Chapter 865 — The Walking Corpse Fiend

Shen Mu's body went rigid.

The Heavenly Emperor of the Heavenly Court Beyond the Domain—was he the Heaven Alliance?

Did the blind old man mean that the Heavenly Emperor was one man within the Heaven Alliance, or the Heaven Alliance entire?

He had never turned this question over in his mind before. Was it possible that the Heavenly Emperor of the Court Beyond the Domain was not a single man but a body of men, a faction whose members were tangled in a thousand conflicting interests?

If that guess held, he could sketch the outlines of the Supreme Emperor Era.

The Supreme Emperor Era had been stirred up by Earth Mother Yuanjun.

Earth Mother Yuanjun had nurtured her own offspring, supporting them as they opened up the Supreme Emperor Era and founded the Supreme Heavenly Court; they were called the Northern Supreme Emperor. The Heaven Alliance, for its part, had backed another group of people to establish the Southern Supreme Emperor and the Southern Supreme Heavenly Court, which stood opposed to the Northern Supreme Emperor.

The two courts fought and slaughtered each other, and the strife lasted nearly three hundred thousand years.

In those days the Court Beyond the Domain was little more than a bystander, sitting on the mountain to watch the tigers fight.

At that time the Court Beyond the Domain was still the Longhan Heavenly Court.

The Longhan Heavenly Court had swallowed up the Xiaohan Heavenly Court and the Longxiao Heavenly Court and grown into a bloated colossus, and within it were ancient gods, and demigods, and gods cultivated up from living beings born in later ages.

Through this period the Heaven Alliance grew stronger and stronger, and by a series of stratagems it gradually replaced the backbone of the Court Beyond the Domain and took the Court in hand. Every ancient god felt the danger to himself; both the Lord of Heaven and the Earth Earl sensed that their interests had been harmed, and that the peril of being supplanted hung over them.

Within the Heaven Alliance itself, too, rifts had opened over power and profit. And between the Heaven Alliance, which now held the Court Beyond the Domain, and the Southern Supreme Heavenly Court, an irreconcilable conflict had arisen; the creed of the Southern Supreme Emperor was that the lives of men outweigh Heaven itself, and that gods exist to serve men.

But the Heaven Alliance, holding the Court Beyond the Domain, had already grasped matchless power and authority, and the Southern Supreme Heavenly Court they had themselves raised had become a thorn in their eye, a colossus that threatened their rule.

The flashpoint came after the Heaven Alliance removed Mother Earth: with Mother Earth dead and the Northern Supreme Heavenly Court destroyed, the rooting out of the Southern Supreme became the Heaven Alliance's first priority.

The war broke out just when Heavenly Venerable Ling was cutting off a stretch of the Heavenly River to test the most perfect state of her divine art; so long as Heavenly Venerable Ling did not die, the Southern Supreme Heavenly Court would not fall. That dreadful existence charged into the mist and assassinated Heavenly Venerable Ling; and at the same moment, the great army of gods and men of the Court Beyond the Domain attacked the Southern Supreme Heavenly Court, bringing about the utter destruction of the Supreme Heavenly Court.

Such was Shen Mu's conjecture. Though many questions remained, he felt the guess came close to the truth. He followed the blind old man back to the bank of the Heavenly River, and the blind old man went on laying out for burial the "corpse" of Heavenly Venerable Ling that drifted up; and the same thing happened—the "corpse" once more turned to clear water.

Shen Mu could not hold back. "Elder, Heavenly Venerable Ling's divine art is that matter neither changes nor increases nor diminishes nor alters.

Even if she dies, her corpse will vanish and become her again, and she will live once more. For her divine art is the immutability of matter.

What you gather will never be her—only the water of the river. The true her has already become that eternal mass of matter above the Heavenly River.

She has become the mist upon the river.

She does not care what you do!

She does not care that you raise a stele for her, or build a tomb for her! " Choose one person who understands Heavenly Venerable Ling, and that person must be Shen Mu.

He understood her divine art better than anyone; in the beginning it was he and Kaihuang who had taught her the art of creation before it had taken shape, and the embryo of her divine art had been completed with the help of Shen Mu and Kaihuang. Later, when Shen Mu entered the ghost ship, it was Shen Mu who broke her divine art with the aid of the Four Emperors—though at that time her art was still imperfect. Still, in understanding Heavenly Venerable Ling's art, he was beyond dispute the first. In his eyes the blind old man's vigil at the river, gathering her corpse, was wholly unnecessary, for she had already fused with her own divine art; it could be said outright that Heavenly Venerable Ling had become her divine art. She would live forever inside the art, dying and coming back to life, living and dying again, round and round without end. Shen Mu even guessed that the mist he had met at the source of the Yong River was Heavenly Venerable Ling's divine art—that it was she who had carried him back to remote antiquity, back to the last years of the Supreme Emperor Era.

Only, Shen Mu had not known it then.

The blind old man's stone coffins ran out, and he dragged the outer coffin away to raise a stele and bury it, saying in a muffled rumble, "No one cares for her, and she does not care for herself. Our master was a person born solely for the Way, a pure person, so simple that her heart held nothing but the Way! She had nothing of your calculations, nothing of your plots; she did not care for power or position, and she threatened no one.

Why must she die? Why can she not be allowed to live?

" The blind old man's fury flooded the heavens; he threw back his head and gave a long howl, like a wounded beast.

"Why must a pure person die? Why will you two Heavenly Venerables not take the burden up yourselves? Why must you go back to the day you first knew her and drop the whole weight on her?

" His hair rose in his rage so that it lifted his cap.

"Can you not shoulder it yourselves? Why did you leave?

Could you not have walked on with her?

Why must she face the world's evil alone? " "She does not understand, Heavenly Venerable Mu! She truly does not—" Two streams of bloody tears ran down his old face, and with his head bowed he dragged stone coffin after stone coffin forward, his voice sinking lower and lower. "Why do I bury her? Why do I keep watch here and bury her again and again? Heavenly Venerable Mu, do you not understand?

Because she died.

Because in her divine art she has died again and again. Do you not understand the agony of death?

She has died countless times, so I must bury her countless times. For every one of her deaths is bitter, is a true death. She must repeat that death countless times.

.

. " Shen Mu was struck dumb, and watched him go.

Yan'er flew up from his shoulder and became a beautiful girl; she took out a gauze kerchief and wiped the tearstains from his cheeks. Shen Mu forced a smile and said hoarsely, "I am fine. Thank you, Yan'er.

" From the Jade Capital City came one violent crash after another. Suddenly the Heavenly Dragon King roared with laughter, flung the others aside and flew out with a whistle; with a great bang he leapt into the black coffin at the dock and cried, "Heavenly Venerable Ling's treasure is mine! There is hope of bringing Earth Mother Yuanjun back to life!

" The old dragon carried another outer coffin on his shoulder, and in wild delight sealed himself and that coffin inside the hanging coffin.