Chapter 1366 — Nowhere Left to Turn
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 1 of 3
On the northern frontier of Jingping, red light suddenly came crashing down from the heavens. Within that red glow drifted two wandering souls, one an earth soul and one a divine soul, desolate and wretched beyond telling, riddled full of holes by Shen Mu's arrows!
It was fortunate that the Heavenly Emperor's two souls were incomparably mighty, and so they were not blasted apart on the spot.
Even so, the earth soul and the divine soul of the Heavenly Emperor Taichu had been gravely wounded at their very root.
These two souls had in the beginning been summoned nineteen years ago, before the Jingping Calamity erupted, when Shen Mu, needing the Heavenly Emperor to lend a hand and carry Jingping through the disaster, had no choice but to call the souls back for him upon the Heavenly Emperor's own terms. At that time the Heavenly Emperor's two souls had already shattered into black soul-sand; to reshape them, Shen Mu went so far as to borrow power from the Lord of Heaven and the Lord of Earth, kowtowing to them again and again until their strength was granted him.
The reshaping of those two souls cost Shen Mu so much of his own vitality that he collapsed into unconsciousness. Yet once the Heavenly Emperor's two souls were remade, he did not step forward during the Jingping Calamity to shield Jingping; the calamity broke out all the same, and countless common folk and divine-ability users perished.
Only after he had taken dominion over the Yuan Realm did the Heavenly Emperor command the gods of the Heavenly Court to cease their targeting of Jingping, allowing it to survive, and then he went back on his word, ordering the reforms forbidden, suppressing Emperor Yanfeng and Jiang Baigui, Imperial Teacher of Jingping, and putting Ling Yushu to death.
That succession of bloody measures plunged Jingping into a great terror. By then Shen Mu had no souls left at all; he had given his very soul over to his elder brother Shen Fengqing, leaving him nothing but an undying divine consciousness and a body, a walking corpse.
It was Shen Mu's desperate defense of Jingping that bought Jingping its future. It was also at that time that the earth soul and divine soul of the Heavenly Emperor Taichu were reincarnated into Jingping; soulless and spiritless, Shen Mu wandered for two or three years before he came to the Heavenly Court. Now Shen Mu was sixteen, soon to be seventeen, and therefore he judged the Heavenly Emperor Taichu's incarnation in Jingping to be nineteen.
"Heavenly Venerable Mu is a mere buffoon, and a vicious one at that, to assassinate my incarnation by stealth; I will not suffer him!
" The Heavenly Emperor's earth soul and divine soul twined together in the air, shaking with fury. "I have indulged him far too long.
I never thought he would run so wild!
The Yuan Capital is my domain. He ekes out his wretched life beneath my eaves, and still dares such insolence.
I will not abide him!
" The Yuan Realm had originally been called the Yuan Capital, until the Earth Mother renamed it the Yuan Realm, declaring it her own territory; yet in the mouths of certain ancient gods, the Yuan Realm was still the Yuan Capital. "That he could find me means he must have used the Lord of Earth's Book of Life and Death, and also that my name contains the character Xiao.
It seems I can make no further use of Xiao! " Taichu was the name the Grand Emperor had given him, while Xiao was the name he had given himself.
He had always loathed the name Taichu, and so in every reincarnation his name must contain a Xiao. Gu Xiao, Chu Xiao, Xiao Weisu, Xiao Tianji, Xiao Chujue, each of them bore a Xiao.