Chapter 1788 — Bloodshed Without End

Behind Shen Mu, the Guixu Lotus swelled in the space of a single instant to an immense size, a thousand times over his own body; the lotus took the Calamity of Destruction as its Sea of Chaos, drawing upon the power of the great kalpa of destruction! The chaos qi within the Calamity of Destruction condensed into a sea that stood upright behind Shen Mu, its lotus leaves drifting upon the surface.

Crack!

A violent tremor swept out; with Shen Mu at its center, space itself warped, becoming a great Guixu abyss — and seen from without, that abyss was boundless darkness.

Yet from Shen Mu's vantage, space was shattered, and the wind of heat death made this place unbearably bright. He stood within the abyss and swung his sword in fury!

The power surging in from the Sea of Chaos rushed all at once into his body, coursing through him, and was transmuted into the might of the Heaven Capital Genesis Chapter!

Beneath his feet, vital essence took form, fashioning an altar in imitation of the one where Heaven Capital had opened the heavens; the altar rose, its myriad gorgeous patterns blazing with light, magnifying the power of this strike.

Behind him, the Hall of Chaos appeared within the Calamity of Destruction; the chaos qi of the kalpa surged madly, driving his cultivation higher and higher!

Never before had he unleashed such terrifying power! The abyss quaked; the might of the Heaven Capital Genesis Chapter erupted to its utmost, becoming a snow-bright beam of light that slashed out from Guixu!

Old Man Wuya had not anticipated this turn at all; Shen Mu's response was beyond his reckoning.

By his estimation, Shen Mu's best choice would have been to cast himself willingly into the Calamity of Destruction under his pressure, using the Heaven Capital Genesis Chapter to clear a path and cleave through the destruction kalpa of the Sixteenth Era.

Then Shen Mu would have entered the great kalpa of the Fifteenth Era.

If he still had strength left to break through the Fifteenth Era's kalpa, he would enter the great kalpa of the Fourteenth Era. The greater his strength, the more ancient the era to which he would be exiled; if Shen Mu's strength reached the level of a Young Master, he ought to exhaust himself in the great kalpa of the First Era and fall into the First Era. And then Shen Mu would never be able to return to the present.

To return, Shen Mu would need the Third Young Master's blood sacrifice — a blood sacrifice of the Seventeenth Era, a conversion of mass and energy.

And given Shen Mu's character, he would never do such a thing.

Nor would the Third or Fourth Young Master ever help him perform the conversion; thus Shen Mu could only remain forever in the past. Yet Shen Mu had not only refused to enter the kalpa of his own accord — he had struck at him instead!

The power of this sword was immense; at the moment the blade light swept out from the warped and shattered spacetime of the Guixu abyss, its radiance pierced the boundless space beneath the World Tree, and the strike was bent on severing him and the World Tree together!

Old Man Wuya's white hair streamed in the sword light; before it even touched the radiance, strand after strand snapped in midair.

Crack, crack, crack!

His severed white hairs, in midair, transformed into tiny cosmos newly opened; in an instant they underwent the transformations of the Five Primes, stars were born in swift succession and drew apart from one another, forming gorgeous heavens that hung in the sky beneath the canopy of the World Tree!

And behind him, the surface of the World Tree burst open with cracks; sword marks appeared upon its trunk!

If Shen Mu's sword truly landed, the World Tree might well be severed! "Chaos, you are still obstinate in your delusion!

" Old Man Wuya's figure blocked the path this sword must take to reach the World Tree; he had to stop it.

The World Tree was his true body — if Shen Mu severed it, his power would vanish once more, sealed away within the roots, and who knew when it might revive!

He would never permit such a thing to happen! His steps moved forward; a dao resonance more mysterious than mystery erupted from within him, and all manner of inconceivable divine powers and dao arts issued from his hands — each one so wondrous and strange, each one concealing the supreme profundity of the great Dao! Through the ages, era after cosmic era, geniuses had been as numerous as stars in the sky; yet those who spent a lifetime cultivating a single great Dao, who could raise it to the thirty-sixth heaven and imprint it upon the void, transforming it into a dao tree that bore a dao fruit — even these were few.

Even a hall master of Miluo Palace could, in one cosmic era, cultivate only a single great Dao to its utmost and bear one dao fruit — and sometimes might not bear a dao fruit at all.

Yet upon Old Man Wuya, such limits seemed not to exist at all.

In this brief moment alone, the great Daos he had brought forth numbered in the hundreds, each one cultivated to the utmost limit of the Dao Realm!

The divine powers these great Daos evolved were likewise those of the ultimate Dao Realm! In his hands, he could even unleash the great Dao divine powers of Miluo Palace, the great Dao divine powers of Heaven Capital! He even brought forth Hongmeng divine powers, with utter fluency, as though he too had achieved Hongmeng entering the Dao at the thirty-sixth heaven!

After all, even the seven young masters of Miluo Palace had not mastered all the arts of the Master of Miluo Palace; not one of them had achieved Hongmeng becoming the Dao.

Even the First Young Master, Taishang, had achieved only the Taishang Hall, not Miluo Palace itself. Yet Old Man Wuya could actually unleash the ultimate mystery of the Dao of Hongmeng!

This was what Shen Mu called the dao tree trap! So long as one walked the path of attaining the Dao through the Dao Realm, imprinting the ultimate void, one had stepped onto the Dao Realm trap.

The Dao Realm trap might not be as overbearing as the Yujing Trap or the Lingxiao Trap, but so long as one cultivated a Dao Realm dao tree, it was as good as helping Old Man Wuya in his comprehension and cultivation. The great Daos mastered by those who attained the Dao, Old Man Wuya could master as well — and among these was the Master of Miluo Palace's Hongmeng attainment of the Dao!

Within the abyss, Shen Mu's arm trembled violently; one after another the great sinews of his thick arm snapped, piercing through the skin and laying bare — the sinews like crimson dragons, claws bared and fangs bared, yet the crimson dragons' bodies were already severed.

His skin burst apart, flesh and blood tore asunder, and soon his arm was reduced to bare white bone!

Old Man Wuya's divine powers were vast; the dao arts he had mastered were simply too many, each one so powerful — even Lord Shang's Dao of Slaughter was unleashed from his hands.

The Heaven Capital Genesis Chapter was the mightiest divine power Shen Mu had ever created, and the most wondrous; it could be said to fuse all he had learned and comprehended into a single strike that split heaven and earth.

Yet in depth of foundation, he was still far beneath Old Man Wuya.

In cultivation, though he leaned upon the Calamity of Destruction, drawing power through the Guixu Lotus and the Hall of Chaos, his cultivation still fell short of the World Tree, which could likewise take root in chaos.

Crack!

Shen Mu's right arm burst apart; then, with a crack beneath his feet, the altar split open.

Old Man Wuya's divine powers invaded the abyss; Shen Mu circulated the Dao of Taiyi in his left hand, and as his left hand rose, Taiyi Felling the Tree was already unleashed, the axe cleaving at Old Man Wuya.

The Taiyi Divine Axe burst apart together with Shen Mu's left arm, blood mist scattering.