Chapter 1599 — The Art of the Turning Wheel
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 2 of 4
Despair filled Gong Tianzun's heart. She could see that even Shen Mu could do nothing now, without the slightest plan.
Shen Mu had always been wily. Facing every kind of danger, even traps that seemed certain death, he could always produce an unexpected scheme and snatch his life from the jaws of death.
But the Empress now was a lunatic — a lunatic beyond all reason!
Gong Tianzun felt her own Dao burning and ebbing away, and her heart darkened: "I never dreamed that I, who have lived from primordial antiquity to this day, surviving countless tribulations without dying, should die in the end at the hands of a madwoman..."
Suddenly Shen Mu proclaimed in a ringing voice: "Through desires and karmic bonds, beings sink into the three evil paths, wheel through the six realms, and endure every misery! Living beings turn and revolve, spinning ceaselessly within!"
Gong Tianzun was briefly startled; she heard Shen Mu reciting a sutra — a sutra of the Way of Reincarnation. Its doctrine was lofty and profound, unfolding the mysteries of the Way of Reincarnation one by one.
In this world, the Way of Reincarnation had never existed before; it was the Netherworld Sovereign who had hewn it out. But the Netherworld Sovereign, shackled by his natural endowment and insight, though he opened up the Way, never perfected it, and so its fame had never spread.
Yet the sutra of the Way of Reincarnation that Shen Mu chanted was far more profound than the Netherworld Sovereign's. Even Gong Tianzun, hearing its subtleties, could not help but gasp in admiration and nod again and again.
On the other side, Her Highness the Empress listened spellbound. Imperceptibly, the Dao fire on the bodies of Shen Mu and Gong Tianzun gradually died down — clearly Her Highness the Empress, listening, learning, and cultivating at once, had grown remiss in turning their attainment into Dao fire.
Shen Mu continued his recitation. The sutra grew loftier and lofter, obscurer and obscurer: it set forth how within the wheel one is reborn and changes one's fate; how within the wheel one casts away delusion and disaster; how within the wheel one forever keeps the original heart, holds fast to the root, and never suffers invasion by heart demons.
Even Gong Tianzun listened as if drunk, as if entranced, and secretly praised: "Mu Tianzun is truly formidable! This great Way of Reincarnation of his seems to have fused in the Buddhist Mahabrahma's Scripture of Immeasurable Kalpas; it is deeper than the Netherworld Sovereign's Sacred Art of Reincarnation beyond all measure. No wonder that when the Netherworld Sovereign once cast his reincarnation art upon him, he passed out cold on the spot."
Her Highness the Empress listened even more raptly than she. Though the Dao fire on the two of them was still burning, its force had greatly lessened.
The sutra of the Way of Reincarnation that Shen Mu recited happened to speak exactly to Her Highness the Empress's present condition, and that was why it held such power of attraction, making the two of them stop clawing at each other and devote their whole minds to fathoming it.
But Shen Mu, perversely, had deliberately made the sutra obscure and hard to grasp, drawing every shred of their attention to it.
The more profound his chanting grew, the more Her Highness the Empress, without realizing it, loosened the grip of her hands upon the two of them.
Shen Mu's eyes flickered. His mouth did not stop reciting, yet his feet moved silently, and he slipped out from beneath the great furnace.
Seeing this, Gong Tianzun's heart stirred: "Mu Tianzun has truly become a devil at escaping death — even from a certain-death trap like this, he still finds a way!"
She, too, moved her feet without a sound.
In the very instant her foot lifted, Her Highness the Empress's aura suddenly shifted: two auras shot up to the heavens and collided with each other.