaos well was the passage that countless expert masters of his universe, exhausting their wisdom, had opened by gathering chaos qi—a passage leading to the Miluo Palace! So long as he climbed out, so long as he reached the Jade Capital City, he could borrow the power of the Miluo Palace's master to shelter from the Annihilation Tribulation, and in days to come win a place for himself in the new universe!

Even if his Dao attainments were wiped out entirely, even if his flesh and bones were destroyed, so long as he preserved his Dao Fruit and his Dao Tree, he could rise again!

Clinging to the well wall, he strained to lift his Dao Tree on high, letting the tree go first, rising out of the well. At that very moment, sword light flashed at the rim.

The Dao-Achiever looked up and saw beam after beam of sword light, bearing utterly dreadful might, stab into his Dao Tree and his Dao Fruit—swish, swish, swish! Reduced to a dried skeleton, he could once have brushed away such sword light with ease; but now he could only watch helplessly as those beams pierced his Dao Fruit!

"Who has ambushed me, Heavenly Lord Fude? !

" He had time for only that single roar before he saw his Dao Fruit cut down by the sword light, torn from the tree, tumbling into the chaos qi of the well, where the Annihilation Tribulation devoured it.

With his Dao Fruit destroyed, the Dao-Achiever's strength ebbed utterly away; he fell from the wall and plunged, together with his Dao Tree, into the Annihilation Tribulation. "That chaos well is strange.

The bottom of it should connect to the previous universe. How odd—shouldn't that Dao-Achiever simply have entered the Jade Capital City directly to hide from the Great Annihilation Tribulation?

Why bore a well and smuggle himself into the city?

" Shen Mu came before a great hall and mused, "The Dao Tree grove outside the well is full of dead Dao-Achievers as well. Could they all have smuggled themselves over through that well?

Then who killed them?