Chapter 1675 — The Ferocious Sword Cleaves Taichu
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 3 of 4
Of the Ancestral Court Yujing's Seventy-Two Halls, no one had ever succeeded in cultivating them all; Shen Mu was likely the first in this age. Emperor Haotian had only the methods for fifty-eight treasure halls; the rest had fallen into Taichu's hands.
Even after Haotian ascended the throne and his authority was unmatched, Taichu had never taught him the remaining fourteen. If Haotian wanted them, he would have to offer benefit enough in exchange!
And that benefit was the twenty-odd treasure halls Haotian held and Taichu did not.
So to this day neither Haotian nor Taichu had completed the Seventy-Two Halls.
Because their way of thinking was the same as before. In the old days the Ten Heavenly Venerables had dealt with one another in false courtesy, trading benefits under cover, haggling over every grain, each hoping to wring more from the other, each hoping to reach perfection before the other, each scheming to trap the other, and none able to trust any other.
To this day they still carried on in the old manner, and instead Shen Mu had completed the Seventy-Two Halls before them!
The Seventy-Two Halls were the key that sustained the Thirty-Six Heavenly Palaces! Shen Mu had not completed the Thirty-Six Heavenly Palaces, but thirty-three Heavenly Palaces were no small matter either.
Yet a great Heaven Court made of thirty-three Heavenly Palaces and seventy-two Treasure Halls could not compare with a Dao Attainer.
So Taichu suspected it was Shen Mu's Chaos Hall that gave him such terrifying dharma power.
It had never occurred to him, however, that Shen Mu's Chaos Hall was empty of substance, a name and nothing more, and that the Chaos Hall had no gate at all, so that none could enter it. Shen Mu now stood at what might be called the Lingxiao Realm, or equally the Chaos Realm, yet his cultivation system was unlike any other.
He had several realms more than Taichu.
Taichu's true body still cultivated according to the old Divine Treasury Heavenly Palace system, but Shen Mu's realms held the great realm of the Ancestral Court beyond the old realms.
Within the Ancestral Court there were also the Four Heavenly Gates Realm, the Heavenly Sea Realm and the Nine Hells Terrace Realm, which the traditional cultivation system did not possess.
And Shen Mu applied these new realms to his own Heavenly Palace system as well; every Heavenly Palace had several realms more than the traditional minor realms of a Heavenly Palace. If one measured by realms, Shen Mu's Chaos Realm was equal to the Dao Flower Realm within the Dao Realm, and thus equal to Taichu. More terrifying still, Shen Mu had not yet attained the Dao!
Should he attain it, he would likely equal a Dao Attainer who had weathered several Great Cataclysms of Ruin!
And more: Shen Mu did not even mean to brand his Dao upon the ultimate void and add to its burden; his aim was to brand his own great Dao within the Divine Treasury universe of his own body.
He meant to make the World Tree in that Divine Treasury universe his Dao Tree, I myself am my Dao! That was also why Shen Mu, when he ascended the Chaos Hall, was confident he could contend with Emperor Haotian!
Taichu stirred his Dao Tree; the branches of the Innate One-Qi Dao Tree danced and blocked the sword light of the Five Primordials as One.
He raised a hand and plucked the Dao Flower, going to meet Shen Mu as he burst into the One-Qi Daluo Heaven!
The Dao Flower revolved; that was the thirty-fold Heavenly Dao Realm.
He had attained the Dao through force, his own dharma power forcibly transformed into a Dao Flower, not a Dao Flower cultivated in the Dao Realm, yet the power of that blow was no small thing, for it was all he had.