Chapter 1868 — The One Who Shepherds the Gods
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 6 of 7
Lan Yutian looked around. Jade Capital was filled with white-haired elders. Those former rivals had aged too.
"Are you my mother?" Shen Lingyun sought out Ling Yuxiu, lying on a sickbed, skin like a chicken's, hair like crane's down, and asked.
Ling Yuxiu embraced her and wept bitterly. Her life too was nearing its end, and at the very brink of death she had finally seen her own flesh and blood.
"I will protect Mother, until the day Father returns."
Shen Lingyun was full of confidence: "The sixteen Long Rivers of Chaos can sustain the Seventeenth Epoch for a very long time."
The voidification of the Sixteenth Epoch's Long River of Chaos came faster than she had expected. This universe, because of the invaders' onslaught, had little energy to begin with.
After a million years, the Sixteenth Cosmic Epoch was like a painting spread flat upon the void, the people and things upon it vivid and clear.
The people in the two great holy lands looked up and could see this painting. A few years later, the Sixteenth Cosmic Epoch gradually dimmed. The people and things in the painting vanished without a trace.
The Fifteenth Epoch's Long River of Chaos lasted somewhat longer. In the end, that image too gradually disappeared.
In the image of the Thirteenth Epoch, Taiyi saw Young Master Wuzong. Wuzong too, with the void's extension, turned to nothingness.
When the Great Silence reached the Tenth Epoch, Yue Tianzun raised her head and saw Young Master Zixiao and his wife. The two embraced in the image within the void, their faces brimming with smiles, appearing most happy.
Faintly, Yue Tianzun seemed to hear that qin melody again—most lovely, holding emotions she herself did not possess.
As one after another Long River of Chaos was voidified, Shen Lingyun too gradually grew weak. The vanishing of each Long River of Chaos stripped her of strength.
"Father will return. He said the Chaotic Space will burst open like fireworks—the brightest light in the void." She spoke weakly to Ling Yuxiu.
The Calamity of Destruction of the First Cosmic Epoch was also gradually voidifying. That was this universe's final barrier.
Yet even the First Universe's Calamity of Destruction could not withstand the void's silence. Shen Lingyun grew weaker and weaker because of it. When the void reached Miro Palace, it finally met resistance.
A withered skeleton sat enthroned in Miro Palace, revealing its form. Its Dao Tree blazed with light, its Dao Fruit radiance ten thousand fathoms—holding back the void's onslaught!
"Teacher!" Taiyi bowed to the withered skeleton.
The surviving Dao Achievers in Jade Capital bowed to the withered skeleton as well, tears streaming down aged faces.
In the end, the master of Miro Palace's withered skeleton, Dao Tree, and Dao Fruit could not hold back the void. He too turned to void. The long eight-hundred-billion-year history of the First Epoch spread out like a scroll upon the void, fading by degrees.
The master of Miro Palace in the scroll was peerless in elegance. His gaze seemed to look toward the Chaotic Space. The Chaotic Space remained—but it had not bloomed.
His gaze dimmed, and with the First Epoch's scroll, he dispersed into the void.
In Jade Capital, hall master after hall master and Miro Palace's Dao Achievers bowed down. In the instant of their bowing, their forms turned to void.
Jade Capital, like a painting, unfurled beside the Primordial Cauldron, gradually growing hazy.
"There is still one path of life."
The aged Lan Yutian rallied his spirits: "The Ancestral Court's Dao Realm system attains the Dao within. We can transform ourselves into Ancestral Court Great Luotians, letting all living beings dwell within our Great Luotians, sustaining their lives. Thus we can hold out for a very long time!"
"We cannot hold out long. We too will soon turn to void."
Some Dao Achievers shook their heads: "To do this for mortals..."
"Gods exist for the use of man."