Chapter 1540 — The Truth Behind the Tribulation

He saw a wondrous scene in the cosmos beneath, one that was in the midst of destruction!

There, beneath the towering, magnificent World Tree, the phantom of a giant holding a Chaos Axe was walking toward the World Tree!

The scene he had seen before was of the giant Taiyi holding the axe and swinging it against the World Tree; but now it was as if time had flowed backward, and Taiyi stood on the eve of cleaving the World Tree!

This was very strange indeed.

His heart stirred slightly, and he urged the boat to sail off in a direction chosen at random.

After a while, Shen Mu looked at the World Tree again and saw that Taiyi had already come to the tree with his axe.

He halted the boat, turned it about, and sailed on, and saw that Taiyi was actually retreating, drawing farther and farther from the World Tree.

Shen Mu was stunned, then overjoyed: this River of Chaos gave no bearings, yet there was a coordinate to steer by!

That coordinate was the very process of the previous cosmos's destruction!

He urged the boat onward without cease, and saw Taiyi's phantom draw farther and farther from the World Tree, and at last vanish; while in the cosmos below, the tribulation of destruction seemed to flow backward, the annihilated Great Dao recovering, the shattered heavens and the shattered worlds one by one spat back out of the chaos and restored!

The multitudes who had died in the tribulation of destruction remade their fleshly bodies and primordial spirits from the chaos qi, restored to the very moment before the destruction.

The stars recovered from death, and starlight shone forth again! Onward Shen Mu sailed, and the river of stars appeared, and the Ancestral Court appeared! The tribulation of destruction that had befallen the previous cosmos seemed to run backward before his eyes.

He saw again the early days of that cosmos's annihilation, when its worlds had already attained a very high form of civilization; he saw civilizations of many, many kinds.

There were, for instance, civilizations akin to sacrifice, civilizations akin to faith, and cultivator civilizations, machine civilizations — too many kinds to count.

These worlds were ruled by Dao-attainers one by one, each with its own peculiar civilizational makeup and world order; before the great tribulation of destruction descended upon them, all was peace and harmony.

The towering figures of those Dao-attainers shrouded the worlds, giving an incomparably grand and majestic impression.

The Dao-attainers were the rulers of these worlds, remaking the worlds they governed according to their own will.

Shen Mu had but a hurried glimpse; he could not say that the worlds ruled by these Dao-attainers were bad, yet wherever his gaze reached, he found that the previous cosmos was many times smaller than he had expected.

That cosmos was too small; its Ancestral Court was many times smaller than the present Ancestral Court, and its heavens and myriads of worlds were not so breathtaking as those of the present.

The whole of that cosmos was but a thousandth the size of the present one — or even smaller!

Shen Mu looked on, searching for the source of the tribulation of destruction, and at last his gaze came to rest upon the Ultimate Void.

There Dao Trees stood like a forest; there were too many Dao Trees, the energy of the Great Dao condensed to the utmost, the Dao Trees radiant and towering, and the light from their Dao Fruits outshone even the stars and rivers of stars in the heavens! Yet within that Great Luotian the great tribulation of destruction had already erupted, sweeping away all within the Ultimate Void!

The duck is first to know when the spring river warms: many Dao-attainers had already sensed the cataclysm and were each cleaving the Great Luotian apart, hacking it to pieces and hastening this great tribulation of destruction!

That great tribulation came surging out of the Ultimate Void, destroying layer upon layer of void along the way, sweeping over the real cosmos!

Those Dao-attainers who held sway over worlds one by one now flew toward the World Tree, and some toward the River of Chaos — they must have been flying toward Miluo Palace, toward Jade Capital City.

Watching this scene, Shen Mu unwittingly slowed the boat, tracing it back bit by bit, until at last he fixed time upon the eve of the previous cosmos's destruction. And at that moment the little boat beneath his feet gave a slight check, and at last touched the far bank of the River of Chaos.

Yet he did not go ashore; his gaze was fixed upon the chaos in the river, for there he saw the last Dao-attainer of the previous cosmos, who, in order to cultivate the Great Dao and lodge it in the void, had chosen to practice the Dao of Slaughter.

That Dao-attainer destroyed worlds one after another, slaughtering countless living beings; as those worlds perished and their stars reverted to chaos, he drew in that power, and at last attained the Dao of Slaughter. His Great Dao condensed in the Ultimate Void, became a Dao Tree, bore a Dao Fruit, and at last became the final straw that crushed the Ultimate Void.

In the very instant his Dao Fruit formed, the tribulation of destruction that swept the whole cosmos at last erupted in the Ultimate Void!

And in truth, even before that, the Ultimate Void had ceased to be stable; violent tremors came from time to time, shaking the Dao Trees of the Dao-attainers! Not only the Dao Trees — even the great worlds throughout the cosmos quaked and trembled without cease!

"Energy condensed to the utmost gives rise to collapse, and the source of that collapse is the Ultimate Void!

" Shen Mu steadied himself, withdrew his gaze, and walked toward the shore, thinking: "The Ten Heavenly Venerables do not have eyes as powerful as mine; they should be unable to find the far bank, no?

Perhaps the Lady of Heaven Qiang, with the woman in the Dao Fruit to guide her, might find it, but the other Heavenly Venerables certainly cannot. .

.

" His foot had barely touched the ground when the expression on his face froze: Heavenly Venerable Hao, Heavenly Venerable Xiao, and the rest — ten Heavenly Venerables in all — were standing right before him, with the Lady of Heaven Qiang squeezed in the midst of the other nine!

Shen Mu's heart gave a jolt, and he spun about and leapt onto the little boat.