Chapter 1605 — Never Bowing His Head
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 2 of 4
The figure beneath the tree turned around and looked at him with a smile. "Heavenly Venerable Shen, have you been well?"
"You - you..."
Kaihuang was shaken to the core. He stared dumbly at the man, stammering, unable to get out a word.
The Great Abyss of Guixu.
Shen Mu had fallen into collapse. All of his cultivation caved inward without cease, and soon even the heavenly palaces within his divine treasury, the stars and constellations and rivers of stars across the heavens, the heavens and the myriad worlds - the Ancestral Court, Yuandu, Xuandu, Youdu - everything was collapsing inward!
The dao of Guixu was mysterious and wondrous, possessed of a fascination, yet to cultivate it was exceedingly perilous. Though the runes of its great dao had been deciphered, those who could master the dao of Guixu remained very few.
Besides the Empress and her sister, there were also the Heavenly Emperor Taichu, Heavenly Venerable Hao, and Shen Mu who had mastered this path.
As for the rest, even if they cultivated it they could scarcely refine it; at most they could master one or two divine arts.
This was precisely because the dao of Guixu was so perilous: one who wished to master such a great dao could hardly be certain that the dao of Guixu would not devour him while he cultivated.
Soon the whole Primordial Embryo divine treasury was devoured to nothing; even the primal spirit that was expounding the dao of reincarnation to the Empress was dragged in by that dreadful collapse, twisted, and hurled howling into the Great Abyss of Guixu within his body!
The voice of the sermon stopped. The Empress noticed at once, opened her eyes, and looked at Shen Mu, saying sharply, "Why have you stopped?"
Crack. Crack.
Her head swiveled half a turn, revealing the face of Madame Yuanmu. "Shen darling, are you the God of Longevity hanging himself, weary of his long life? Just where your girl's heart began to itch, you stop - heaven will punish you for that!"
Shen Mu sat there withered and silent, giving off a sense of utter emptiness, without a spark of vitality about him.
Behind him there remained only a World Tree, its branches swaying faintly.
The Empress and Madame Yuanmu were puzzled, but at once they saw what was amiss: this Shen Mu had not a breath of life in him. He had simply died, right there before their eyes!
Not only had Shen Mu's heart stopped beating; he no longer had even a soul!
His incomparably powerful consciousness had been utterly annihilated as well, as though someone had refined him to death with a Guixu divine art!
"You killed him?" The Empress flew into a rage.
Madame Yuanmu too grew angry and scolded, "A moment ago you were facing him and I had my back to him. Had I struck him dead, how could it have escaped your eyes and your senses? Could it be that you are the one who did it?"
"Little wretch, I stand on the verge of having my chance to refine you to death - why would I kill him and forfeit that chance? If I am to kill him, it will be after I have refined you to death!"
The two women wrangled a while, yet neither could do anything about it. Suddenly Madame Yuanmu rolled her eyes and tittered, "Shen darling is dead and leaves us sisters as widows. It wrings the heart, it does - two sisters fair as flowers and jade, and just like that, without a lover. Sorry as I am, the dead cannot come back to life. Better that we sisters divide Shen darling's estate early and find ourselves a fine man!"
Her words were ugly to hear, yet the Empress was rather moved by them. "Heavenly Venerable Mu is a walking treasury - a country squire on an outing, decked in gold and silver. Now that he is dead, it is indeed the perfect moment to divide his treasures."
The two women reached an understanding at once and walked toward Shen Mu.
Suddenly a vigorous vitality issued from the World Tree, and the two women hastily halted.