Chapter 1639 — The Dao Ancestor and the Ancient Buddha

Shen Mu halted and looked back. Yuchenzi came quickly to his side, bent to his ear, and whispered a few words.

"Truly?" Shen Mu said in astonishment.

Yuchenzi nodded slightly. "They have returned."

Shen Mu's face shifted, fair and foul by turns. Suddenly he flexed both arms and snapped the chaste-tree ropes that bound him. "Take me to them!"

Yuchenzi looked at him, astonished. "What does the Imperial Preceptor of Jingping mean by this?"

Shen Mu fetched clothes and put them on. "Kaihuang has fallen, Youdu has fallen into enemy hands; my hopes were ashes. Had they not returned, I would by now have gone to the Heavenly Court to bear brambles before Hao Tianzun and beg forgiveness for my crimes."

Yuchenzi was greatly shaken. He was the minister of Jingping who handled foreign policy, and he knew well what a blow Kaihuang's fall was to Jingping. The human race had only a handful of peak powerhouses, and among them the first Dao-attainer, Kaihuang, was the most fearsome of deterrents.

With Kaihuang dead, the strategic deterrence that had held Hao Tianzun and the rest in check vanished into thin air.

And Kaihuang's death meant that Youdu had fallen into enemy hands!

The loss of Youdu meant that every soul in Jingping, every soul in the myriad heavens and worlds, held their lives in the Heavenly Court's palm.

To preserve the human race, Shen Mu had only one road left: surrender.

And the news he himself had brought might well be the only way out besides surrender.

Shen Mu said to Langwan, "Do not go to the Heavenly Court yet. Wait until I return, and then we will decide. Yuchenzi, let us go — to see the Old Buddha and the Dao Ancestor!"

Langwan, Lizheng, Ling Tianzun and the others watched Shen Mu hurry back past them with Yuchenzi, looked at one another in bewilderment, and hastened to follow.

As Shen Mu passed the Golden Ship of Salvation, Shen Fengqing came out of the shadows in alarm and called loudly, "Little brother, there is a ghost on your ship!"

"We will speak later!" Shen Mu hurried into the Palace of Earth Virtue.

In the Palace of Earth Virtue, in the Wendao Court, Shen Mu arrived in haste and saw a slovenly old Daoist and an old Buddha sitting in the hall drinking tea, both looking travel-stained and weary.

"Dao Ancestor, Old Buddha," Shen Mu greeted them.

The Dao Ancestor and the Great Brahma Heaven King Buddha hastened to return the courtesy. The Dao Ancestor said in surprise, "Mu Tianzun. You seem much gaunt to me, Tianzun."

Others too flooded in and crowded into the hall.

Shen Mu had no time for pleasantries. "Yuchenzi has just told me that the two of you went to the Chaotic Space to explore it, and that the journey was fruitful. May I ask what the two of you gained?"

The Dao Ancestor and the Great Brahma Heaven King Buddha exchanged a glance. Great Brahma said, "This is better told by you."

The Dao Ancestor nodded lightly. "I have some history with the White-Browed Monk, and with Emperor Ming and Emperor Chi. After Emperor Ming was reborn, we went with him to the Crimson Bright Suspended World, and there took the occasion to visit Emperor Chi. Emperor Chi's brain was still there, though at the time he had not yet been reborn."

Shen Mu nodded slightly.

In his third eye, he had once seen that Emperor Chi's consciousness stood on close terms with the Great Brahma Heaven King Buddha; their friendship must reach back to the Crimson Bright era.

Throughout the Buddhist world and the Daoist sects, many protector deities had three heads and six arms — plainly a borrowing of the essence of that age's cultivation arts.

"Emperor Chi told us of what he had met with in his exploration of the Chaotic Space."

The Dao Ancestor said, "He said he had passed through visions beyond counting, grotesque and monstrous, had seen the birth and destruction of innumerable universes, their rise and fall, their success and failure. At the last his strength failed him, and knowing he could not escape, he turned his very flesh into the Crimson Bright Suspended World. His account stirred our curiosity, and we thought to probe this Chaotic Space ourselves. That probe was no small matter."

The Dao Ancestor went on, unhurried. "In the Chaotic Space the inconceivable things we lived through were beyond counting. Great universes formed, endured, decayed and emptied before our eyes; in those strange little universes, those who had attained the Dao forged Great Luotians one after another, yet as the universes broke and gathered and broke again, they struggled for survival with all their might and one by one died, their Dao extinguished. Deep in that space, worlds evolved and dissolved; the Dao Trees of the Dao-attainers withered, like a blighted forest. In that forest the Dao cried out, like a ghost."

The things he described grew ever more grotesque and fantastical.

They had passed through perils and tried to seek out the origin of the Chaotic Space; to witness the rise and destruction of those universes was, for them, a kind of cultivation.

But the dangers within were beyond imagining.

When Xiao Tianzun had been exiled there, he too had barely escaped with his life, and in the end only the Yuanmu had carried him out.

The Dao Ancestor and the Great Brahma Heaven King Buddha were far inferior to Xiao Tianzun in cultivation, and the perils they faced were greater still.

"Strangely, we walked on and lived. The perils of the Chaotic Space seemed to avoid us, as though some power were sheltering us."

The Dao Ancestor's face turned strange. He was silent a moment, then said, "The Old Buddha says that the birth and death of universes here is a most peculiar thing, sharing a hidden kinship with his Scripture of Immeasurable Kalpas — only his scripture is a dream, whereas the birth and death here is real. We followed it all the way, through a thousand hardships, and at last found the end of the Chaotic Space."

The Great Brahma Heaven King Buddha sat cross-legged, spread out his six arms, and lightly drew a circle in the air; at once phantom worlds leaped out of that circle and floated in the Wendao Court.

"There lie countless fragments of Great Luotians. A supreme venerable one, by the vast power of his Dao, evolved these little universes, striving to deduce a way for the primordial universe to escape the kalpa of destruction."

The Great Brahma Heaven King Buddha raised one finger and lightly stirred the phantom worlds in the Wendao Court. "This immeasurable Chaotic Space is his dream made real. The fragments of Great Luotian that we saw, the withered Dao Trees, the faded Dao Flowers and Dao Fruits — these are the countless selves within his dream attaining the Dao in dream, and again and again destroyed in the great annihilation of the dream."

Shen Mu gazed at those countless phantom worlds in their evolution, and a doubtful look came over him. He raised a hand and lightly touched one of the bubbles.

The bubble burst, and at once new bubbles gathered.

The Dao Ancestor said, "We had thought this supreme venerable one was dead. But as we went deeper into the Chaotic Space, we found new little universes still being born."

Shen Mu said doubtfully, "You mean..."

"That supreme venerable one is still alive."

The Dao Ancestor and Great Brahma exchanged a look. Great Brahma said, "His Dao arts and divine powers are transcendent, surpassing my Scripture of Immeasurable Kalpas by I know not how much. He has achieved the return to truth in a single dream, which is beyond my reach. That such a being existed in prehistoric times fills me with longing."

"But when we came to the origin of the Chaotic Space, we did not find that supreme being."

The Dao Ancestor said, "There we were cut off from the world — truly cut off. There one cannot see Youdu, nor Xuandu, nor the Ancestral Court. Even the Crimson Bright Suspended World lies only at the outer edge of that space, and yet it can keep the Heavenly Court from finding it."

Shen Mu's eyes slowly kindled.