Chapter 1796 — Telling Black from White
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 1 of 4
The crowd was as if facing a mortal foe; nearly everyone here had been captured by the First Young Master, Taishang!
The First Young Master, Taishang, was like some idle old monster — ever since he had pledged himself to the Master of the Milo Palace, he had spent his days fixated on every power that refused allegiance to the Milo Palace, and the slightest misstep would see one seized and suppressed by him.
The obelisks of this forest were beyond counting, and within each stele was sealed and suppressed a Dao-attaining one from the prehistoric epochs. Many had failed to endure, and had long since turned to flying ash within their steles.
The First Young Master, Taishang, was still not at ease. Before Shen Mu had come, he had even planted his own Dao Tree here, his eye transformed into the sun in the sky, watching day and night without a single day's slackness.
It was not until Shen Mu's last visit, when he exposed the presence of an eighth Dao Tree here, that they realized the First Young Master, Taishang, had been spying on them all along!
Only after that did Taishang's Dao Tree and eye vanish.
"Shameless!" the girl cried out toward the heavens.
"Come down if you dare, and fight this Grandpa Zhu one-on-one!" Zhu Santong bellowed with righteous indignation.
In the sky, Taishang's face betrayed no expression whatsoever, her curses not weighing on his mind in the least.
The old man was murderous, and raising his head, he said, "Taishang, your hand may reach the heavens, but you are not invincible! In those years you and I were of equal fame — had I not willingly submitted to your suppression, how could you have run rampant before me?"
Just then, Taiyi's face in the sky descended lower and lower, as though he were bending down to look at them, and that pressure, like the sky itself caving in, made their scalps go numb.
They had been imprisoned too long; their cultivation and strength were far from what they had once been. As one waned, the other waxed — Taiyi grew ever stronger, and now they were no longer worthy to be Taiyi's opponents.
When that pressure reached its utmost, the several of them could endure no longer and were about to strike, when suddenly Taiyi's face pressed down above the obelisk forest, then swiftly shrank and fell into the forest.
Whoosh —
Zhu Santong was the first to lose control of himself; involuntarily he flew backward, and with a swish was absorbed into an obelisk, becoming a man within a stele.
Zhu Santong struggled and howled within the stele, yet not even his voice could get out.
Swish, swish, swish!
Streaks of light flashed by, and the girl, the Madam, and the old woman flew backward one after another, falling into obelisk after obelisk, able only to struggle beneath the mirror-like stele surfaces, unable to break free.
The First Young Master, Taishang, walked out from the forest of steles. Though Shen Mu had placed one stele aboard the Golden Ship of Salvation and had the golden ship carry it off to the Ancestral Court, so that Taiyi could not complete the forest's formation — yet Taiyi was as though the missing stele himself; falling into the forest, he completed the formation.
The old man's fury made his hair stand on end; beneath the suppression of the obelisk forest his body shook without cease, and he wished to strike, yet the suppressive force of the forest was truly too strong, making his cultivation vanish at flying speed, his Dao-conduct falling silent, so that he could sense no Great Dao at all.
"Taishang, do you not dare contend with me?" He stood before Shen Mu, his eyeballs blood-red, his voice hoarse.
"Old Monster Dongyang, when you willingly submitted to my suppression, you had already ceased to be my match."
The First Young Master, Taishang, raised his palm and gave a gentle flick; the old man went howling away and crashed into an obelisk.