Chapter 1796 — Telling Black from White

The crowd was as if facing a mortal foe; nearly everyone here had been captured by the First Young Master, Taishang!

The First Young Master, Taishang, was like some idle old monster — ever since he had pledged himself to the Master of the Milo Palace, he had spent his days fixated on every power that refused allegiance to the Milo Palace, and the slightest misstep would see one seized and suppressed by him.

The obelisks of this forest were beyond counting, and within each stele was sealed and suppressed a Dao-attaining one from the prehistoric epochs. Many had failed to endure, and had long since turned to flying ash within their steles.

The First Young Master, Taishang, was still not at ease. Before Shen Mu had come, he had even planted his own Dao Tree here, his eye transformed into the sun in the sky, watching day and night without a single day's slackness.

It was not until Shen Mu's last visit, when he exposed the presence of an eighth Dao Tree here, that they realized the First Young Master, Taishang, had been spying on them all along!

Only after that did Taishang's Dao Tree and eye vanish.

"Shameless!" the girl cried out toward the heavens.

"Come down if you dare, and fight this Grandpa Zhu one-on-one!" Zhu Santong bellowed with righteous indignation.

In the sky, Taishang's face betrayed no expression whatsoever, her curses not weighing on his mind in the least.

The old man was murderous, and raising his head, he said, "Taishang, your hand may reach the heavens, but you are not invincible! In those years you and I were of equal fame — had I not willingly submitted to your suppression, how could you have run rampant before me?"

Just then, Taiyi's face in the sky descended lower and lower, as though he were bending down to look at them, and that pressure, like the sky itself caving in, made their scalps go numb.

They had been imprisoned too long; their cultivation and strength were far from what they had once been. As one waned, the other waxed — Taiyi grew ever stronger, and now they were no longer worthy to be Taiyi's opponents.

When that pressure reached its utmost, the several of them could endure no longer and were about to strike, when suddenly Taiyi's face pressed down above the obelisk forest, then swiftly shrank and fell into the forest.

Whoosh —

Zhu Santong was the first to lose control of himself; involuntarily he flew backward, and with a swish was absorbed into an obelisk, becoming a man within a stele.

Zhu Santong struggled and howled within the stele, yet not even his voice could get out.

Swish, swish, swish!

Streaks of light flashed by, and the girl, the Madam, and the old woman flew backward one after another, falling into obelisk after obelisk, able only to struggle beneath the mirror-like stele surfaces, unable to break free.

The First Young Master, Taishang, walked out from the forest of steles. Though Shen Mu had placed one stele aboard the Golden Ship of Salvation and had the golden ship carry it off to the Ancestral Court, so that Taiyi could not complete the forest's formation — yet Taiyi was as though the missing stele himself; falling into the forest, he completed the formation.

The old man's fury made his hair stand on end; beneath the suppression of the obelisk forest his body shook without cease, and he wished to strike, yet the suppressive force of the forest was truly too strong, making his cultivation vanish at flying speed, his Dao-conduct falling silent, so that he could sense no Great Dao at all.

"Taishang, do you not dare contend with me?" He stood before Shen Mu, his eyeballs blood-red, his voice hoarse.

"Old Monster Dongyang, when you willingly submitted to my suppression, you had already ceased to be my match."

The First Young Master, Taishang, raised his palm and gave a gentle flick; the old man went howling away and crashed into an obelisk.

His back had already sunk into the stele's surface, but his hands and legs were still braced outside, and he cried out fiercely, "If you have the ability, fight me to the death! What sort of skill is it to deal with a cripple?"

The First Young Master, Taishang, was expressionless. He raised his palm, and with a thunderous boom, the old man Dongyang's legs and arms could no longer hold out; he was forced bodily into the stele and sealed within.

The five of them stood behind the mirror surface of the stele, watching Taishang approach Shen Mu, grief and despair written on their faces.

The cripple had finally found hope of revival, yet Taishang's arrival had shattered that hope to bits!

The First Young Master, Taishang, came before Shen Mu. Shen Mu's cultivation too was suppressed by the complete obelisk forest, and the dream slowly faded.

He opened his eyes: "Senior Brother Taishang. Did you not say you were impartial, favoring neither me nor the third and fourth? Why then have you come today to stop me?"

The First Young Master, Taishang, sat down before him, his gaze passing over him to rest on the cripple and the coffin, and said, "I will not favor you, nor will I favor them. But you should not attempt to revive the Lord of Tiandu."

Shen Mu was perplexed, and said, "I beg Senior Brother to enlighten me."

"The Master killed the Lord of Tiandu with no trace of selfishness — it was because of what the Lord of Tiandu did. The Great Dao of heaven and earth is a public instrument, utterly impartial and selfless; the Dao does not favor you because you are a Dao-attaining one, nor ignore you because you are obscure. But Tiandu's opening of the heavens turned this public instrument of the Dao into a private one."

Taishang spoke unhurriedly: "You have never been to the Seventh Epoch, and do not know its circumstances; thus your sympathy for the Lord of Tiandu is forgivable. In the Seventh Epoch, after Tiandu City opened the heavens and split the earth, the Great Dao became private, belonging to the heaven-openers of Tiandu City. The myriad living beings of that time were forced to cultivate their Dao. Yet the heaven-openers of Tiandu City could control the Great Dao of heaven and earth and do as they pleased, and among them were no few who acted wantonly."

Shen Mu raised his eyebrows and said, "The enmity between the Master and the Lord of Tiandu was stirred up by Elder Wuyai. How the title of Dao-defiler came to be — Senior Brother Taishang should know better than I."

"What manner of being is the Master? Elder Wuyai's influence over him was limited — at most he helped him confirm his own thoughts. Elder Wuyai thought himself too important, but in the Master's heart, he was not so important."

The First Young Master, Taishang, said calmly, "Tiandu City taught all without discrimination, and among them were many of depraved morals. The heaven-openers could seize and bestow their Great Dao at will, robbing others of their bitter cultivation or granting others cultivation on a whim, according to their own likes and dislikes. The entire history of the Seventh Epoch was a foul miasma, and no others attained the Dao. The Master went to reason with the Lord of Tiandu, exhorting him three times, and each of those three times, I was at his side."

Shen Mu frowned.

He knew little of the enmity between Tiandu and the Milo Palace, and now, hearing Taishang speak of its history, he realized it was far more complex than he had imagined.

"Each of the Master's three visits to Tiandu City was made in the manner of a fellow Daoist, to discuss and seek instruction, hoping to persuade the Lord of Tiandu to abandon his original philosophy. But after the Master arrived at Tiandu City, what he received was the mockery and scorn of the heaven-openers, and what he saw were cold looks and white eyes."