Chapter 1697 — Yours Truly Raises the Standard of Revolt

Shang Jun followed Shen Mu step for step; wherever Shen Mu went, he went.

He had no need to consider whether the road Shen Mu walked was the right one, nor to consider how Shen Mu used the Hongmeng runes and the Hongmeng vital essence to deceive the obelisk forest. He needed only to follow Shen Mu.

Along the way they walked and halted by turns. Had Shen Mu been walking out of the stele forest alone, it would have been far simpler; but bringing Shang Jun with him made it countless times more complicated.

The obelisk forest had been created by the First Young Master to suppress the Cripple's mortal body and those of other Dao-attainers, and among them was Shang Jun. To blind the obelisk forest, Shen Mu had to build a framework of Hongmeng runes to shroud the aura of Shang Jun's own Dao; only so could he lead him out of this place.

The Hongmeng construct was a formidable problem even for Shen Mu; he advanced and calculated at the same time.

He was like a walking obelisk, and Shang Jun walked in his shadow, as though suppressed within the obelisk that was Shen Mu, and so stirred no change in the stele forest.

Should Shen Mu's Hongmeng construct fail and Shang Jun's aura leak out, he would at once be suppressed by the obelisk forest and driven straight into a true stele!

How long it took, he did not know, but at last Shen Mu led Shang Jun out of the stele forest. Sweat steamed from his whole body; all this while he had calculated with all his strength, pushing his mind to its utmost, seeking the single path of life amid countless permutations, and only so had he walked out of the stele forest.

Now that he relaxed, his mind suddenly went dim and muddled, and his limbs grew strengthless.

Shen Mu closed his eyes and gasped several harsh breaths, standing there to steady his heart.

Shang Jun looked back. The steles stood in dense, crowded ranks, so many that the way they had come could no longer be found.

He felt as though a whole age had passed. He thought of the sixteenth epoch, of his own persistence in those years, of all he had met with in this life, and it seemed to him like the affairs of a former existence.

And in this life, he would be born anew!

Before long, Shen Mu opened his eyes and walked toward the outside of the gateway.

Shang Jun still followed him. Shen Mu said nothing, and Shang Jun said nothing either; he seemed to have melted wholly into Shen Mu's shadow.

He was a being who had attained the Dao through killing, and had once been an assassin; otherwise he could never have slain a Dao-attainer before attaining the Dao himself. Lurking in Shen Mu's shadow, he was invisible to ordinary eyes, and not the least trace of his aura could be sensed.

The two were about to step out of the gateway when Shen Mu suddenly halted, and Shang Jun halted with him.

Shen Mu studied the outside warily. After a moment he laughed aloud and said, "As a fellow young master of Miluo Palace, do you mean to aid the third and the fourth and suppress me? I hear you are the disciple the Master values most. Were it the Master, what would the Master do?"

Beyond the gate all was silent.

Shang Jun's heart gave a violent leap, and he looked beyond the gate. What was out there?

Why had Shen Mu suddenly spoken so?

Could the First Young Master of Miluo Palace be just outside the gate at this very moment?

"The Master can be impartial, favoring neither me nor any of my other senior brothers."

Shen Mu said calmly, "If you truly inherited the Master's mantle, you would not block me, nor would you block Shang Jun. For when Shang Jun attained the Dao in those years, the Master did not block him either."

Beyond the gate all remained silent; not a sound.

Shang Jun frowned slightly and thought, "Can the young master have misjudged? There is no one outside at all."

Just then an obelisk appeared in their view, drifting toward them.

Shen Mu let out a breath and stepped out through the gateway. In his shadow, Shang Jun followed him out. No one barred their way; only that obelisk drifted quietly past them and into the gateway.

Shen Mu looked back and saw the obelisk come to its original position and settle down.

Shang Jun, in the shadow, said hesitantly, "Young master, Old Monster and the others..."

Shen Mu frowned slightly and raised a hand to stop him from going on.

With the settling of that obelisk, the old man and the old woman of that little village, Zhu Santong and the rest, would surely be suppressed once more, sealed within the obelisks one by one with no way to escape!

Moreover, the obelisk array was now whole again, without a gap. Should Shen Mu return to this place in the future, he would have no choice but to break the array by sheer force!

And that would require fighting strength on the order of Taiyi's!

"Strength on the order of Taiyi..."

Shen Mu's eye twitched, and he said silently in his heart, "I do not have it now, but I will in the future!"

Suddenly the two broken door leaves within the gateway flew up and joined together, becoming a single whole door, and with a click they were set into the gateway.

The two doors closed; Hongmeng runes flowed across them, locking the gateway fast.

"Eldest Senior Brother, you cannot do as the Master did!"

Shen Mu turned and departed, his voice echoing through that abandoned place: "Walk on along the Master's road, and even if you do exactly as the Master did, you cannot escape the Master's end. The Master has already failed! Why not try another road?"

No one answered in the abandoned place.

Shen Mu led Shang Jun far away.

When they had left the abandoned place, Shang Jun finally voiced the doubt in his heart: "Was the First Young Master there just now?"

"He did not truly descend."

Shen Mu shook his head. "He may be the one among the seven young masters of Miluo Palace most like the Master of Miluo Palace, but only like. His every action, even his philosophy, is the same as the Master of Miluo Palace's. I have never met him, but from the fact that he studies the Hongmeng runes, his character can be seen. He suppresses his own nature to make himself more like the Master of Miluo Palace. That being so, he will surely follow the Master of Miluo Palace's instructions and return to the cosmic epoch that belongs to him; therefore he could never descend here."

Shang Jun was somewhat perplexed.

He found it hard to understand a man like the First Young Master of Miluo Palace.

"He descended only as a projection."

Shen Mu said, "When Old Monster and the others attacked his Dao tree, they did after all disturb him, and so he sent a projection to take a look. I had to appeal to his feelings and reason with him; otherwise he would have sealed me in the gateway along with the rest. Precisely because he imitates the Master of Miluo Palace, his temperament has a flaw, and so long as we grasp that, we can get away."

He let out a long breath. "If it were not you following me but Old Monster and the others, we could not have escaped... We go to the Ancestral Court, to establish the ultimate void that corresponds to the world tree!"

He took his bearings and set off for Great Black Mountain of the Ancestral Court.

Youdu.

Yuji, Shixiu, Lingshu, and Lingyuan were sacrificed one after another, transformed into energy that entered the past cosmos, and the Dao tree of the Lord of the Lingguan Hall thereby grew ever clearer, and the Dao fruit upon it ever stronger.

Now ten years had passed. Once the sacrifice of the Lingyuan heavens was complete, he could recover to the peak of his sixteenth-epoch days, and then this cosmos would hold no rival for him.

The Lord of the Lingguan Hall waited quietly. Today was the day the sacrifice of the Lingyuan heavens would be completed, and the day his Dao tree would fully descend.

Though he was a Dao-attainer who had lived through four cosmic epochs, with a Dao heart of unyielding firmness, even he could not help but feel a faint stir at this moment.