Chapter 1791 — The Palace Master's Compensation

To Shen Mu, those six months had been sheer torment — and at the same time a rare chance to raise himself.

The Old Man Wuya knew far too many Dao arts and divine powers: the arts of the Miluo Palace, a portion of the arts of Tiandu, all of them he commanded down to the last detail; the only things he did not know were the great Dao arts he had slandered as the blasphemies of Tiandu, and the Way of Guixu. He could not use the Dao Tree trap to spy out the Dao arts and divine powers of those who had achieved the Dao without cultivating a Dao Tree.

Even so, the knowledge he possessed was enough to make him the foremost man of seventeen cosmic eras.

To cross blades with such a being, Shen Mu was naturally hard-pressed beyond measure; but fortunately, the Red Rope Knot Seal, which the master of the Miluo Palace had created expressly to restrain the Way of Guixu, was something Shen Mu also understood.

When the Old Man Wuya used the Red Rope Knot Seal against him, he unraveled it again and again, rendering that supreme divine power, aimed squarely at the Way of Guixu, utterly useless. In the end, to deal with him, the Old Man Wuya had no choice but to bring out the World Tree, adopting a strategy of trading a thousand of the enemy's for eight hundred of his own, each countering the other's Way of Guixu, in an attempt to grind away Shen Mu's Guixu Lotus.

But Shen Mu had the Long River of Chaos at his back; the Guixu Lotus was rooted in chaos, drawing energy without cease, and this became the capital that let him hold on.

Had he not had the Long River of Chaos behind him, a man of Shen Mu's strength would long since have been defeated and broken by the Old Man Wuya. The Old Man Wuya did indeed have a way to make the Long River of Chaos vanish, but if he did so, Shen Mu could immediately withdraw beyond the World Tree's shroud, and then the Old Man Wuya would have no way to cast him back into the past.

The two of them deadlocked for half a year.

Under the Old Man Wuya's oppression, Shen Mu's comprehension of the Way of Guixu grew stronger and deeper.

His understanding of the Way of Guixu had from the first been second only to Her Majesty the Empress; though he had never achieved the Dao through Guixu as she had, he had received the "patronage" of the Second Young Master Wuji, planted the lotus seed, and grown lotus leaves and lotus flowers, so that the power the Way of Guixu could bring forth actually surpassed the Empress's by a measure. Now his lotus flower had become a platform — a second-grade lotus platform of the Dao realm — and in his comprehension of the Way of Guixu he had long since surpassed the Empress by a great deal; one might say that since the beginning of the seventeen cosmic eras, he was second only to the Second Young Master.

Tempered by the Old Man Wuya, his comprehension deepened ever further, and he drew ever nearer to a third-grade lotus platform of the Dao realm.

Yet what improved the most was not the Way of Guixu but Shen Mu's World Tree.

The World Tree and the Guixu Lotus restrained each other; when the Old Man Wuya drove the World Tree to refine Shen Mu's Guixu Lotus, he was bound to bring forth every kind of mystery and marvel of the World Tree. And Shen Mu likewise cultivated the World Tree. His World Tree was a true World Tree as well — not born of visualization, nor parsed out through Dao arts by Lan Yutian Xushenghua, but come from the Old Man Wuya's "patronage.

" Shen Mu's use of the World Tree had always been half-understood; after all, he had simply planted it, with little personal insight into it. The Old Man Wuya's attempt to refine him was, in effect, a demonstration by example, teaching by word and deed, guiding his hand to show him how to drive the World Tree, how to comprehend the Dao arts hidden within it — which naturally brought him a qualitative leap.

This too was one of the reasons Shen Mu could hold out for half a year in the Old Man Wuya's grasp.

But the clumsiest method is the most effective: the Old Man Wuya forcibly refined Shen Mu, spending half a year on it, and at last struck Shen Mu's Guixu Lotus until it snapped.

Success was within reach.

With the Guixu Lotus broken, Shen Mu suffered a grievous wound and fell from the lotus.

The Old Man Wuya flicked a finger, and a leaf of the World Tree flew out and landed beneath Shen Mu's feet. The leaf swelled with incredible speed, its veins and textures like the mountains and rivers of a continent, crisscrossing; as Shen Mu fell toward the World Tree leaf, those veins and textures grew larger and larger.

Before he had even landed on the leaf, it had become a towering continent, bearing him up, about to plunge into the Long River of Chaos.

The Old Man Wuya's face was grave, as though facing a mighty enemy; behind him the World Tree suddenly blazed with the light of the Dao. Long before, when the Giant Taiyi set foot in the Long River of Chaos, he had already sensed it.

The reason that after the Giant Taiyi split open the first Long River of Chaos another river appeared ahead of him was also the Old Man Wuya's obstruction.

There were few beings in this world that could make him feel peril, and the Second Young Master Wuji was one of them; Taiyi was another. As for the other young masters of the Miluo Palace and the other blasphemers of Tiandu, he did not deign to look at them at all.

The Giant Taiyi's actions were flagrant beyond measure, flaunted beyond measure: the moment he stepped into the Long River of Chaos, the light of the Dao bursting from his Great Luo Heaven shone down from the highest void, swishing onto the Old Man Wuya's body.

This too was what forced the Old Man Wuya to break off the Guixu Lotus by main force and deal with Shen Mu first. Suddenly the Long River of Chaos heaved violently.

The Old Man Wuya stood beneath the tree and looked up, and saw the Long River of Chaos split asunder in an instant; a blade of axe-light clove the churning chaos apart, and to either side of the axe-light lay the Great Calamity of Destruction, divided in two. That axe-light was incomparably keen, incomparably dreadful; this divine power actually pierced through the Great Calamity of Destruction, howling its way beneath the World Tree, and came down at the Old Man Wuya's head.

Within the Great Calamity of Destruction the breath of chaos surged violently, and dimly, behind the vast and boundless chaos, one could see the figure of a giant, incomparably majestic, striding across the river and coming this way.

The chaotic breath of the river dashed against his boulder-like body without causing him the slightest trouble; the Great Calamity of Destruction seemed unable to wound him in the least. At the same time, Taiyi's Great Luo Heaven appeared above the Old Man Wuya's head; upon the Dao Tree a dao fruit emerged, and the great Dao hidden within that dao fruit burst forth.

The Taiyi of now had recreated the heroic bearing of that day when he crossed the destruction calamity of sixteen eras, sped straight to the Miluo Palace of the First Era, and did battle with the master of the Miluo Palace.

The master of the Miluo Palace had been able to defeat Taiyi and strike him down into the destruction calamity of the Fourth Era, but the Old Man Wuya was not the master of the Miluo Palace.

Though he knew more than the master of the Miluo Palace, though he was uniquely favored and had achieved the Dao through the World Tree, his whole body of Dao arts had not been cultivated by himself.

Knowing the how but not the why — that was the Old Man Wuya's condition. Facing this axe stroke from Taiyi, the Old Man Wuya's white hair streamed, and he too brought out every ounce of his strength.

Boom!

In the destruction calamity of the Sixteenth Era, countless dark, coarse roots, like black dragons churning seas and rivers in the calamity, rushed at Taiyi's true body. The sight was like ten thousand dragons coursing through chaos.