Chapter 1652 — Twelve Kinds of Dao Fruits
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 2 of 4
The Haotian Emperor could not tolerate his betrayal and would surely kill him; but the Haotian Emperor had to guard against Taichu and Taiji, so the only people he could send were the Void Heavenly Venerable, the Ancestral God King, and their like. And long ago he had deliberately exposed the "weakness" that his cultivation method could not reach the soul; thus the Void Heavenly Venerable would surely burn his soul with demonic fire, seeking to kill him in a single blow. He had begun laying this scheme almost in the Shanghuang Era, and only today drew in the net — three or four hundred thousand years in the making, and at last crowned with complete success, his wish fulfilled!
Feeling the demonic fire temper his soul and the elevation it brought, the Fire Heavenly Venerable was filled with boundless delight. What did a moment's honor or disgrace matter?
What did betraying kin and friends matter? What did it matter that he had enslaved the human race of the Southern Heaven, using the flesh and blood of countless humans to curry favor with the demigods?
What did it matter that the humans of the Southern Heaven, once enslaved, had not a thought of resistance?
One general's glory is built on ten thousand bleached bones!
So long as he, the Fire Heavenly Venerable, became the mightiest being in the world, the emperor of this cosmos, an invincible existence, he could rewrite the histories and leave in the officials' annals his most brilliant and glorious face.
He need only kill all who knew, and he would bear no stain at all!
Ever since the Yu Heavenly Venerable died in the Manhui Corridor Pavilion a million years ago, he had understood one truth: to survive, one must become the power, must grasp the strongest force!
And before one became the power, before one grasped the strongest force, one could only cling to the powerful, could only be the powerful one's dog.
The world always took dogs for humanity's best friend, but dogs had never thought so!
Once the dog grasped a force greater than its master's, the situation would be turned on its head. Beneath his palm the Void Heavenly Venerable fought back without cease; her divine arts and Dao methods were sublime, and having obtained Tubo's Dao of the Nether Capital, her comprehension of the demonic Dao had reached unprecedented heights, her Heavenly Palaces numbering as many as thirty-five.
Had it been a few decades earlier, such cultivation would have been called the very pinnacle among the Ten Heavenly Venerables!
But that was decades ago. After the Fire Heavenly Venerable obtained her Dao fire, his mana, divine sense, fleshly body, spirit, soul, runes, Dao patterns, Dao chains, domains, qi and blood, divine treasury, and Heavenly Palaces had no weakness left; indestructible diamond, incorruptible diamond.
Twelve kinds of attainment, all cultivated to their utmost — the first time under heaven anyone had achieved such a thing.
His palm pressed down, blotting out sky and sun; the Void Heavenly Venerable gazed up from within his palm as though at a burning canopy of heaven.
Her every attack could only shake the Fire Heavenly Venerable's five fingers, yet a flick of those fingers could shatter her divine arts!
The Void Heavenly Venerable attacked madly, her fleshly body swelling and growing, but space itself warped under the might of the Dao fire; however large she grew, she could never escape the Fire Heavenly Venerable's grasp. As his palm fell, its center like a burning canopy left her nowhere to flee, and her Heavenly Palaces burned too!
That was the most blazing of fires, like desire itself, devouring all.
Suddenly, above the Southern Heaven, the world of Xuandu appeared; the Ancestral God King, controlling the immense body of the Heavenly Lord, thrust out half his form and pressed a palm toward the Fire Heavenly Venerable's skull.