Chapter 1486 — The Brat Churns the River, Startling the Fish to Leap
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 1 of 4
Palace Heavenly Venerable knew at once that things had gone awry: the Nether Heavenly Venerable's body was recovering at a flying pace, swiftly turning from an old man into a youth!
The Nether Heavenly Venerable of old had been like a man bent double with age; it was for this reason that men called him the Old Nether Courier.
He had kept to Youdu all the year round, his mortal flesh long since withered and sapless, and a dark, gloomy air hung about him. He always came forth in the night, standing all alone in the glow of a lantern, folding paper men and paper horses.
His name was infamous throughout the heavens and the myriad worlds. To speak of the Old Nether Courier was enough to strike silence and trembling into the boldest of devils and gods, enough to stop a child's crying.
And now the Nether Heavenly Venerable had turned back into a youth; that heavy reek of twilight had fallen away from him, as though he had become once more that rather solitary boy who shunned the crowd and loved to sit alone by the water, kneading a divine art in his palms and flinging it into Yaochi to blast the fish.
He was not one of those youths who, at the least exertion, bulge with knots of muscle and swagger with brute strength; on the contrary, he was very thin and frail, his face somewhat pale, giving no great sense of menace.
Yet compared with the days when he had blasted fish beside Yaochi, he was plainly far more open of heart, far more confident, and his pupils were filled with the will to fight!
"The divine art ages not, though the heart grows old—
returned at last, he is still a youth—"
The Nether Heavenly Venerable lifted his head slowly, and behind him that vast, measureless primordial spirit lifted its head as well.
Palace Heavenly Venerable looked up. The greatness of this primordial spirit was enough to stand on equal footing against beings such as the Heavenly Duke and Tubo!
For a long age, everyone had believed the Nether Heavenly Venerable to be in decline. He had lain silent in Youdu, never coming into contact with the divine arts and dao methods of the outside world; he had never undergone the Longhan Revolution, the Chiming Revolution, the Shanghuang Reform, the Kai Huang Reform, or the Jingping Reform. His dao methods and divine arts must surely be outmoded, unable to keep pace with the times.
Yet the ten Heavenly Venerables of the Heavenly Court had never overlooked him. The Heavenly Court had established Mingdu and put the Yin Son of Heaven in charge of it, to stand in opposition to Youdu, guiding the souls of the dead, and of gods and devils, into Mingdu.
The Heavenly Court's purpose, beyond weakening the strength of Youdu, had been to keep the Nether Heavenly Venerable from mastering the dao methods and divine arts of the world through these dead.
Only the Nine Heavenly Venerables of Longhan understood how terrifying the potential of the Nether Heavenly Venerable, one of their own number, truly was. That was why the Vast Heavenly Venerable and the Fire Heavenly Venerable would not grant him the chance to grow.
Yet everyone had overlooked one thing: within Youdu, the Nether Heavenly Venerable possessed a hundred million clones, scattered through all the heavens and worlds, guiding the dead onward.
Each of these clones was equal in strength to an ordinary god or devil.
True, the dao methods and divine arts the dead brought to Youdu had made him grow, but what had truly raised him to a height beyond anyone's imagining was his clones.
He was, by nature, the Nether Heavenly Venerable who had founded his dao upon the soul, the peerless prodigy who first broke through the boundary between life and death. After he came to Youdu, his primordial spirit had grown ever mightier.
A hundred million clones were the outward proof of the might of his primordial spirit.