Chapter 1537 — All Beings Scramble to Cross

Shen Mu walked on along the palaces of those who had attained the Dao, halting at every hall he came upon to ponder the profound mysteries of the Great Dao stored within these treasure halls, and his harvest was rich.

Set against the Woodcutter's method of the Great Heavenly Court, with its Thirty-Six Heavenly Palaces and Seventy-Two Treasure Halls, the treasure halls of this Jade Capital City of the Ancestral Court did not walk the road whereby the Innate Dao guards the Acquired Dao, but the road whereby the Innate guards the Innate. "If Teacher Woodcutter's method can be made to work, then perhaps one may leap free of the Master of the Miluo Palace's grasp.

" Shen Mu mused: in the Woodcutter's method, the Seventy-Two Treasure Halls are the Innate Dao, and the Thirty-Six Heavenly Palaces the Acquired Dao; the Innate guards the Acquired, and by this one cultivates the true Heavenly Court realm and lays a foundation that will not shift.

Between the two there would seem to be only the difference of the Thirty-Six Heavenly Palaces, yet the difference is fundamental: the Woodcutter's method takes the Acquired Dao as its master, and the Innate Dao merely as its aid. The Woodcutter himself never cultivated such a discipline; he passed it on to Jiang Baigui.

In that year, when Taihuang Heaven preached the Dao, the former Imperial Preceptor of Jingping ascended the altar; Sage Woodcutter shouted out his questions, Jiang Baigui gave his answers, and so won the Woodcutter's favor, who permitted him to stand upon the altar. Afterward Jiang Baigui spent several years, out of three hundred and sixty kinds of Acquired Great Dao, selecting the thirty-six that suited him best, and thereby chose his own path of cultivation.

Sage Woodcutter had only inferred that such a method could cultivate the true Heavenly Court and fashion a great master surpassing the Ten Heavenly Venerables; but whether or not he could truly cultivate it, he could lend no help — that rested on Jiang Baigui's own wisdom.

"My third junior brother's Acquired Heavenly Palaces have already been opened, and he has cultivated the Seventy-Two Treasure Halls by his own method; then he has no need to come to the Jade Capital City. This realm of Jade Capital is no longer a snare for him.

" Shen Mu walked on, and could not help sighing within: his own path of cultivation had been crooked and hard, yet Jiang Baigui's road already lay smooth and open before him. If Jiang Baigui were to cultivate to the Emperor Throne realm, he would be the one who gathered into himself all the civilizations of the past million years, and there would be no second.

"Strange — the Ten Heavenly Venerables have split into two bands. " He halted before another treasure hall, examined the traces of battle there, and found that those who had struck were no longer Heavenly Venerable Hao and his company, but Heavenly Venerable Xiao, Heavenly Consort Yan and others.

The ten Heavenly Venerables had divided into two bands, each fighting its own war; judging by the footprints they left, one band was led by Heavenly Venerable Hao, the other by Heavenly Venerable Xiao. "The Ten Heavenly Venerables have broken apart.

Strange — by the footprints there are only nine of them; Heavenly Consort Qiang is not among them.

.

.

" Shen Mu formed his own judgment: the Ten Heavenly Venerables were circling among the outer treasure halls, divining the Great Dao contained in hall after hall. Plainly, besides Heavenly Venerable Hao, who had the guidance of a "master" and understood the function of the Seventy-Two Treasure Halls, Heavenly Venerable Xiao also had the guidance of a "master"!

And what was strange was that Heavenly Consort Qiang had thrown in neither with Heavenly Venerable Hao nor with Heavenly Venerable Xiao. Heavenly Consort Qiang is the Great Emperor; by every reckoning of feeling and reason, the Great Emperor would never submit to any single man — yet the Great Emperor was also a fickle one, exceedingly skilled at bending with circumstance.

If he kept himself apart from these two bands, he would stand alone without allies, at a grave disadvantage.

The strangeness, then, lay exactly in the Great Emperor's decision to fight alone! That was not in keeping with his temperament.

"They are all trying to sort out the dao patterns of the Great Dao of the Seventy-Two Treasure Halls ahead of the other side, and cultivate the halls to completion.

" Shen Mu's gaze flickered, and he said in a low voice, "Were I in their place, I would, while pondering them, carry off several treasure halls, so that the other side could never obtain the dao patterns of the Seventy-Two Treasure Halls, and their road to the Heavenly Court would be severed.

" Before long, Shen Mu stood livid before a stretch of ruins; of that place only broken walls and shattered eaves remained, and an enormous pit.

The Ten Heavenly Venerables had, just as he expected, carried off this treasure hall!

Only he could not tell whether it was the work of Heavenly Venerable Hao or of Heavenly Venerable Xiao.

"It may also be that Heavenly Consort Qiang carried off a hall as capital for bargaining with the other Venerables.

But with Heavenly Consort Qiang alone, she should hardly have such strength. .

.

How thoroughly unprincipled!

" Shen Mu spat the words in anger and walked on.

Before long he came to the site of yet another treasure hall — that one too had been taken away, and was no longer here. The veins on Shen Mu's forehead leaped and quivered.

Such a move by the Ten Heavenly Venerables was understandable enough: when one side discovered that the other had carried off a treasure hall, the intent was plain, and so, as bargaining chips, they too must carry off a hall the other side had not yet had time to ponder. Thus each side held a hall, denying the other completeness, and in any exchange neither would come off the worse.

Shen Mu steadied himself and sneered, "If I were one of the Ten Heavenly Venerables, taking a single hall to haggle with the other side — not to gain the advantage is to lose. So I would simply take several halls; my capital would then be greater, and the other side would have to bleed heavily, trading other benefits to buy them back! " Not long after, he stood black-faced as charcoal before the site of yet another treasure hall.

Plainly, someone among the Ten Heavenly Venerables had nursed the same thought as he, and had taken a second hall as capital.

"Utterly shameless! Still, come to think of it, if I were one of the Ten Heavenly Venerables, I would try to carry off every hall that had not yet been pondered. .

. " He walked on, his face darkening by the moment, the veins on his forehead writhing one after another.

Sure enough, one treasure hall after another had vanished without a trace, plainly carried off by Heavenly Venerable Hao, Heavenly Venerable Xiao and the rest.

These halls would become the capital with which they coerced and traded with one another; and in such shabby dealings the Ten Heavenly Venerables were even more at home than Shen Mu.

There was nothing left along the road for Shen Mu to ponder, so he could only press on along the Ten Heavenly Venerables' path; as for the map Wei Suifeng had given him, he cast it clean out of mind.

This Jade Capital City was vast beyond measure; walking its streets, one could not begin to tell where the places Wei Suifeng had marked might lie.

Suddenly, from ahead came the surging sound of water, roaring and crashing. Shen Mu's heart stirred faintly: "The Chaos River?

Then I have come to the very core of the Jade Capital City!

" The Jade Capital City of the Ancestral Court was a place of extreme peril. In the ancient Primordial Era, the Great Emperor had gathered the strongest masters of the day — including even such mighty ancient gods as the later Heavenly Emperor Taichu — to explore it, and yet they too knew the difficulty and drew back.