Chapter 1688 — Founding the Seventh Era

The monstrous head rolled and leaped off the ship, but Shen Mu swung the door plank and brought it down hard; the head rolled rumbling under the ship and was ground over by the wrecked ship several times.

When the head steadied itself again, the ship and Shen Mu had already flown far away. Upon the wrecked ship, the skeletons worked together to rescue their companions and continued to pounce doggedly at Shen Mu.

Shen Mu had little magic power left and could only resist with the strength of his body; his plight was dire. Not even the great calamity of a universe's birth and destruction could destroy these skeletons — their hardness was terrifying. If he were careless and let them touch him, he would surely be dismembered!

Boom! The door plank lurched abruptly, having struck something unknown.

Shen Mu's stance wavered and his heart lurched. At once he urged the Tribulation Sword to fly up and down around him as a guard against the skeletons' attacks. Yet upon the wrecked ship a skeleton turned the tattered sail, forcing the ship to swerve and avoid the plank.

On the ship the skeletons seemed utterly terrified, scrambling and rolling into the cabin and bolting it shut with a clack. The skeleton hung upon the ship's wall clawed and pounded at the wall, as though begging its companions to save it and let it into the cabin.

It was not the only one locked outside; the skeleton that had turned the sail slid down from the mast, found the cabin door shut, and threw itself into a posture of heaven-shaking lament, kneeling before the door and beating upon it with both hands. Shen Mu set his hands on his hips and laughed.

"Now you know fear?

"

He turned his head, and the smile froze upon his face. The door plank had struck a stretch of ruins — ruins of broken walls and crumbling structures everywhere, utterly desolate. Plainly the skeletons on the wrecked ship had not feared him, but feared these ruins.

The ruins resembled the remains of the Jade Capital City of the Ancestral Court, yet as Shen Mu looked about, their layout differed from that Jade Capital City; somewhat alike, yet fundamentally different. The core of the Ancestral Court's Jade Capital City was the Miluo Palace and the Seven Halls; at the center of Miluo Palace was the Master's Dao tree, hung with sixteen Dao fruits, guarded by the Seven Halls, encircled by the seventy-two treasure halls, and beyond them the forest formed by the Dao tree and the dwellings of the Dao-achievers sheltered by Miluo Palace. But the arrangement here was another sight altogether; though its treasure halls had been destroyed, the ruins revealed how prosperous this place had once been.

"The Dao-achievers here may have been fewer than in Miluo Palace, but this could still count as another great power to rival Miluo Palace. Why would the bones of those Dao-achievers fear these ruins? "

Shen Mu steadied his mind.

The abandoned lands of the Ultimate Void held more secrets than he had imagined.

He greatly wished to go in and explore, but his purpose on this journey was to find the gateway where the Eldest Young Master had sealed the enemy of Miluo Palace.

To venture rashly in and explore would delay him too long, and that would be gravely harmful to the war in Jingping. He was about to leave when suddenly a mass of chaos qi welled up from the ruins, vast and grey and boundless, veiling the ruins.

Shen Mu's heart stirred. He was in sore need of chaos qi for his cultivation, and this ruin held so much of it — for him it was a supreme treasure ground!

"I will only go in to gather some chaos qi; it should not delay me long! "

Shen Mu shouldered the door plank and walked into the ruins, murmuring, "If things look bad, I will retreat at once. .

. "

The cold, silent wind blew toward this place; the chaos qi churned and drew back from around him.

As though possessed of consciousness, wherever he walked not a trace of chaos qi ever remained at his side. Shen Mu tried reaching out to seize a strand of chaos qi, but could not grasp it at all.

He turned to leave, only to see chaos vast and grey on every side, no direction to be told — the way he had come was completely hidden away! Shen Mu smiled faintly. The vertical eye between his brows opened, its gaze piercing through the chaos, and he walked outward. Just then he saw an ancient altar, built of chaos stones.

Shen Mu climbed the altar and saw upon it only a stone monument, not tall, and beside it a pair of footprints.

He came before the monument. The writing upon it could not be verified, but from the structure of its runes he could infer their meaning.

"Tiandu, here opened the seventh epoch of the universe.

.

.

Opened the seventh epoch?

This is.

.

. "

Shen Mu was stunned.

"Can it be that the seventh-epoch universe was opened by human hands?

"

He stepped forward and set his two feet, one after the other, into those footprints.

Boom!

In his mind there came at once a thunderous roar like the cleaving of heaven and earth!