Chapter 1665 — Severing Your Path to Attaining the Dao

The other of Taichu's reincarnations was Du Yufei.

Du Yufei had not entered Jingping's Wendao Academy, nor had he gone to the Taixue Academy; he studied at the Heavenly Sage Academy. In recent years, because Jingping had to face the pressure of the Heavenly Court, the Heavenly Sage Academy, whenever it took in scholars, would invariably scrutinize their souls and make certain of their roots before they could be admitted. Du Yufei had been examined, and his roots were clean; there was nothing at all amiss in his record, his family, or his background.

After his admission, his performance placed him in the lower middle reaches of the Heavenly Sage Academy's scholars, the sort who drew no notice, who had never once shown anything out of the ordinary.

He was a solitary man, seldom mixing with others. One day, Du Yufei was on his way to attend a lecture when he heard a hawker's cry: "Mirrors for sale!

Mirrors for sale!

Fine divine mirrors, taken from the ancient tomb of the Supreme Emperor! Fifty thousand Great Feng coins for a single mirror!

" Du Yufei paid it no mind. Such was ever the temper of the Heavenly Sage Academy.

Its predecessor had been the Heavenly Sage Cult, whose adherents were drawn from every trade and every walk of life, carrying with them the savor of the marketplace. The scholars of the Heavenly Sage Academy likewise bore a rustic, bumpkin air; whenever they came by some treasure, they would hawk it about the academy, and some of them loved to boast, extolling their prizes to the skies.

Du Yufei stepped forward and saw a good many people gathered around the mirror-selling scholar, sizing up the divine mirror.

"What a treasure!

" someone cried. The scholar held up a divine mirror and shouted, "This divine mirror is a treasure from the ancient tomb of the Supreme Emperor, a thing of the Supreme Heavenly Emperor himself, so of course it is a treasure. In the past you would not have gotten so much as a glimpse of it!

Today I sell it to you for a mere fifty thousand Great Feng coins, and I am bleeding on the deal!

" Du Yufei looked toward the divine mirror, and it happened to turn its reflection upon him. Du Yufei was startled for a moment, somewhat dazed; then he shook his head and went on toward the lecture hall.

The bell for the start of class rang, and the crowd around the scholar scattered in haste, running for the lecture hall.

Du Yufei looked back; the mirror-selling scholar was gone, no doubt off to class as well. Shen Mu walked out of the Heavenly Sage Academy, a smile on his face, and tossed the divine mirror in his hand.

In the mirror, Du Yufei's phantom passed through the cycle of rebirth, life after life, and all his divine abilities and Dao arts were already imprinted in the bright mirror. In the single instant that Du Yufei had looked upon the divine mirror, he had already fallen into Shen Mu's divine ability; his lives, one after another, were all imprinted in the bright mirror.

"Fifty thousand Great Feng coins is truly cheap for this bright mirror.

" Shen Mu smiled. A treasure refined by his own hand was priceless; fifty thousand Great Feng coins was indeed as good as giving it away, only a pity that no one knew its worth.

"Taichu is cunning indeed. Though Du Yufei and Yan Duxing both cultivated treasure halls, each holds only half; plainly Taichu feared someone would see through his reincarnations, and so had them cultivate separately.

" Shen Mu returned to the heavenly palace above the Yong River, and there studied and comprehended one after another, filling in the fourteen treasure halls he lacked.

At last the remaining fourteen treasure halls were complete, and with the completion of the final hall, Shen Mu's aura abruptly surged, and he felt streams of incomparably mighty power come surging in from the past! That was the power of the sixteen universes of the past, the power of the seventy-two Dao-attainers of the Jade Capital City of the Ancestral Court.

Though those men had never come to this universe, their Dao arts had been transmitted into this universe through the inheritance of the seventy-two treasure halls of the Jade Capital City of the Ancestral Court! Dimly, his gaze seemed to pierce through the sixteen universes of his past lives, and he saw chaos vast and boundless, and seventy-two mighty figures standing beneath their own Dao Trees! They dwelt each within the kalpa of destruction of his own universe, and though they passed through the tribulation, they were not worn away by the ceaseless birth and death of universes!

The chaos was too thick; Shen Mu could see only the forms of these seventy-two followers of the Master of the Miluo Palace, could see the light given off by the Dao Fruits hanging upon the Dao Trees behind them, but could not make out their faces. "Seventh Young Master!

" He heard voices from the past, the voices of Dao-attainers one and all, crossing time and space, crossing the great kalpa of destruction, piercing into his ears.

"You cultivate our arts, and so you fall into our grasp! " Those seventy-two overlapping voices were deafening, reaching deep into his mind: "You steal our power, and so you spin the cocoon that binds you!

" "And now you have fallen into our grasp; it is fated that you cannot attain the Dao!

" In Shen Mu's mind these seventy-two voices thundered and shook, and for a long time did not subside. In that boundless chaos, the seventy-two strode toward him, as though to walk from the past into the present, from the illusory into the real.

He stood there, and suddenly gave a sneering laugh.

Within the Primal Embryo Divine Treasury between his brows, the Jade Capital City was joined to the Jade Capital City of the Ancestral Court, as though it were a projection of the latter.

This was a borrowing of power, borrowing the power of the Jade Capital City of the Ancestral Court to raise his own cultivation realm.

To do so would surely leave hidden dangers, and so when he finished cultivating the seventy-two treasure halls, he at once alarmed those Dao-attainers who had forged the seventy-two treasure halls of the Jade Capital City of the Ancestral Court!

These Dao-attainers were all overlords of past universes; their divine abilities were vast and inconceivable, and the treasure halls they left behind were the contention of their powers.

So long as Shen Mu cultivated them, he was borrowing power from them, and they would sense it.

Among them were the Dao-attainer Yuanzun, who had already died in the Jade Capital City of the Ancestral Court, and the Dao-attainer Nanxiang Yuanjun, with whom Shen Mu had once met face to face. In the universes of the past, Yuanzun had not yet died, and Nanxiang Yuanjun had not yet settled her grudge with Shen Mu.

"You think that because I borrow your power, you can use the seventy-two treasure halls to bar my way? A fool's dream!

" In the Primal Embryo Divine Treasury, Shen Mu's primordial spirit grew ever vaster, ever stronger. "My aim is not so simple as to cultivate my way to the Jade Capital realm. " His body stood straight and upright, like a World Tree, hard and unbreakable, such that even the great kalpa of destruction could not wear it away!

Behind him the World Tree stood beside the Great Heavenly Court, as though swept by a wild wind, the fierce gale whistling, branches and leaves dancing.

His aim was to borrow the power of the Jade Capital City of the Ancestral Court, and use it as a stepping stone to stride into the next realm!

His next realm lay at the center of the Jade Capital City, in the great hall that loomed half-visible within that mass of chaotic qi!

That was where his true goal lay!

The great hall within the chaotic qi stood where the Lingxiao Hall ought to have been.

Having learned of the Lingxiao trap, Shen Mu was full of vigilance toward the Lingxiao and Imperial Throne realms.