Chapter 1769 — The Blood-Rust Battle

The Heavenly Duke gazed at the corpse of the Ancestral God King, and a desolation beyond words rose in his heart. He had thought he would wail aloud and shed tears, yet his state of mind now stood too high, and he felt only that bleak chill.

He drew ever closer to the attainment of the Dao of which Tai Yi had spoken, but the ascent of his Dao realm had slowly stripped from him some of his most primal feelings.

His true body was still dissolving into starlight of the Heavenly Dao and streaming into his flesh, lifting his cultivation higher with every breath. He had cast off the shackles of the ancient god Heavenly Duke, but were the realm of the Heavenly Dao and the heart of Heaven not themselves another bondage?

When the peoples of the primeval age lifted their eyes to the starry sky, Heaven was born.

Thus the heart of Heaven is the heart of man, the heart of all living beings.

The Heavenly Duke had leapt outside the Heavenly Dao, yet he had gained the heart of Heaven, and that heart would hold him fast and bid him act according to its will.

Attainment was not so fair as he had imagined.

Nor was it so ill.

In word and deed he would never overstep the Heavenly Dao, nor would he be confined to the Heavenly Dao alone, for he could still comprehend other great Daos and exalt himself.

He sat in silence, contemplating in stillness, raising himself, striving to break through the last pass.

Elsewhere the armies of the Heavenly Court had already been driven from the Primal Realm, fleeing in rout with helmets cast aside and generals lost, and along the road the soldiers of the Court more than once sought to steady their ranks and raise a camp to face the pursuers of Jingping, but the pursuers of Jingping gave them no such chance. The troops sent to block the enemy, before they could even set their formations, were ambushed from Youdu by You Tianzun, whereupon the great host of Jingping swept down upon them, and what followed became a crushing war of encirclement.

At the same time the hosts of Jingping grew ever more numerous, for the Two Emperors of Chiming hastened to join them and reinforcements from the other heavens of the Primal Realm poured in, so that the allied multitude swelled day by day. And the armies the Court had dispatched to other heavens to plunder them met fierce resistance and bled through heaven after heaven before at last escaping back.

As they fled, heaven after heaven declared rebellion and rose against the tyranny of the Court.

Before the war Ling Yuxiu had raised spirit-energy transmigration bridges with the great heavens to link them in passage, and now the worth of those bridges stood revealed.

It was by those bridges that news of the defeats at Youdu and Xuandu swept so swiftly through all the worlds, and it was by those bridges that the lords of the heavens could reach the Primal Realm in so short a time to besiege the Court.

Emperor Haotian and the Empress launched several counterstrikes, seeking to wield the might of two who had attained the Dao to hunt and slay the high command of their foes, yet with the coming of Xu Shenghua, Yue Tianzun and the Xuanwu Two Emperors, Langwan and the rest, and with Yue Tingge who guarded the Western Lands leading the western host to seal their retreat and strike from behind, they were forced once more to withdraw in bitter hatred.

In Tianzun-level battle strength Jingping had now surpassed the Court, and with Tai Chu slain in battle and the Ancestral God King fallen in defeat, the cause of the Court could truly be called lost. The Court withdrew wholly from the Primal Realm and trekked through the starry sky toward the Ancestral Court, while along the way the great heavens raised their banners and marched forth from the stars to chastise the remnant.

That road could be called a road dyed in blood. Fleeing and slaughtering their way onward, they came to the old battlefield where the Creators had been exterminated, the Bloodrust Belt, and there met with a sudden turn. Shu Jun, last God King of the surviving Creators, stood at the heart of the Bloodrust Belt, his breast full of sighs, for more than a million years before it was here that he had led the Creators in decisive battle against the ancient gods and demigods headed by Tai Chu, Heavenly Emperor of the ancient gods.

It was the grandest battle in all history, unmatched by any campaign in the million years after, until only the recent war for the Primal Realm surpassed the Bloodrust campaign in scale.

In that battle he, a primeval God King, was utterly routed. The race of Creators that had walked out of the Ancestral Court was buried clean away, not a shred remaining, so that even he, their God King, survived only as a wisp of consciousness hidden in a fragment of Tai Chu Origin Stone.

Later Wei Suifeng found him and hid the stone away, and by winding paths it passed into the hands of Shen Mu, whereby he won new life.

Of that campaign only the remnant that had hidden beforehand in the Grand Void survived, namely the branch of Langwan.

"In those days my errant command buried the age of the Creators, and the race of Creators all but perished by my hand. " Shu Jun passed altar after altar, those bloodstained altars that had once been the fount of civilization in this universe, for the Creators could never return to their glory of old and could only merge into the present age.

"Yet the Creators may still blaze splendid in this new age. " Shu Jun bowed low, and the Upper Consciousness of the Three Enclosures burst forth, his voice ringing like struck metal and brimming with surging passion: "For the Creators of posterity, O my compatriots, follow me, your once-defeated leader, and awaken once more to do battle with the Heavenly Court.

" The great host of the Court had entered the Bloodrust Belt, and within that vast interstellar ruin a rolling tide of divine consciousness suddenly erupted and swept the Belt.

A humming filled the air as the Upper Consciousness of the Three Enclosures kindled every altar in that long narrow waste, and above altar after altar the visions of ancient gods emerged, while Shu Jun charged foremost and the visions condensed from the lingering consciousness of the dead primeval Creators followed at his back to slay their way into the armies of the Court. The soldiers of the Court fought desperately and pressed forward, and at last, before the hosts of Jingping could arrive, they burst through the Bloodrust Belt, yet their dead and wounded lay heavy, and countless corpses of gods and demons were left behind.

The Bloodrust Belt dimmed, ancient altar after altar was shattered, and the ruins would never again behold their former splendor.

When Langwan found Shu Jun he was kneeling before the broken bones of the Creators.

Langwan stepped forward and gazed at the man who had buried an age, and after a moment said slowly: "God King, the guilt is not yours.

In that battle any man in your place would have lost. " She had once reproached Shu Jun, but after she learned the whole cause and consequence of the Bloodrust campaign, the hatred in her heart dissolved.

Shu Jun rose unsteadily to his feet and wiped the bloody tears from his face and shook his head: "I am no longer God King of the Creators.

I am now of humankind, and you are God King of the Creators. Of our race only a few hundred remain.

Shu Jun, our power to multiply is frail, and for the breeding of our race you must bear the burden.

You must find the mightiest of men and with his bloodline mend the blood of the Creators.

" Langwan's eyes flickered, but she said nothing and led the surviving Creators onward in pursuit of the Court. Jiang Baigui came walking by, and passing Shu Jun said coolly: "Hereafter Mu Tianzun will not remain at the center of power, and even if Langwan borrows Mu Tianzun to alter the blood of the Creators, the Creators will not thereby become rulers.