Chapter 1557 — How Many Sins in Your Name

Before the great hall floated a broken dao fruit, and within the dao fruit was a naked woman, watching Shen Mu as he came stumbling out of the hall like a man who had lost his soul. "Mu Tianzun?

" she called softly.

Shen Mu paid her no heed.

He sat down before the hall doors and stared blankly into nothing. The dao fruit drifted to his side, and the woman within it said, "You have seen the Master of Miluo Palace, have you not? Did the old gentleman not fill you with the feeling of gazing up at a mountain too high to climb? It was so with me. He alone could raise a divine city so resplendent, standing eternal at the end of the universe, beyond even the Great Calamity of Destruction's power to harm. You killed Tai Di's reincarnated body, and so Tai Di's burden now falls upon your shoulders.

.

. " Shen Mu rose to his feet and glanced at her.

"What burden did the Master of Miluo Palace give Tai Di? " The woman in the dao fruit was about to go on when suddenly the Long River of Chaos heaved with towering waves. A figure wreathed in surging aura trod the long river and ascended Miluo Palace.

Shen Mu looked out from afar and saw Xiao Tianzun, drenched in blood, walking toward him step by step.

His momentum soared to the heavens; behind him the thirty-six Heavenly Palaces and forty-seven Treasure Halls blazed with light like divine fire burning.

So mighty was that momentum that even Shen Mu, standing so far away, felt the pressure of it.

"Xiao Tianzun won? " Shen Mu was startled.

Thud.

Xiao Tianzun pitched forward, his face striking the ground, and lay there motionless.

Landing in such a posture, his nose would have hit first and skidded several feet.

Had he been an ordinary man, his nose would surely have been ruined, but a Tianzun is no ordinary man.

"Hao Tianzun and Xiao Tianzun fought, and it was Hao Tianzun who won! " Shen Mu was appalled. How had Hao Tianzun defeated Xiao Tianzun?

Xiao Tianzun was the reincarnation of the Heavenly Emperor Tai Chu!

Shen Mu had once joined hands with Qiang Tianfei to ambush and kill Xiao Tianzun, only to be beaten so badly by him that they had no choice but to flee in disarray. And now Xiao Tianzun had been mauled to such a state. Did that not mean Hao Tianzun's strength surpassed even Xiao Tianzun's?

And yet Hao Tianzun ought not to possess such fighting power!

Hao Tianzun might hold all the resources of the world in his grip, but Xiao Tianzun held the Primordial Wood, was a former Heavenly Emperor, and now commanded the Taichu lode as well. Since escaping the Chaotic Space, his cultivation and strength had grown unfathomably deep. Even with Tai Su to aid him, Hao Tianzun should have had almost no chance of victory.

"Are Tai Su's dao soldiers truly that formidable? Or is there something hidden behind this battle between Hao and Xiao? Still, this is an opportunity.

. . a grand opportunity to seize Xiao Tianzun and sink him in the river!

" Shen Mu cast every thought from his mind and his eyes turned vicious. "Wait!

He already has the power of a Dao-achiever; sinking him in the river may not be enough to kill him. . .

then I will simply hack him to death—" The woman in the dao fruit had meant to tell him of Tai Di's burden, only to see Shen Mu, who a moment before had looked so listless, now full of vigor, dashing toward Xiao Tianzun while drawing the Tribulation Sword! At the same time, in his Primal Embryo Divine Treasury, forty-nine heavenly dao soldiers whirled and took the form of the supreme treasure, the Heavenly Saber, which his primordial spirit behind him caught up in his hand, brimming with killing intent.

Another arm sprouted from beneath his ribs, seizing Tai Yi's cane. He stamped his foot, and the God-Slaying Platform surfaced; the two blood-fury God-Slaying Mystic Blades had not yet recovered to their peak, but their might was far from small. The woman in the dao fruit was dumbstruck, then she came to terms with it.

"This is the Young Master Mu I know. .

.

" Shen Mu's heart held no stray thought, and his speed grew greater and greater.

Just then a strange change came over the scene: one of the halls in Miluo Palace suddenly creaked open its doors, and rays of light streamed out from the doorway, falling upon Xiao Tianzun.

Shen Mu halted and looked toward the light, and dimly he seemed to see a figure within that radiance walking along the beam toward Xiao Tianzun.

The light withdrew, returning to that hall, and Xiao Tianzun had vanished. Shen Mu looked at the hall, alarmed and doubting, and saw that it was none other than the Lingxiao Treasure Hall.

"Whose hall is the Lingxiao Treasure Hall? " he asked the dao fruit that flew to him.

The woman in the dao fruit said, "The Third Young Master's. " Shen Mu frowned, looked at the Lingxiao Treasure Hall, and said in a low voice, "Is the Third Young Master in the Lingxiao Treasure Hall at this moment?

" The woman in the dao fruit shook her head. "The Third Young Master is a dragon that shows its head but never its tail; he seldom appears.

At this moment he should be within the Great Calamity of Destruction of the sixth universe.

" Shen Mu's gaze flickered. In those years Tai Di and Tai Chu had led their followers into Jade Capital City. They might not have seen the Master of Miluo Palace, but they must have seen the Lingxiao Treasure Hall!

And now, Xiao Tianzun had been gravely wounded, a beam of light had shot forth from the Lingxiao Treasure Hall, and Shen Mu had dimly glimpsed a figure within that light. Was this matter connected to Tai Di and Tai Chu's exploration of Jade Capital City in those years?

Why, by such a coincidence, had Tai Di and Tai Chu chosen to contemplate the Lingxiao Treasure Hall?

Why, after Tai Chu became the Heavenly Emperor and built the Heavenly Court, was his supreme palace, the Lingxiao Hall, built in imitation of the Lingxiao Treasure Hall of Jade Capital City?

Why, when the Heavenly Palace realms were later created, did the Lingxiao realm and the Imperial Throne realm become the highest realms? And why had someone in the Lingxiao Treasure Hall rescued Xiao Tianzun? "The waters of this Miluo Palace run deeper and murkier than I imagined!

" Shen Mu steadied himself. If the Master of Miluo Palace had not lied, then after he dissolved into the Dao, Miluo Palace had split into different factions, each scheming to seize control of the future universe in secret.

The path taken by the master of the Lingxiao Treasure Hall, the "Third Young Master," must be the path of the "Jade Capital Trap"! "The Master of Miluo Palace said there is no Jade Capital Trap. He meant that by cultivating in accordance with the layout of Jade Capital City, one could obtain the various great daos of the Dao-achievers of past universes, and thereby attain the Dao. Once one cultivates all the way up to Miluo Palace, one becomes a Dao-achiever, or at the lowest, attains the Dao through force.

That path is not wrong. But someone tampered with that path from the very beginning. They changed the ultimate realm, Miluo Palace, into the Lingxiao Treasure Hall, and split it into these two realms: Lingxiao and the Imperial Throne!

And that person is, naturally.

. . " Shen Mu put away the Tribulation Sword, the supreme treasure of the Heavenly Dao, and Tai Yi's cane, and his gaze settled on the Lingxiao Treasure Hall.

"The Third Young Master! When Tai Di and Tai Chu came here in those years, it was the Third Young Master's scheme. Then whose scheme was the Ancestral Court Altar, and Tai Di's massacre of the Creator race, and the creation of the Void Beasts and the Mother Beasts?

The Second Young Master? The Fourth? Or the Fifth and Sixth?

These two schemes must have been laid down at the same time, after Tai Di and Tai Chu first entered the Jade Capital City of the Ancestral Court! Tai Di and Tai Chu were both their pieces! Pieces in the open and secret struggles between them!