Chapter 1669 — Two Figures Alike

"I should not be called Shen Mu.

I should be called Shen Ken — Shen Fen! " Shen Mu clenched his fists.

The Chaos Hall stood before his eyes; he need only step across its threshold, enter it, and mount the Imperial Throne within, and he would be an existence of the Imperial Throne realm! These days, from the battle of the seventy-two Dao-Achievers in the Jade Capital City to the answering of questions upon the stone steps, had consumed far too much of his vigor and his time.

Yet in the end it was the wisdom of all the world's people that had brought him here.

Once he mounted the Imperial Throne of the Chaos Hall, every one of his primordial-spirit clones in the heavenly palaces of his Great Heavenly Court would enter the Imperial Throne realm as well!

By then he would be but a single step from the great perfection of the Heavenly Court realm. Having absorbed the Imperial Throne arts of Lady Yuanmu, Lord Haotian, and others, he now possessed as many as thirty-three heavenly palaces — only three palaces short of the thirty-six, only three kinds of Imperial Throne art short.

Once those three arts were complete, he would be able to do as Emperor Haotian had done and achieve the Dao through sheer force!

And even without completing them, so long as he reached the Imperial Throne realm he would be stronger than Emperor Haotian by no one knew how much; pinning Emperor Haotian to the ground and beating him would be no difficult matter! Even as he was now, Shen Mu did not think himself inferior to a Dao-Achiever; even if he could not pin Emperor Haotian to the ground and beat him, he would not be the one to fall.

Of course, he had never yet crossed blows with Emperor Haotian, and did not know which of them was the stronger. This time he had gnawed at the people of the world and gained enormously; he had every right to contend with Emperor Haotian for mastery!

Yet when his gaze fell upon the Chaos Hall, he could not help sinking into a daze.

That great hall before him was chaos above, chaos below, chaos on every side — and it had no door!

Shen Mu walked up to it and circled the hall several times, and still he could find no entrance.

This Chaos Hall was a Chaos Hall in very truth: no door, no window, nothing but the outward shape of a hall, as though it were composed of pure chaos.

There was no entering it, and no seeing what lay inside.

Even when he opened the vertical eye at the center of his brow, he could not see what was within. His primordial spirit stretched out both hands and thrust them into the chaos of the hall, striving to part it and seek out what lay inside; but the chaos qi was immeasurably thick and heavy, and even when he spent all his strength, he could not part the chaos of that hall!

He tried again and again, and still he could not enter.

"Is anyone there? " He tried knocking and laughed. "You inside — I heard your Dao-question.

You asked me so many questions; why not open the door and talk face to face?

" No one answered him from within the Chaos Hall.

After a long while, Shen Mu sat upon the stone steps in silent stupor, his brows locked tight.

Now and then he turned his head to glance back at the Chaos Hall, and his brows knit tighter still.

The Chaos Hall stood at the highest point of his Heavenly Court; even seated before the hall, he could take in the whole majestic, boundless holy realm of the Heavenly Court at a single view. Thirty-three heavenly palaces, endless palaces and pavilions, buildings and mountains and waters, billowing and vast; the light of the Dao turned to rosy clouds, the qi of the Dao turned to clouds, drifting through palace after palace.

Even the Lingxiao Halls of those heavenly palaces seemed far lower and smaller than this Chaos Hall. Above his head was Xuandu; the Heavenly Lord of Xuandu revealed his face, blotting out myriads upon myriads of stars, and he too was studying this Chaos Hall, his brows drawn tight.

This Heavenly Lord likewise wore Shen Mu's face; he was one of Shen Mu's divine avatars. After a long while, the face of the Heavenly Lord Shen Mu faded from sight.

Upon the stone steps, Shen Mu propped his chin on his left hand and brooded in bitter thought, not knowing where he had gone wrong, nor why the Chaos Hall had a hall but no door, nor why he could not enter.

Suddenly a voice came from behind him, chanting in long, drawn notes: "Chaos swaddled and shrouded like an egg, dim and silent, filling the void. The vast Taishu embraces Hongmeng!

The one qi cycles, dense and grave.

" Startled, Shen Mu turned to look: there within the Chaos Hall, a mass of Hongmeng purple radiance wrapped about a figure of light was threading through the chaos, walking outward.

That voice was a Dao-sound, spoken in the Dao-tongue; when it spoke of chaos swaddled and dark, the Dao of Chaos and Taiyi truly flowed within the sound; when it spoke of dimness and silence, it was as though the cosmos were not yet split and heaven and earth not yet opened — the very scene of chaos! When the voice within the light spoke of Taishu, the Dao of Taishu circulated; when it spoke of the one qi, the Dao of Taichu was truly stored within it.

Shen Mu rose to his feet and stared blankly at the figure walking out from the Chaos Hall. The man's tread was heavy and firm; his form seemed to walk from an age immeasurably ancient toward the present, and the light about him was as though, in passing through one great tribulation of destruction after another, the cold gleam of the wind of cold silence and the firelight of the wind of heat-death wove and interwove ceaselessly around him.

In the blink of an eye, Shen Mu saw that figure pass through seven layers of the great tribulations of destruction, drawing nearer and nearer! And the man's voice seemed to come from a prehistoric cosmos — not the sixteenth cosmic epoch, but a cosmos more ancient still!

"Within lie hidden true water and true fire, coiled and veiled as ice. At the center the Primordial Origin works the mysterious art!

The three qis divide, all in great stillness.

" That figure passed through sixteen great tribulations of destruction and at last reached the edge of Shen Mu's Chaos Hall, about to step out from it, and his Dao-sound grew ever clearer as he said in admiration: "What a Chaos Hall! Standing at the end of time and space, it guided me to this place! This is the cosmos of the future seventeenth epoch, is it not?

" He halted before the last layer of chaos qi, unable to take one step further and walk out of Shen Mu's Chaos Hall.

Shen Mu stared at the figure in a daze, shock beyond measure in his heart.

In a cosmic epoch already destroyed, there existed an incomparably mighty being who, when Shen Mu cultivated to the chaos realm, had actually followed the chaos qi within the Chaos Hall and come to this place!

Of course, this person had walked here from one great cosmic annihilation to the next, taking the chaos qi that a cosmos' destruction turned into as his medium. Shen Mu's case was exceedingly peculiar: his spirit treasury had passed through birth and death no one knew how many times, and the World Tree within that treasury had once entered the Jade Capital City of the Ancestral Court, absorbing the chaos qi produced by each cosmic destruction to strengthen itself, so that his spirit treasury became linked to the destruction-tribulations of those cosmic epochs. And his Chaos Hall had thus formed the passage linking those epochs' great tribulations of destruction.

Shen Mu had never returned to a past cosmos, had never lived through those great tribulations of destruction; yet he could well imagine such a scene.

In each of those great tribulations that destroyed a cosmic epoch, countless living beings struggled amid the calamity to survive, to endure; the Dao-Achievers' Dao trees swayed behind them as they did all in their power to preserve themselves, and they too struggled in the calamity.