Chapter 1554 — The Duel of the Dao-Achievers

The Great Heavenly Court, formed of thirty-six heavenly palaces and crowned with as many as forty-eight treasured halls, made Hao Tianzun's power far greater than anything the Seven Heavenly Venerables had commanded in the days of their prime! Beneath the press of his aura, Langxuan Divine Emperor, one of the seven, let out a stifled groan; with a thunderous crash he was forced flat to the ground, blood weeping from all seven of his orifices, unable to stir.

Elsewhere, Shen Mu was retreating with all speed, step after step back, and with every step the ruins of Jade Capital City before him were ground down, the very earth sinking under an unspeakably dreadful force. It was as though ahead of him a giant beyond compare were lifting an immense foot, pursuing him, stamping down at him again and again.

That was Hao Tianzun's power! Hao Tianzun had not even made a move; the mere force carried by his presence had left Shen Mu no choice but to fall back.

"Langxuan, my elder brother, this is attaining the Dao through force, the way of the heavenly palace and the Heavenly Court!

" The rejuvenated Hao Tianzun raised a hand, and in his palm appeared a Myriad-Dao Heaven Wheel.

At first it was no larger than a cup's rim, shrieking as it spun, skimming along the ground toward Shen Mu.

An instant later the Myriad-Dao Heaven Wheel reached Shen Mu's front, grown to several zhang across, the myriad daos within it fused into one, ten thousand daos resonating together in that single wheel.

Look closely, and you would see countless daos taking shape within it as divine abilities of endless complexity, countless abilities combining inside the wheel, each combination making its power greater and fiercer! Hum— The divine abilities gushed out of the Myriad-Dao Heaven Wheel; the wheel itself scattered.

Shen Mu thrust the Tribulation Sword forward, breaking the Heaven Wheel's abilities with his Tribulation-Breaking Sword, and a ceaseless clang of collisions rang out as he was shaken until the sinews of his arm burst apart and driven back a hundred-some steps before he at last shattered every ability. Yet before he could draw a long breath, the streaming light the abilities had become halted, and the radiance gathered and became a second Myriad-Dao Heaven Wheel, larger than the first, fully sixty zhang tall!

Within the wheel the myriad daos churned and roiled as in a great furnace; its face turned crimson, then from crimson to searing white, and the ten thousand divine abilities spun within and erupted! Shen Mu shifted the Tribulation Sword to his left hand and thrust into the abilities bursting from the wheel, his feet never stopping, forever falling back, and in the blink of an eye his left arm too was slick with blood.

Hum— Countless abilities gathered once more and became a third Myriad-Dao Heaven Wheel, a hundred zhang tall, appearing before Shen Mu like a mirror blazing with light.

He retreated again; from beneath his arms arm after arm drilled out, the Tribulation Sword shuddered and split into six, and the six arms seized a Tribulation Sword apiece, meeting the Myriad-Dao Heaven Wheel head-on. Within the wheel the ten thousand daos surged forth as a rainbow light a full hundred zhang thick that charged straight at his face. Shen Mu grunted; when he had broken this wheel, the hundred-zhang rainbow light abruptly withdrew and became a fourth Myriad-Dao Heaven Wheel!

This wheel stood a hundred and forty zhang tall! In its mirror face no flowing vision of the myriad daos could any longer be seen, only Shen Mu's image, filling the whole wheel; and yet the wheel's power had grown still greater!

"A Dao-entering divine ability! Each wheel is a heaven!

" Shen Mu understood. He shook his body, and the Dao soldiers of the Forty-Nine Heavenly Daos merged into one, becoming a heaven blade.

He cast aside the sword and gripped the blade, his six arms raising it high, and brought it down in a single stroke!

The stroke clove the oncoming rainbow light in two; the halves of that light suddenly gathered with a swoosh behind him and became a fifth Myriad-Dao Heaven Wheel. Shen Mu turned, abandoned the blade, and a staff appeared in his hand; using the Taiyi staff as a sword, he stabbed at the mirror face a hundred and eighty zhang high!

Boom! The Taiyi staff pierced the rainbow light and struck Hao Tianzun's blow; the next instant Shen Mu's body quaked violently and was flung high into the air, and then another Myriad-Dao Heaven Wheel appeared before him.

Against that mirror face his figure was immeasurably small; the mirror refracted his body, illuminating his flesh and everything within it with perfect clarity!

The him in the mirror stood more than two hundred zhang tall, his five viscera and six bowels shone through and through, and even his divine treasury, his heavenly palaces, his primordial spirit were laid bare!

Shen Mu landed and broke this blow as well — yet the next instant another Myriad-Dao Heaven Wheel appeared, greater than the one before!

He fled backward with all speed, and suddenly the ground vanished from under his feet: he had stepped onto the Chaos River, and the soles of his feet were at once eaten and rotted away. Undismayed in the crisis, he turned the Taiyi staff into a small boat that settled on the river's surface; sword in hand, Shen Mu sent blade-light leaping to meet the onrushing myriad-dao rainbow!

Hum, hum, hum!

On the Chaos River, Myriad-Dao Heaven Wheels appeared one after another before Shen Mu; each attack blasted him hundreds of li, driving him from the riverbank all the way to the middle of the Chaos River! Swift as speech, swift as thought, from the moment the Myriad-Dao Heaven Wheel flew from Hao Tianzun's palm to the moment Shen Mu was blasted into the Chaos River, only a single blink had passed.

In that blink, Shen Mu had already traded countless moves against Hao Tianzun's one strike. And seen from afar, one could make out only Hao Tianzun's palm thrusting out, a rainbow light joined to mirror faces, mirror after mirror blasting forward while Shen Mu fell back and back, until at last he was driven onto the Chaos River.

By the time he reached the middle of the Chaos River, the Myriad-Dao Heaven Wheel before him stood ten thousand zhang high, and in the mirror his primal-embryo divine treasury, his domain, was reflected in its minutest particulars, as though he had no secret left at all! The daos he cultivated, the composition of his heavenly palaces, the sun and moon and stars within his divine treasury, the myriad heavens and worlds, even every arrangement in the Ancestral Court, all were illuminated and laid bare!

His dao arts and divine abilities were mirrored in the Myriad-Dao Heaven Wheel in their finest structures, and in the mirror light his primordial spirit revealed its most secret subtleties!

"This is the thirtieth heaven of Hao Tianzun's Dao realm. " Shen Mu's gaze remained keen as ever as he looked upon his own reflection in Hao Tianzun's Myriad-Dao Heaven Wheel. Hao Tianzun's Dao realm had indeed reached the thirtieth heaven, truly formidable. His cultivation had already reached the Heavenly Court stage, farther than the other Heavenly Venerables had gone, and that alone was terrifying enough; yet his attainments in the Dao realm surpassed the others' as well!

In this brief clash, Shen Mu had already fathomed the secret of the Myriad-Dao Heaven Wheel: the wheel mirrored an opponent's shadow, parsed the structure of his flesh, the makeup of his daos, of his heavenly palaces, of his primordial spirit, seeing through every secret he possessed. And to see through an opponent's secrets was to break his dao arts and divine abilities, and cut him down!

That Hao Tianzun held the station he did today was not, in truth, owed to his being the Heavenly Emperor Taichu's bastard son; he had his own true distinction.