Chapter 1558 — The First Rune
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 1 of 4
Shen Mu paid her no mind. He took out the two Qiankun Mirrors and held them up against the Dao patterns on the palace walls.
This journey to Miluo Palace had resolved one of his doubts: the trap of Jade Capital.
The trap of Jade Capital was no trap in the Jade Capital realm, but in the Lingxiao realm and the Imperial Throne realm. Judging from the layout of Miluo Palace's treasure halls, the seventy-two halls also included the Lingxiao Hall, the Zixiao Hall, the Taishang Hall, and others; and the master of Miluo Palace's Lingxiao Treasure Hall, the Third Young Master, had used the trick of passing a peach off for a plum, making the Lingxiao Hall the sovereign, turning it into a realm. The Third Young Master of Miluo Palace had deliberately led men astray, using the strength of the world's cultivators to swell his own, binding to his own war chariot every future mighty one of the universe who cultivated to the Lingxiao and Imperial Throne realms.
When men of the world cultivate the Lingxiao realm and the Imperial Throne realm, the foundation of their Dao arts and divine powers is none other than his Lingxiao Treasure Hall; to cultivate these two realms is to cultivate his great Dao for him, to raise his cultivation. What is more, the Lingxiao Treasure Hall governs the Dao arts and divine powers of every Lingxiao and Imperial Throne expert under heaven; all such experts must uphold the Lingxiao Treasure Hall, must uphold the Third Young Master, must stand on the same front as he, or their cultivation will be lost.
More crucial still: cultivate his Lingxiao Treasure Hall, and even one who sets himself against him can be slain by him with ease. And the key figure in the trap of Jade Capital was the Heavenly Emperor Taichu.
The true Jade Capital realm consists, apart from the seventy-two treasure halls, of Miluo Palace. Its master had already dissolved into the Dao, become the Dao itself; which meant that if one replaced the Lingxiao and Imperial Throne realms with Miluo Palace, the trap could be evaded.
That Shen Mu had stayed in Miluo Palace and never left was precisely for the sake of exploring this realm, Miluo.
The seventy-two treasure halls had been carved up among the Ten Heavenly Venerables, and the complete seventy-two were very hard to come by; Shen Mu had already explored more than ten of them, and the rest could only be seized from the bodies of the other Tianzuns.
Soon he grew absorbed in the Dao patterns of Miluo Palace's master, and then he discovered something wondrous.
When he examined the master's Dao patterns with the vertical eye at the center of his brow, he could actually see the inner structure of the Dao patterns; he could even see the Hongmeng primal qi runes of the deepest layer without the aid of the Qiankun Mirror!
Shen Mu's heart stirred faintly, and he tried to activate the vertical eye in his brow.
He had always taken this eye for nothing more than a sacred pupil capable of piercing the qi of chaos, unable to activate its other functions, because whenever he tried, the Taiji eggshell that formed the eye's retina would turn up chaotic qi and leave him staring into a murk in which nothing could be seen. But now, when he activated the vertical eye, that sense of murk vanished, and in its place the Dao patterns of Miluo Palace became incomparably distinct; in an instant he saw every last change of the Dao pattern, plain as day!
The Dao patterns Wei Suifeng had reflected with Kui Sou's Qiankun Mirror showed only their form, not the changes of the patterns; all was fixed and unchanging.
Yet now, looking with the vertical eye in his brow, Shen Mu saw at once that this one Dao pattern was changing at every instant of every moment! Dao patterns were already incomparably complex, holding nearly endless information, and extremely hard to comprehend.
And now, seeing the internal changes of the Dao patterns, Shen Mu was even more shaken.