Chapter 1537 — All Beings Scramble to Cross
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 3 of 4
" The Jade Capital City of the Ancestral Court was a place of extreme peril. In the ancient Primordial Era, the Great Emperor had gathered the strongest masters of the day — including even such mighty ancient gods as the later Heavenly Emperor Taichu — to explore it, and yet they too knew the difficulty and drew back.
But this time Shen Mu had fought his way here; though there had been scares enough, never once had he met a fatal peril, for the Ten Heavenly Venerables scouted the road ahead of him. They swept those perils away, and his whole charge in was calm seas and quiet winds.
From this alone one could see that the Ten Heavenly Venerables of today were far, far stronger than such beings as the Great Emperor and Taichu of that year. At last, Shen Mu saw the Chaos River ahead.
He gazed across it from afar, and could see nothing of the far bank.
And when he surveyed the surrounding terrain and set it against the map Wei Suifeng had left, he could find no place that matched.
"This river must have changed its course; it is not where the map sets it.
The map my eldest senior brother gave me is utterly useless!
" Shen Mu shook his head, gave up hunting for the landmarks on the map, opened the vertical eye at his brow, and studied the great river, thinking, "How did the Ten Heavenly Venerables cross?
" He gazed at the Chaos River, and at once the vertical eye at his brow saw all within it with perfect clarity.
Within that river was the destruction of a universe: countless living beings struggled in the great calamity of annihilation, longing to flee, and one and all were reduced to ash and smoke in that calamity, utterly wiped away!
Even beings such as the Ten Heavenly Venerables had not the least power of resistance in the great calamity of annihilation; they were annihilated outright, transmuted into pure states of energy — formless, substanceless, bodiless! And in the chaos, countless powerful living beings contended to cross, seeking to pass through the Chaos River and enter this Jade Capital City.
Shen Mu's heart stirred faintly; putting himself in their place, if he stood within that great calamity of annihilation, then lifting his head he would surely behold a sight of utter magnificence. When the whole universe is collapsing and being destroyed, squeezed and stretched, and chaos lies on every side, worlds in their annihilation and people struggling without strength — then, when all lift their heads, they see an ancient and mighty divine city standing amid the chaos, and no matter how fierce, how terrible the great calamity of annihilation, it cannot shake that divine city by a hair.
And that divine city is the Jade Capital City of the Ancestral Court beneath Shen Mu's feet!
This, surely, was the sight beheld by the people of that perishing universe! Yet by Shen Mu's reckoning, these powerful beings were merely thrashing in the Chaos River, trying only to reach the shore.
Only thus could one explain why the mighty of that annihilated universe were all laboring to swim up toward the river's surface.
"The Master of the Miluo Palace is a remarkable being, to have forged such a divine city and passed through the great calamity of annihilation! But where is the World Tree?
" He swept his gaze through the Chaos River.
The eye at his brow had been tempered with Tai Yi's eggshell and could see clear through the qi of chaos; after a search, Shen Mu at last found the World Tree of the Ancestral Court.
The roots of that World Tree were vast beyond all bounds, set within the annihilated universe, drifting and flying like a great octopus of countless tentacles swimming through the chaos.
Many others too struggled in the calamity of annihilation, straining to swim toward the World Tree's roots and seize them.
Quite a few powerful beings had already clambered onto those roots; these mighty ones sought to split the roots open and merge themselves into them, and so hide from the great calamity of annihilation.