Chapter 1844 — The Summons from the Holy Court
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 1 of 4
Time slipped away, and the three heroes of the Reform had become ancient legend. Emperor Yanfeng and Jiang Baigui had launched the Jingping Reform in a tiny patch of land, Shen Mu had walked out of the Desolate Ruins into Jingping, the Heavenly Alliance had been founded, High Heaven had invaded, the First Jingping Calamity had come, and all that history had grown so ancient that the memories of those who had lived through it had yellowed. Though those events were still branded upon their minds, the voices and faces of the people within them had blurred beyond recall. Emperor Yanfeng, the first Heavenly Emperor, had already gone to the Ancestral Court, and Sage Jiang Baigui had become as elusive as a divine dragon that shows its head but never its tail.
The Sage Hall still towered above Shangjing, yet seldom was any trace of the Sage to be seen within it.
As for Celestial Venerable Mu, who had single-handedly upheld the Jingping Reform, since he had entered the Ancestral Court and sealed it, he had never returned. Every so often there would be those who returned from the Ancestral Court, some Dao-attainers and some who had never attained the Dao, telling the world of the wars there and recounting battle after breathtaking battle. At first the people found these tales of war fresh and strange.
Some burned with hot blood and wished they could fly at once to fight and slaughter alongside those predecessors, while others wrung their hands and sighed for the fallen. But later, having heard too many such stories, they grew indifferent.
After all, the war in the Ancestral Court went on and on, fought since the age of legend with no result to this day, and likely to be fought on into the future. They felt that war had nothing to do with them, serving at best as idle talk over tea.
"Human life outweighs Heaven, gods serve man, the daily life of the people is the Dao. " This was the guiding line of the Jingping Reform, yet along the way there were reversals. When a million years of history had passed, the successors no longer remembered why their forebears had set such a line, and some were devoured and swayed by power and began to rot.
Heavenly Emperor after Heavenly Emperor laid down power and departed for the Ancestral Court, until under the thirty-second Heavenly Emperor power began to pass by hereditary succession without replacement, and under the forty-fifth Heavenly Emperor there was even an attempt to make the realm a family possession.
In the end Emperor Yanfeng led more than a dozen retired Heavenly Emperors rushing back from the Ancestral Court to bring that farce to an end. From then on, godhood was merely an office.
Above, the Heavenly Dao ran its course, below, Tubo and the Six Paths of Reincarnation turned, and Dao-attainers and the Heavenly Emperor governed all heavens and myriad worlds in perfect order.
After this incident the legends of the Ancestral Court caused a sensation once more, for the return of a dozen legendary Heavenly Emperors from the Ancestral Court to quell rebellion was truly spectacular and shook every heart. Many mighty beings from all heavens and myriad worlds journeyed toward the direction of the Ancestral Court to search for it, only to witness an inconceivable phenomenon there and find no way to enter at all.
After some more years the Ancestral Court was gradually forgotten again, as batch after batch of new prodigies stepped to the fore and displayed their brilliance across all heavens and myriad worlds. Contact between the Ancestral Court and Yuanjie grew ever rarer.
Once a Dao-attainer returned every three thousand years, then it became four thousand, five thousand, and later ten thousand, twenty thousand. When tens of billions of years had passed, the starry sky had grown vaster and more boundless, new heavens had appeared, the heavens and worlds lay farther apart, Yuanjie itself had grown greater, and going to the Ancestral Court had become a difficult feat.