Chapter 1230 — Your Uncle Is Going to Beat Your Father
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 2 of 3
Xu Shenghua stood with his feet in a loose, careless stance and said mildly, "Yet his path is wrong, and so he still lost to me. And I have seen the true Heavenly Venerable Yu."
Shen Mu raised his eyebrows and said, a little guiltily, "You defeated him?"
Xu Shenghua said, "He keeps company with the younger generation, with Jiang Yunjian, and he is Jiang Yunjian's master. But his realm is very strange, and the realm he has taught Jiang Yunjian is very strange as well."
His brows knitted deeply.
It was the first time Shen Mu had ever seen Xu Shenghua knit his brows.
This fellow wore no expression at all, ever; whether startled or wild with joy, it was always the same face.
Even Shen Mu had seen him laugh only two or three times; as for a frown, that had never once happened.
Yet Heavenly Venerable Yu, Lan Yutian, had made him frown.
"His realm is past my understanding now."
Xu Shenghua let out a breath of turbid air. "I went looking for him. His realms begin with the Spirit Embryo realm, and next the Star River realm."
Shen Mu nodded. He had known of it when Heavenly Venerable Yu opened his Spirit Embryo and Star River; but after that came the outbreak of the Jingping Calamity, and Shen Mu had sent him to Youdu, so of his later realms he was not so well informed.
"The third is the Heavenly River realm, the fourth the Four Poles Heaven realm."
Xu Shenghua's expression grew stranger still. "The fifth realm is the Yuandu realm, the sixth the Youdu realm, the seventh the Guixu realm. After these seven realms there is no so-called Divine Realm—and yet he is mightier by far than any god."
Shen Mu was dazed for a moment, then praised him. "These seven realms are wonderfully akin to my own! Only, his path runs from the outside inward, while mine runs from the inside outward."
Xu Shenghua shot him a glance. "You and I are well acquainted. There is no need to gild your own face."
Shen Mu's body trembled slightly, and he unfurled the divine treasury of his Primal Embryo. At once golden light blazed throughout the Shangcang Divine Sect; a divine treasury spread over a thousand li, and at its center stood the Ancestral Court, the divine tree, and beneath the tree Shen Mu's Spirit Embryo, a hundred zhang tall.
Above was the Heavenly Court; above it Xuandu, below it Tianyin, Youdu, Yuandu, and beneath all, Guixu; the Heavenly River coiled through, linking the many worlds.
The gods of every world sat enthroned, and the sound of the Dao rumbled.
Xu Shenghua was astonished. He walked to and fro within that divine treasury, examining everywhere, the astonishment in his eyes growing ever thicker.
"Your two realms are indeed exact reversals of one another!"
Xu Shenghua's face did not change; only his eyes betrayed extreme astonishment. He said, "Lan Yutian first established the Spirit Embryo, then the Star River and Xuandu, then the Heavenly River; through the Heavenly River he established the Four Poles Heaven, and through the Four Poles Heaven he established Yuandu, Youdu and Guixu. When I met him not long ago, he was studying an eighth realm."
Shen Mu's eyes flickered. "His eighth realm is the Ancestral Court."
Xu Shenghua said, "He calls it a great realm; if it can be opened up, it will surpass even the Heavenly Palace and the Heavenly Court. He is still deducing it, and has not settled it. But come to think of it, Sect Master Shen, you first established the Ancestral Court, and only then the other Xuandu, Youdu and Yuandu. It looks as though you follow the order of heaven and earth, yet to cultivate it is incomparably difficult."
Shen Mu thought it over. It was indeed so; Lin Xuan had said the same.
"Lan Yutian established the other realms first, from the outside inward, and the difficulty falls greatly."
Xu Shenghua said, "If these two cultivation systems are both to be handed down, then yours will surely be the first to go extinct, while Lan Yutian's transmission can endure for ten thousand generations!"