Chapter 1384 — Summoning the Shadows of the Elders
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 1 of 3
".
.
. a leaf of the Dao Tree?
" Shen Mu's eyes flickered, and inwardly he sighed with regret—he had come but a hair's breadth from seizing that leaf.
Tai Yi's Dao Tree was surely incomparably mighty, and the leaves upon it must surely bear powers beyond all fathoming; could he but obtain one, he might certainly refine it into a treasure of the profoundest mystery. "But why does that leaf look so familiar? " Shen Mu mused.
He had seen leaves of that kind before, within the Daluo Heaven of Tai Di's divine consciousness—and not only there; he had seen such leaves in the little iron bucket that Tai Yi was forever carrying about. When Tai Yi was feeling lazy, he would hand them the branch and have them sprinkle the water from the bucket over the cracked Great Black Mountain with it, mending the mountain. The leaves upon that branch were exactly like the leaf Yan'er had just carried in her beak.
"So then—all this while, we have been sprinkling water with branches and leaves from the Dao Tree?
" The vertical eye at the center of Shen Mu's brows rolled and opened once more with a gurgle, and inwardly he lamented: "Had I only known, I would have secretly plucked a leaf or two. . .
If the branch and its leaves come from Tai Yi's Dao Tree, then what manner of water is the water in his bucket? " Why was it that a single drop of that water could suppress the chaos qi in his eye, enabling his vertical eye to see through even the composition of the Great Way within the primordial spirits of the Lord of Heaven and the Lord of Earth?
He could not help growing more and more curious about the water in that little iron bucket.
The Lord of Heaven said, "Heavenly Venerable Mu, test this vertical eye of yours as it now is, and see what power it holds.
" Shen Mu's heart stirred; once again he roused his vital qi and his divine consciousness, and drove the vertical eye between his brows.
Yet no sooner had he done so than chaos qi came surging up from the depths of his pupil, and in a moment his vertical eye was a mass of chaos, unable to make out anything at all. He hurriedly stopped, and the chaos qi of itself withdrew into the depths of his pupil and vanished.
This vertical eye possessed no power whatsoever.
Yet when he looked upon the Lord of Heaven and the Lord of Earth, he could still see the structures of the Great Way within their primordial spirits.
This vertical eye was far too strange.
The Lord of Heaven and the Lord of Earth were likewise at a loss.
The Lord of Earth had seen the might of Shen Mu's vertical eye for himself; Shen Mu had once used this eye to seal Heavenly Venerable Xiao, and had even sealed Heavenly Venerable Xiao's divine artifact, Yu Tianzun—only thus had Heavenly Venerable Xiao's arrogance been quelled. Otherwise, in the battle of the Peach Grove, to say nothing of banishing Heavenly Venerable Xiao, whether Heavenly Venerable Yue, Heavenly Venerable You, and the Lord of Earth could have withdrawn unscathed would have been far from certain. By rights, the materials used to forge this new vertical eye far surpassed those of the one before: the Lord of Earth's horn of origin was mightier than the Shen-character continent of old, and the Lord of Heaven's crystal of the Heavenly Dao was a thing the former vertical eye had never possessed; and with the Lord of Heaven and the Lord of Earth themselves tempering and refining it for Shen Mu with the blessing of their respective Great Ways, its power should only have surpassed what came before.
Yet now it was plain that the new vertical eye possessed no power at all. "The trouble most likely lies in the chaos eggshell.