Chapter 1868 — The One Who Shepherds the Gods
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 1 of 7
In the Hall of Chaos, Shen Mu conversed long with Shen Ye, the Founding Sovereign, and at last had Zhanji escort the Founding Sovereign away.
"Jingping—he should be well, shouldn't he?" Shen Mu murmured.
*All is well with you* had been his first words upon meeting the Founding Sovereign earlier. To Shen Ye, the phrase was mere polite pleasantry, but to Shen Mu it meant so very much more.
He and the Founding Sovereign and the others had been parted for sixteen cosmic epochs—a trillion years of time. He had walked through endless wind and rain, witnessed sixteen universes arise, abide, decay, and empty.
The history he had lived through was more magnificent than Jingping's, more splendid by far, and no less wondrous.
He feared forgetting Jingping, forgetting old friends. After all, he was only three and a half billion years old in the Seventeenth Epoch—far too brief beside a trillion years.
But that place was home.
"Jingping—he must be well."
Shen Mu broke into a smile, rallied his spirits, and strode out of the Hall of Chaos: "Lingyun and I, Ling Tianzun and Yue Tianzun—we have prepared for so long. Jingping cannot possibly be otherwise!"
He stood before the hall and gazed toward Miro Palace. Its gates remained tightly shut.
"Teacher, the future you saw never came to pass."
Shen Mu spoke softly: "Because when you turned and returned to the Calamity of Destruction of the Sixteenth Epoch, the future was no longer the shape you had seen. But in one thing you were right—if I wish to surpass you, I must indeed return to the First Epoch. Not to the Calamity of Destruction of the First Epoch, but to its Calamity of Creation. Seventeen cosmic epochs, and only sixteen Calamities of Creation—truly most strange..."
In former days, Shen Mu had lacked the necessary cultivation to return to the very beginning of the First Cosmic Epoch. Now he had reached the required measure.
Within the Calamity of Destruction of the First Epoch, Miro Palace rang with Dao-voices on every side—the ripples of Shen Mu's Chaos Dao searching for the fluctuations of the First Epoch's Calamity of Creation. The Calamity of Creation is the great calamity of heaven-splitting and earth-rending. The First Epoch possessed a vast history of eight hundred billion years. By rights, within the Calamity of Destruction of the First Epoch, none could sense such fluctuations. Yet for Chaos, the ripples born of that sundering had never ceased. Such ripples were branded deep into the fabric of the universe, grown infinitely faint, and even the Calamity of Destruction could not erase them.
After a long while, Shen Mu's expression stirred. One after another, Chaos Samsaras spun, slicing madly into the past—slicing into the eight-hundred-billion-year history of the First Epoch.
Shen Mu walked within the Samsara, and at last entered the interminable reaches of the First Epoch's time.
The magnificent epic of the First Epoch unfurled before him. Within the Chaos Samsara he traced time backward, and beheld the tears and triumphs of ages past.
Shen Mu did not halt, did not linger, but continued his reverse ascent.
At last, when his power was nearly spent, he arrived at the time before the First Epoch had yet been opened.
Perhaps the key to unraveling the Great Silence of the Seventeenth Epoch could be found here.
After Shen Mu's departure from the Seventeenth Epoch:
The war between Jingping and the Miro Palace's Dao Achievers and hall masters continued. With the Third Young Master Lingxiao and the Fourth Young Master Zixiao gone from Jade Capital, and with Shen Mu gone from Jingping's side, the war saw reversals. Jade Capital even pressed its attack to the vicinity of the Yuan Realm. Because Jingping now faced this formidable enemy, his reforms flourished anew.