Chapter 1647 — The Lotus of the Dao Blooms on the Golden Boat

Shen Mu ambled up to them, then said abruptly, "Brother, do you know the techniques of the Nether Heavenly Venerable? " Shen Fengqing was puzzled.

"The art of the Nether Heavenly Venerable's countless avatars.

" Shen Mu said, "Your attainment in the Dao of the Nether Capital should already match his. What he can do, you can most likely do as well. " Shen Fengqing's eyes lit up. He suddenly shook his body, and another Shen Fengqing walked out of him.

The two Shen Fengqings looked at each other; their cultivation was split exactly in half. Then each shook his own body and split off another Shen Fengqing.

Shen Fengqing kept dividing, and soon he numbered in the tens of thousands! This was the technique of the Nether Heavenly Venerable.

The Nether Heavenly Venerable's mightiest primordial spirit had been cultivated exactly this way — dividing into countless avatars, each avatar bearing a primordial spirit, so that the spirit was naturally mighty.

But this method had a weakness: the physical body was frail.

Because the Dao of the Nether Capital repelled the living body, this manner of cultivation made it very hard to refine the physical form to the utmost, and so the Nether Heavenly Venerable's achievement in the flesh was not great.

Countless Shen Fengqings ran in every direction, charging into palace after palace, yet still more palaces materialized from nothing.

And those Shen Fengqings, running as they went, kept shaking their bodies and splitting off yet more selves. Shen Mu's eyes glittered; the palaces he visualized grew ever more numerous, and the pattern among them gradually became clear.

Taishi watched, dumbfounded, and suddenly blurted out, "Has Shen Fengqing studied the Nether Heavenly Venerable's techniques?

" Shen Mu shook his head. "He has never studied them.

The Nether Heavenly Venerable is too reclusive; few people can get along with him in conversation, and the great Dao of the Nether Capital is extremely abstruse — he cannot be bothered to teach it to anyone else.

" Taishi stammered, "Then how did Shen Fengqing come to learn it?

" "After all, my brother is the Earth Lord. And besides, my brother and I are, after all, the same person.

" Shen Mu said coolly, "He looks like a simpleton, but he is in fact every bit as clever as I am.

" Taishi thought for a moment, then said, "Then why have you not learned it? " .

. .

At last, Shen Fengqing finished searching the final palace, and no new palaces appeared.

He called back his avatars one by one, a look of disappointment on his face, and shook his head: "We did not find the Grandsire.

.

. Fatty, why are the rims of your eyes swollen?

" Taishi hemmed and hawed, unable to say a word.

Shen Mu let out a turbid breath.

Looking at the palaces he had visualized, analyzing the mathematical pattern among them, he shook his head: "There is still one great hall on the boat that has not revealed itself.

But I can determine where it is!

" He walked forward to an open stretch of ground, raised his hand, and lightly touched the center of his brow.

The vertical eye at his brow opened. A radiance as gorgeous as countless crystal prisms shot out from that sacred pupil between his brows and refracted in every direction — he was driving the Moon Heavenly Venerable's Scripture of the Utmost Void to its very limit. The crystal light shooting from his eyes refracted countless planes of space, and within those strange and outlandish spaces stood palace after palace — precisely the inner spaces of the World-Ferrying Golden Boat!

Suddenly, Shen Mu's gaze gathered and fell upon one palace.

The crystal prism in his vision revolved slowly from front to back, and a strange thing happened: when it had turned to its reverse face, there behind the prism, a jeweled hall materialized out of thin air before them! The vanished golden hall of the World-Ferrying Golden Boat had appeared at last! "Once the mathematical pattern is penetrated, no mystery will remain a secret.

" Taishi said this with weighty earnestness to Shen Fengqing, who was staring with his mouth agape.

Shen Fengqing stared blankly at the golden hall and murmured, "If you were not such a round little fatty, I really would think what you say makes a great deal of sense. .

. " Shen Mu shook out his robes, pushed open the great gate of the palace, and stepped inside.

Before his eyes, a flower of the Dao, as if formed from countless sword blades, revolved slowly. Shen Mu stood there, on the verge of tears yet not weeping, on the verge of laughter yet not smiling, and for a long, long time he did not move. In the Heaven Court, after the enthronement ceremony of the Haotian Emperor, there had been another spell of clamorous festivity.

The Haotian Emperor enfeoffed his meritorious ministers, and the most conspicuous of these rewards was the enfeoffment of new Heavenly Venerables.

The Nether Son of Heaven was enfeoffed as the Yin Heavenly Venerable, the Great Sage of Reincarnation; the Ancient God of Taiji was enfeoffed as the Sun Heavenly Venerable and the Moon Heavenly Venerable; and the Eastern Emperor Azure Dragon was enfeoffed as the Azure Dragon Heavenly Venerable. Most unexpected of all was that Long Xiao had come as well, enfeoffed by the Haotian Emperor as the Tenth Heavenly Venerable, the Heavenly Venerable Long Xiao, in charge of the Beast Realm.

The other Heavenly Venerables — Fire, Void, Ancestor, and the like — also received their own enfeoffments and rewards, their standings more honored than before. When the grand occasion was over, the Haotian Emperor ordered a punitive campaign against the unsubmissive, preparing to use arms against the Extreme West Heaven and the Extreme North Heaven.

The masters of the myriad heavens and ten thousand worlds each returned to his own realm, and the various Heavenly Venerables likewise went back to their own territories, recruiting soldiers and mustering horses for the campaign.

The Fire Heavenly Venerable rode in his jeweled palanquin, seated within it with his eyes closed, nursing his spirit.

The palanquin traveled through the starry sky, blazing with light, leaving a long trail behind it in the stars.

Wealth and honor without returning to one's homeland is like strolling abroad at night in embroidered robes. It was for this very reason that he did not take the Spirit-Energy Transfer Bridge but insisted on riding his jeweled palanquin back to the Southern Heaven.

A Heavenly Venerable must keep the bearing of a Heavenly Venerable. The whole way was peaceful and uneventful.

When the palanquin arrived at the Southern Heaven, its pace gradually slackened. It sailed over the various heavens of the Southern Heaven, and below, the common people knelt prostrate in worship.

The Fire Heavenly Venerable inspected the regions as he passed; he saw that the Southern Heaven was neatly ordered, and yet signs of disorder were faintly emerging, and he could not help frowning.

Those who had risen in revolt were not of the human race but the demigods, who were burning, killing, and looting everywhere.

The humans, by contrast, were still as meek and long-suffering as ever, offering no resistance at all. The Fire Heavenly Venerable seized a demigod and questioned him.

The demigod stiffened his neck and said, "There is no money! In the Southern Heaven everyone is a farmer, a silkworm breeder, a weaver.

Who knows how to build a supervised manufactory?

Who knows how to make civilian-model primal soldiers?

Everything has to be bought from Jingping, and now even we lords and masters have no money left, so the only thing we can do is revolt!

" The Fire Heavenly Venerable set him down, waved a hand, and let him go, and could not help sinking into deep thought.

"If we do not go and plunder Jingping, the Southern Heaven will be very hard to sustain. The Southern Heaven is a land of small states and sparse people, a pastoral life — how could it ever contend with Jingping's large-scale manufacture.