Chapter 1682 — Sounding the Depths (Happy Holidays!)

"The Eldest Young Master of Miluo Palace — the lineage of his Dao arts and divine powers, too, comes from the Primordial Rune!

" Shen Mu tried to rouse the runes within the plank door. That door had surely been forged from the Dao Tree of some Dao-attainer; only, that one had been too mighty, and his Dao Tree had grown indestructible.

Yet as Shen Mu studied the runes upon it, he soon glimpsed the truth. The Eldest Young Master of Miluo Palace must be a direct disciple of the Master of Miluo Palace; his divine powers and Dao arts walked the Master's own road, and his Primordial Runes were of the purest kind.

The rune-brands upon this plank door made that plain.

For every rune-brand upon it came down, in the end, to a single rune: the Primordial Rune!

The Primordial Rune was one and unique; differing arrangements and sequences gave it differing uses. The base runes of the Miluo Palace's Second, Third, and Fourth Young Masters, however, were built of other runes besides the Primordial Rune, which proved that they were not disciples of the Master of Miluo Palace, but followers.

Of them all, the Second Young Master was the clearest case.

The Guixu Goddess walked a road utterly opposed to the Master of Miluo Palace: she cultivated no Dao Tree, no Dao Flower, no Dao Fruit, and she did not much approve of what the Master of Miluo Palace had done.

"The Eldest Young Master most likely received the mantle of the Master of Miluo Palace; his inheritance is the purest. But to fathom his arts from this plank door alone — that is still beyond reach.

" Shen Mu sank into thought. The Second Young Master of Miluo Palace had been suppressed; the Third and Fourth Young Masters held power in the Jade Capital City of the Ancestral Court, and the Dao-attainers of Miluo Palace followed at their heels.

Where, then, was the Eldest Young Master?

By rights, the Eldest Young Master should have been the heir of Miluo Palace.

How, then, had the Third and Fourth Young Masters seized its authority? To study this plank door was of great benefit to him.

He was cultivating Primordial Qi now, and his own cultivation in Qi had not yet recovered; the door held many of the Eldest Young Master's insights, and these would help him comprehend more.

Shen Mu cultivated in peace, and his two frail little legs slowly grew — though at a crawling pace. Then one day, of a sudden, the earth shook and the mountains swayed, and the skies of the Yuan Realm were thrown into upheaval; star upon star shattered.

The stars of the Yuan Realm were transformations wrought by the Heavenly Duke with his supreme treasures of the Heavenly Dao; that they shattered meant, plainly, that the Ancestral God King had struck! For two years past, the Ancestral God King had come to harry the Yuan Realm from time to time, but each time the Heavenly Duke had fended him off with the supreme treasures of the Heavenly Dao; and with the Moon Heavenly Venerable present, the Ancestral God King could win no advantage.

So he would strike once and withdraw, doing little damage. This time, however, his assault was ferocious beyond measure; he battered the fifty supreme treasures of the Heavenly Dao until they quaked without cease, and before long the sky was rent apart, and a vast face filled the whole of the heavens!

Shen Mu rose to his feet and gazed up, his expression grave.

The Ancestral God King had torn open the canopy of the Yuan Realm; below, the Heavenly Duke rose slowly — white brows, white beard, white robe — his body growing ever larger, making ready to do battle with the Ancestral God King beyond the heavens.

On the other side, the Moon Heavenly Venerable at once soared aloft and flew beyond the heavens, meaning to join hands with the Heavenly Duke against the Ancestral God King.

But in the very instant the Moon Heavenly Venerable set forth, the earth trembled, and the devil-qi of the Nether Capital burst abruptly into the Yuan Realm, churning into a black vortex over the East Sea, howling as it spun!

The Heavenly River that flowed through the Yuan Realm was polluted by the devil-qi as well, and countless god-devils and devil-monsters of the Nether Capital came galloping out of the Heavenly River — millions upon millions of them, dense as swarming locusts, treading the surface of the East Sea; wherever they passed, the divine kingdoms beneath the sea were destroyed outright by those devil-monsters and god-devils! The god-devils and devil-monsters of the Nether Capital blackened the face of the sea and surged toward the eastern shore of Jingping.

Behind that sky-blotting host of god-devils and monsters, the Styx invaded the Yuan Realm, and the figure of the Void Heavenly Venerable stood erect behind those monsters!

Shen Fengqing and the Nether Heavenly Venerable at once lifted a foot and stamped down hard; the whole Yuan Realm shuddered violently, and the Yuan Realm's Nether Capital surfaced, dragging all the god-devils and devil-monsters of the Nether Capital down into it together, so that they could not invade the world of the living!

The god-devils and monsters that surged toward Jingping's eastern shore flung themselves upon the coast — and clutched at empty air. The geography of the Yuan Realm's Nether Capital was identical to that of the Yuan Realm; the two were overlapping spaces.

Through these years of growth, the Yuan Realm's Nether Capital too had come to hold many ghosts and gods, foremost among them Fengdu, led by King Yan, who marshaled his host to meet the army of god-devils from the Nether Capital.

Even as those god-devils and monsters galloped onward, great treasures rose flying from their ranks and hurtled howling ahead — they were gateways, one after another. And when those gateways touched the ground, they at once reared up tall.

In the war of the Nether Capital, many god-devils and monsters had fled the Nether Capital into the Yuan Realm and other worlds, and there established one ghost-realm after another in the world of the living, forming no small number of powers.

And the places where these gateways now fell were precisely where those ghost-realms lay.

Once the gateways landed, the god-devils within the ghost-realms strained in the world of the living to push them open! The monster host of the Nether Capital did not collide with Fengdu's army of ghosts and gods; instead it howled into those gateways and poured into the world of the living!

These god-devils and monsters were far too many; if they flooded into the world of the living, they would surely wreak havoc upon the Yuan Realm and do it terrible ruin!

King Yan was leading his host to meet the foe; at the sight his heart went cold, and he cried aloud, "Lay the bridges!

Raise up the Between Life and Death—" From the host of Fengdu, flying bridges shot skyward one after another, one end laid in Fengdu, the other spanning into the world of the living.

The Between Life and Death was a bridge, a treasure forged by Prince Shen Wu, the First Ancestor Human Sovereign.

In those years, longing for his dead wife, he had refined this treasure, meaning to join the underworld and the world of the living with it, and to meet his wife upon that bridge.

Later, his heart turned to dead ash, and he cast off his mortal body to dwell in seclusion in Fengdu; yet he still worried over the affairs of the living world, and so he would often come running out again.

Thus he left the Between Life and Death in Fengdu, where it became the only bridge linking the dead to the living. When Shen Mu became Human Sovereign, he brought this bridge out, and Snow Fox collected the toll, earning their first pot of gold.