Chapter 1787 — One Blade Sunders Yin and Yang
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 1 of 4
Radiance flowed in Shen Mu's hand as the Taiyi Divine Axe slowly took form.
This time he sensed peril — peril without precedent!
Even greater peril than when he had faced the Third and Fourth Young Masters of Miluo Palace!
The depths of the Boundless Elder's power could not be plumbed!
And he was caught up in the feud between Miluo Palace and the Heavenly Capital — the pivotal link in it, one might say! In the Squalid Grounds of the Ultimate Void, Shen Mu had once come upon the place where the Heavenly Capital had opened the heavens. There, amid the great tribulation that annihilated the Sixth Era, he had seen Emperor Haotian lead the many Dao-Achievers of the Heavenly Capital in cleaving open the primal chaos and bringing forth the cosmos from the vast wilds, while Miluo Palace did not intervene but looked on in silence.
Yet afterward, the Master of Miluo Palace struck down Emperor Haotian in an ambush, saying, "What you have done is wrong.
" From the Boundless Elder's words, the truth behind that assassination was by no means so simple.
Since that day, the strife between the Heavenly Capital and Miluo Palace had stretched on unbroken down to this very hour, with no end in sight.
Shen Mu bowed his head, looked at the radiance in his hand, and said with a wry half-smile, "The Master of Miluo Palace is the teacher of every cultivator. From the First Era to the Seventeenth, the origin of every Dao art and divine power bears his mark in one way or another. How could he listen to you and go assassinate Emperor Haotian?
" The Boundless Elder walked toward him, and Shen Mu's hairs stood on end.
With his back to the Boundless Elder, he felt as though that great tree which holds up the sky of the Ancestral Court were pressing down upon him; the whole of the cosmos, heaven and earth alike, seemed to have become the crushing weight of the World Tree, urging him with desperate urgency to shake off the oppression. But to cast it off he must walk forward — and ahead of him lay the great annihilation beyond the World Tree! Step into it, and he would enter the prehistoric age!
He had stumbled into it once before, and because of that he had brought Taisu forth before her time, forging a grievance with the Goddess Taisu.
For the Shen Mu of today, entering the prehistoric Annihilation was no great danger; the Annihilation could no longer kill him.
But once inside, coming back — that was the difficulty!
The time he had strayed into the prehistoric age, he and Taisu had joined hands and stolen back along the root-hairs of the World Tree. This time, the Boundless Elder would not give him that chance.
He closed his eyes. The radiance in his hand slowly dimmed, shifting into the opening stance of the Heavenly Capital's Heaven-Opening Chapter, ready at any instant to draw and strike!
The Heaven-Opening Chapter was a single sword stroke that sundered the primal chaos — and the deepest Dao-realm Shen Mu had ever realized.
The Primordial Finger, the Red-Cord Knot, Taiyi Felling the Tree — these were all arts he had learned from others, and none could be numbered among his own Dao-realm.
But the Heaven-Opening Chapter was a Dao-realm art he had realized while watching the many mighty ones of the Heavenly Capital hew open sky and earth!
His comprehension of it went deeper than with any other divine art.
The stroke was gathering, poised to fly — yet its target was not the Boundless Elder; it was the Annihilation beyond the World Tree!
There was but one way to keep from falling into the tribulation: in the veriest instant before he was forced beyond the World Tree's shelter and into the Annihilation, strike the Annihilation and cleave it straight through the middle!
He need not split the whole of it; he had only to cut out a road and, seizing it, break free! So long as he did not fall into the tribulation, he would not be flung back to the past!
This was the best strategy he could conceive against the present situation!