Chapter 1435 — Red Dust Becomes the Dao Path
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 2 of 5
He had gone out from the Great Black Wood by night, and carrying Taisu's egg he had unwittingly come to the moment when the previous cosmic epoch met its destruction; he had no choice but to lift Taisu's egg high and try to return beneath the World Tree — and it was then, too, that Taisu emerged!
Taisu's emergence was bound up with him in no small measure. "As for us, we too have been defiled by the red dust," said the female voice with a sigh.
"When we observed what had befallen our Daoist brothers, wariness stirred in us first of all; and once we had a heart of wariness, our heart of Dao was no longer pure.
From that moment we stood one step further from attaining the Dao.
" "Yet at the time we did not foresee this. We fashioned a false lode to blind the Creator, and hid the true lode away. And so we stood yet another step from the Dao.
" "We marshaled the Taiji Starfield to strangle the Creator and the other living things that entered our mining ground; to protect ourselves we roused a heart of killing, and so stood still further from the Dao," said the male voice with a sigh. "At the time we did not realize it; we thought ourselves clever.
" "We hid ourselves away and lived in constant dread, in fear and trembling, ever afraid that the Great Emperor would discover us, that Taichu would discover us. It was only when Taichu led the other ancient gods to seal the Ancestral Court that we were set at ease, and thought that now we might absorb the Taiji lode and attain the Dao.
" The male voice sighed. "Only then did we discover that the red dust had long since defiled us. Though the red dust no longer troubled us, we had only drawn further and further from the Dao.
And that was not all: we discovered another, more terrible thing. " Both the male and the female voice fell silent. Shen Mu's heart stirred; a dreadful guess took shape in his mind, and he opened his mouth to ask — then held himself back.
The Empress was calmer than he; she simply waited quietly.
After a moment the male and female voices within the egg spoke together as one: "Though the Ancestral Court is sealed, we have found that we are not the only ones within it — there are others!
" Shen Mu was greatly shaken, and thought to himself: "It is as I guessed!
" "The Ancestral Court is sealed, yet it cannot seal in that Daoist brother who emerged ahead of his time. He comes and goes in uncanny fashion, unfathomable in his depths.
But the others within the Ancestral Court are not him.
" "The others come from beneath the earth — and yet they do not come from beneath the earth. They are remnants of the previous cosmic epoch.
They come from the previous cosmic epoch. " "They prepared long in advance, and within the Ancestral Court they have laid trap upon trap and scheme upon scheme; even our Taiji mining ground has come under their designs.
" "When you sealed the Ancestral Court and all departed from it, we sensed a dreadful prehistoric ruin travel to our mining ground and lock down our absorption of the mining ground's power and Dao, so that these years our progress has been slow. " There was dread in the Taiji ancient gods' voices: "We roused a heart of dread, and so stood another step from the Dao.
That is why, when the uninvited guest came visiting our mining ground, we lent out the Taiji primal stone: for these past million years we have been able to draw little power from the primal stone, and little from the mining ground; lending it to him for a while did no harm. " Shen Mu at once opened the vertical eye at his brow and looked down into the depths beneath the mining ground.