Chapter 1532 — The Finest of Swords
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 1 of 4
"I am still the strongest Heavenly Artisan, but Worry-Free Village is no longer the Founding Emperor era of those days.
" The words fell like a drawn blade with its edge bared, and even the Founding Emperor could not help but dim before them, for though his sword Dao had branded thirty-five layers of void, he could hardly parry such a thrust.
Worry-Free Village had indeed swept away the decay of former days, yet compared with the Founding Emperor era it still lacked much, and could not return to that age of keen reform and striving endeavor. From top to bottom the will to fight remained unchanged in Worry-Free Village, but the accumulated weight was hard to reverse, and whenever the Founding Emperor went to Jingping he felt only a vigorous and striving spirit, changing day by day, while upon returning to Worry-Free Village he could feel no such spirit.
Such was Jingping now. Jingping could gather the finest talents under heaven and forge a sword for Shen Mu with the strength of an entire nation, fusing the essence and spirit of the age into the forging.
The Worry-Free Village of today could no longer do this.
Li Youran walked into the Dao fire, the mightiest Heavenly Artisan of the Founding Emperor era, his realm immensely high, his cultivation even above that of Jingping's strongest Heavenly Artisan, the Silent Artisan.
With his joining, the speed of casting quickened at once.
Yet only then did Li Youran see that in the Dao of casting the Silent Artisan was in no way inferior to him, and in certain respects had already surpassed him.
In casting, the Silent Artisan had achieved the unity of the vast and the minute, and when he forged, his hammer work was square yet without corners, as the great vessel is slow to complete and the great image has no form.
And yet his hammer work was also exquisitely fine, every blow falling upon the tiniest particles, carving delicate patterns upon the smallest motes. Such craft Li Youran did not possess.
In matters of the great he was far stronger than the Silent Artisan, for whether Worry-Free Village or the Other Shore Ark, both were towering and immense, such colossal divine artifacts as even the Celestial Court could hardly refine.
But in matters of the minute he fell far behind.
He also wished to see the Silent Artisan fulfilled, and so he served as his assistant, lending his own comprehension of casting to aid the Silent Artisan, helping him advance one step further upon the Dao of casting and grasp still deeper principles.
One divine weapon after another belonging to prehistoric mighty ones gave off earth-shaking power within the Dao fire, but the Dao fire was too fierce, causing the Great Dao brands hidden within those weapons to crumble and melt away, causing the Great Dao that those prehistoric mighty ones had sacrificed into their weapons to collapse and liquefy.
Those Great Daos ruined by the fire broke apart into domains of the Great Dao, and those domains also collapsed within the Nine Heavens of Dao Fire, turning into Dao patterns. The Dao patterns in turn disintegrated again, turning into runes.
This spectacle let all who took part in the refining and all who watched beyond the Dao Fire Ancestral Ground perceive many secrets of cultivation. The divine ability users and gods and devils of today, though their arts grew ever more profound, had not yet reached the flourishing of past universes.
All along, the path followed by divine ability users and gods and devils in cultivation was that of Great Dao runes, divine abilities, and Dao patterns, with Dao patterns forming Dao chains to make domains.
As for domains, they rested in the hands of only a few, becoming secrets never passed on.
Only when the Founding Emperor transmitted the Dao realm system and the sword domain to Jingping did domains, that higher path of cultivation, gradually become known to divine ability users and gods and devils.