Chapter 1665 — Severing Your Path to Attaining the Dao
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 1 of 4
The other of Taichu's reincarnations was Du Yufei.
Du Yufei had not entered Jingping's Wendao Academy, nor had he gone to the Taixue Academy; he studied at the Heavenly Sage Academy. In recent years, because Jingping had to face the pressure of the Heavenly Court, the Heavenly Sage Academy, whenever it took in scholars, would invariably scrutinize their souls and make certain of their roots before they could be admitted. Du Yufei had been examined, and his roots were clean; there was nothing at all amiss in his record, his family, or his background.
After his admission, his performance placed him in the lower middle reaches of the Heavenly Sage Academy's scholars, the sort who drew no notice, who had never once shown anything out of the ordinary.
He was a solitary man, seldom mixing with others. One day, Du Yufei was on his way to attend a lecture when he heard a hawker's cry: "Mirrors for sale!
Mirrors for sale!
Fine divine mirrors, taken from the ancient tomb of the Supreme Emperor! Fifty thousand Great Feng coins for a single mirror!
" Du Yufei paid it no mind. Such was ever the temper of the Heavenly Sage Academy.
Its predecessor had been the Heavenly Sage Cult, whose adherents were drawn from every trade and every walk of life, carrying with them the savor of the marketplace. The scholars of the Heavenly Sage Academy likewise bore a rustic, bumpkin air; whenever they came by some treasure, they would hawk it about the academy, and some of them loved to boast, extolling their prizes to the skies.
Du Yufei stepped forward and saw a good many people gathered around the mirror-selling scholar, sizing up the divine mirror.
"What a treasure!
" someone cried. The scholar held up a divine mirror and shouted, "This divine mirror is a treasure from the ancient tomb of the Supreme Emperor, a thing of the Supreme Heavenly Emperor himself, so of course it is a treasure. In the past you would not have gotten so much as a glimpse of it!
Today I sell it to you for a mere fifty thousand Great Feng coins, and I am bleeding on the deal!
" Du Yufei looked toward the divine mirror, and it happened to turn its reflection upon him. Du Yufei was startled for a moment, somewhat dazed; then he shook his head and went on toward the lecture hall.
The bell for the start of class rang, and the crowd around the scholar scattered in haste, running for the lecture hall.
Du Yufei looked back; the mirror-selling scholar was gone, no doubt off to class as well. Shen Mu walked out of the Heavenly Sage Academy, a smile on his face, and tossed the divine mirror in his hand.
In the mirror, Du Yufei's phantom passed through the cycle of rebirth, life after life, and all his divine abilities and Dao arts were already imprinted in the bright mirror. In the single instant that Du Yufei had looked upon the divine mirror, he had already fallen into Shen Mu's divine ability; his lives, one after another, were all imprinted in the bright mirror.
"Fifty thousand Great Feng coins is truly cheap for this bright mirror.
" Shen Mu smiled. A treasure refined by his own hand was priceless; fifty thousand Great Feng coins was indeed as good as giving it away, only a pity that no one knew its worth.
"Taichu is cunning indeed. Though Du Yufei and Yan Duxing both cultivated treasure halls, each holds only half; plainly Taichu feared someone would see through his reincarnations, and so had them cultivate separately.
" Shen Mu returned to the heavenly palace above the Yong River, and there studied and comprehended one after another, filling in the fourteen treasure halls he lacked.
At last the remaining fourteen treasure halls were complete, and with the completion of the final hall, Shen Mu's aura abruptly surged, and he felt streams of incomparably mighty power come surging in from the past! That was the power of the sixteen universes of the past, the power of the seventy-two Dao-attainers of the Jade Capital City of the Ancestral Court.