Chapter 1846 — The Debt Contract Wuyai Established
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 1 of 4
Beneath the World Tree, Old Man Wuyai sat motionless, his gaze profound, as though he could see through all the history of ages past and ages yet to come.
Sixteen primordial rivers of chaos encircled the ancient tree, and the World Tree's roots pierced through all sixteen of them; in every cosmic epoch, countless powerhouses had relied upon those roots to preserve their lives. Whether they lived or died, whether they could escape the kalpa, all lay within a single thought of Old Man Wuyai.
He had been born only seventeen years ago — one universe was one year.
Such was Old Man Wuyai.
And now he had entered his seventeenth year; the vicissitudes of history were to him but a succession of images, and the joys and sorrows, partings and reunions of innumerable lives were no more than dust-fine beings clamoring in the din.
The only thing he cared about was himself. Ever since he had been wounded thirty-five hundred million years ago in the Battle of Guixu, he had languished without recovery; that wound had hurt him more grievously than Taiyi's felling of the tree.
Shen Mu had not chosen to destroy him, but had instead given him a chance to flee — yet Wuyai felt no gratitude toward Shen Mu.
The reason Shen Mu dared not kill him was chiefly that killing him would cause the Third Prince and Fourth Prince to descend. Over the thirty-five hundred million years that followed, as the four directions warred, Shen Mu still from time to time helped him resist Miro Palace, and would even lend a hand to aid Prince Wuji.
Yet Shen Mu had already shackled them beyond escape.
Ever since Shen Mu destroyed the Guixu Abyss and resealed the void of the Ancestral Court, Prince Wuji had lost his fountainhead of power; if he wished to return to his peak state, he could only rely on his own step-by-step cultivation.
Old Man Wuyai too had lost his source of power.
Among the prehistoric powerhouses under his command, there were no new Dao Achievers. To achieve the Dao, there was only one path — the Ancestral Court Dao Realm system.
Yet he could not let the prehistoric powerhouses under him cultivate Jing Ping's Ancestral Court Dao Realm system, for if prehistoric powerhouses achieved the Dao by means of the Ancestral Court Dao Realm system, it would bring him no benefit whatsoever.
Wuji could never return to his peak state, and Wuyai himself, after thirty-five hundred million years of growth, had advanced but slowly.
He knew Shen Mu's purpose inside and out — it was nothing more than to stall for time, to give the so-called Jing Ping Reforms more opportunity, to let Jing Ping grow to maturity. He even calculated how many people left Shen Mu's side each time, how many entered from the outside each time, estimating Jing Ping's strength.
Earlier, the number of new Dao Achievers Jing Ping gained had been terrifying, but later this trend gradually slowed, especially in recent years, when new Dao Achievers grew fewer and fewer — indeed, for the past twenty thousand years not a single new Dao Achiever had appeared.
Jing Ping had only three thousand Dao Achievers in total; the number seemed large, but compared to the accumulation of sixteen cosmic epochs, it was still far too few.
From that moment, Old Man Wuyai realized that the Jing Ping Reforms had encountered a great problem.
That problem was, most likely, the absence of external threat. Without external threat, Jing Ping had lost its sense of peril; the populace grew too content with the status quo, and so lost their enterprising spirit, lost the will to strive and press forward.
As for the Reforms, they too became difficult to sustain.
Once Old Man Wuyai realized this, he deduced another possibility: Shen Mu was about to make his move.
For thirty-five hundred million years, Shen Mu's purpose in stalling had been to strengthen the Jing Ping Reforms, to give them more time; now that the Reforms could no longer be sustained, there was no need for him to keep stalling.