Chapter 1586 — The Maiden Who Protected You Back Then

At the source of the Yong River grew a peach tree of unimaginable age.

This peach tree was peculiar. Though unimaginably ancient, it lived on, as though time could leave no trace upon it.

Stranger still, when your gaze fell upon it, it existed, standing there in place.

When your gaze did not fall upon it, it vanished, as though it did not exist at all.

It dwelt at once in existence and in nonexistence; the only thing that could determine whether it existed was whether you observed it.

It was Ling Tianzun's hairpin.

Ling Tianzun's peach-wood hairpin had been planted here, had taken root and sprouted, and forty thousand years had since passed. Winter went and spring came; the peach tree revived, put out branches and leaves, blossomed, and by summer bore peaches; at summer's end the peaches ripened and gave off their fragrance. A woman in blue would come beneath the tree and pick peaches to taste.

Long ago, Kaihuang had dredged the channel of the Yong River here, and come beneath the peach tree to pick a few peaches to quench his thirst.

He had lingered here several times, as though seeking someone; whether he found that person or not was not for outsiders to know. Ling Tianzun, like her hairpin, dwelt between existence and nonexistence. Her case was more complicated than the hairpin's.

She existed at once within the Unchanging Matter into which the Unchanging Divine Art had transformed a cross-section of the Heavenly River, and at once within reality.

Within the Unchanging Matter she was in a state of life or death, waiting for Shen Mu to arrive forty thousand years later, touch the Unchanging Divine Art, and rescue her.

And once she was rescued, she would return to forty thousand years ago, to the time when the Shanghuang era was ending and the Kaihuang era had not yet begun, and would live through the War of the Dao-Achievers.

At that time she would send Shen Mu, Kaihuang, Xiao Tianzun, Hao Tianzun, the Taisu Goddess and the others to forty thousand years in the future, and then alone endure forty thousand years of time, waiting for the future. At the same time, she also existed within the Unchanging Matter, thus producing the strange phenomenon of two of her.

At this moment, the her of the outside world was alive — but the precondition of being alive was that someone must observe her; unobserved, she was in the unknown of life or death. Only when Shen Mu came and broke the Unchanging Divine Art would she be released from this wondrous state.

These years, Ling Tianzun had been studying the two Qiankun Mirrors Shen Mu had given her, studying the Miluo Palace dao patterns within them. She was a tranquil woman, able to calm her heart and devote herself to study, ignoring the changes and shifts of the outside world.

Yet occasionally she would still come out to walk about; but the range of her walking was not wide, only around the source of the Yong River.

Short as the distance was, the time she traversed was very long. At the source of the Yong River she had more than once used the Unchanging Divine Art to travel back into the past.

She had seen Kaihuang Shen Ye as a youth, and, turning into mist, had carried the young Kaihuang back to the early years of Longhan.

There Kaihuang met Shen Mu and Niu Sanduo, and there too he became Shen Tianzun.

Afterwards Kaihuang had several more wondrous experiences of returning to the past, but he never mentioned them to anyone; even when his best friend, the woodcutter Wen Tiange, asked about these experiences, Kaihuang never told what he had actually encountered.

Ling Tianzun settled at the source of the Yong River.

She was still waiting for one person; the coming of this person would dissolve her state of life or death, dissolve her state of existing only when observed.

This person had given her the Hongmeng runes and the Miluo Palace dao patterns, and was waiting for her to go and settle the world in one stroke, needing her rescue. She waited and waited.

The matter around her was ceaselessly changing; she sat watching old mountains age and new mountains be born, watching generation after generation born and die, watching the rise and fall of the Kaihuang era, watching the seas turn to mulberry fields, watching dynasties rise and decline, watching the partings and reunions, joys and sorrows of the mortal world, watching the great banners change upon the walls of the city of gods and demons. She sat watching the Yuan Realm, once so prosperous and flourishing, turn into a wasteland of ruins. She never waited for Shen Mu. In her bitter vigil she went searching through history for traces of Shen Mu; she came to the Shanghuang era.

She had waited nearly forty thousand years and still had not waited for Shen Mu. She thought that perhaps Shen Mu was even older than Kaihuang, perhaps he was a man of the Shanghuang era, perhaps by the time of the battle of the Great Luotian Shen Mu had already been tens of thousands of years old.

One day, as she searched, she suddenly sensed that her peach-wood hairpin had vanished — someone was using her hairpin.

She went to look, and found it was Wei Suifeng, the disciple of that Heavenly Master Wen Tiange who stood at Kaihuang's side. She asked no more. Another day, she again felt someone using the hairpin to call her. She looked across the sky of history at that person, and could not help but be stirred beyond measure.

It was Mu Tianzun!

He was using the hairpin, urging the Unchanging Divine Art, trying to find her! "Mu Tianzun? Is it you? Mu Tianzun!

" She called out joyfully: "So you were not in the Shanghuang era after all.

Wait for me to come find you—" She had many things she wanted to say, but Shen Mu's power had already been exhausted, and he vanished.

(See Chapter 802 for details.

) She waited many more years. That year, she saw a dragon maiden in white robes pass by the source of the Yong River, fleeing the pursuit of the Heavenly Court; the Heavenly Court's pursuers called her the Shanghuang Sword God, Bai Qu'er.

In the sword arts of the Shanghuang Sword God Bai Qu'er, she saw the shadow of Mu Tianzun's sword arts.

Curiosity stirred in her.

She traced Bai Qu'er's history, and returned once more to forty thousand years ago, to that desert of the heavens where the War of the Tianzuns had taken place.

That place was a vast desert, where the history of the Shanghuang era lay buried under wind and sand.

It was here that she had once used the Unchanging Divine Art to send the Great Luotian of Divine Consciousness forty thousand years into the future.

This heaven had originally been destroyed by the War of the Tianzuns, but her Unchanging Divine Art had restored it, returned it to its former state.

Her Unchanging Divine Art had left deep traces here; whenever sun and moon alternated, the Unchanging Divine Art would carry the time and space here back to ancient years. Here she saw Shen Mu as a youth, riding a box, the box clattering across the desert as he fled the pursuit of enemies.

She was greatly stirred, but did not show herself; the Shen Mu of this time could not see her.

She watched Shen Mu awaken the gods and demons of the Shanghuang era who had died in battle in the desert, ask them the way, and bury those fallen soldiers. She watched Shen Mu walk into the darkness, into the last evening song of the Shanghuang era, Bailong City.

There Shen Mu met Bai Qu'er, a lively, lovely girl of the White Dragon clan.

"Mu, you have finally come near. " Ling Tianzun smiled, and returned to the source of the Yong River, continuing to observe this girl who had fought shoulder to shoulder with Shen Mu for a night.

Then darkness descended, and the stars in the sky were blotted out one by one by enormous shadows. The waters of the Yong River ran deep, and thick Youdu demonic qi churned up from them.