Chapter 888 — One Petal, One World

Shen Mu had no idea how he had managed to unleash the Boundless Kalpa Sutra of the Great Brahma Heaven King Buddha; he simply felt that the technique existed somewhere in his mind, and at that moment all he had wanted was to sleep. When he entered the dream, the Boundless Kalpa Sutra had unfolded of its own accord.

In the dream he saw a bubble world, a world opened up within the dream; the bubble kept growing, and little by little it merged with the ruins of Longbo.

Within this bubble world, countless versions of himself sprouted like weeds and ran wild in every direction. It was a strange dream.

Each of the selves within it seemed an independent being, and yet all of them were linked to his own vision; even the mutterings he made in his sleep became the language of these tiny Shen Mus.

The words spoken in that sleep-talk carried no discernible meaning; even the little Shen Mus found it hard to understand one another. In the end he decided to give these tiny selves the simplest possible language to communicate with, and so the maha of the flood dragons became the tongue they shared. It was a revel within a dream.

Across that great dream, Shen Mu searched all of Longbo and at last found the clues the founding patriarch had left behind; only then did he wake, yawning and stretching. The bubble world collapsed and perished with his waking, as though a world had been destroyed; the dainty little selves within it vanished without a trace. The Boundless Kalpa Sutra of the Great Brahma Heaven King Buddha possessed powers beyond all comprehension.

This dream world was but one of its wondrous uses; there were other marvelous methods of cultivation besides. Yet Shen Mu had no understanding at all of how the technique was cultivated or how it was unleashed; everything seemed to come as naturally as breathing.

He set aside his doubts about the Boundless Kalpa Sutra and went to the ruins he had found. Dragon Qilin and Yan'er followed him there, and found Shen Mu standing atop an astrological platform of Longbo.

The armillary spheres and other divine instruments on the platform lay shattered, the whole place in disarray. Shen Mu bowed his head to examine the star marks on the ground, then drew out his calculating primal weapon and began to reckon with a clatter of clicks. Yan'er was no master of the art of calculation; she watched for a long while without understanding, then asked curiously, "Young Master, what are you calculating?

" Dragon Qilin said, "It is a riddle left by the founding patriarch of the Heavenly Saint Cult.

Every time, this senior brother would leave a problem in the art of calculation for the Cult Leader to solve, and once it was solved, clues to his whereabouts could be obtained. The senior and junior brothers often conversed in this language of calculation.

" Yan'er said in astonishment, "The art of calculation is a language too?

" "To a master of calculation, it is indeed a language.

" Dragon Qilin went on, "Everyone says the Daoist school is the foremost sect in the art of calculation, but they all overlook my Heavenly Saint Cult. In those years I followed the patriarch in the deep study of calculation and gained no small skill in it. The Heavenly Saint Cult's teleportation divine abilities, teleportation formations, star and constellation formations, and arts of creation are all studies in calculation.

Moreover, the founding patriarch was a great master of calculation; the Woodcutter Sage was a grandmaster of it; even his mount, Senior Brother Tiger Venerable, was an adept of calculation, and set among the Daoist school he would have ranked among the foremost.

" Yan'er rewarded him with a spirit pill and praised him, "Fat Dragon knows so much!

" Shen Mu worked out the problem the founding patriarch had left, and paced back and forth on the astrological platform, muttering to himself, "What he left behind is a set of spatial dimensional data. But for a spatial dimension, one needs a center point before one can know where that dimension lies. If the astrological platform is taken as the center point to fix that spatial dimension. . . " His expression turned strange, and all at once arms sprouted from beneath his ribs; he bent his fingers and began to calculate.

"This spatial dimension is not in the same space as the Yuan World!

" Shen Mu's expression grew stranger still. Judging by the dimensional data Wei Suifeng had left, Guixu was indeed not in the Yuan World; it belonged to another world. This kind of dimensional architecture was like that of Youdu in relation to the Yuan World. Youdu overlapped with the Yuan World, overlapped with all the myriad heavens and worlds, and yet it was not on the same dimension.

So it was with Guixu as well.

"Relying on teleportation divine abilities alone, it would be very hard to enter this dimension.

" Shen Mu immediately branded runes upon the astrological platform. To enter the dimension Wei Suifeng had marked, only the teleportation formation of the Great Star could possibly send one there.

Dragon Qilin helped as well, and two days later they finally constructed the teleportation formation.

Yan'er transformed into a blue sparrow and perched on Shen Mu's shoulder.

Dragon Qilin also came to the center of the astrological platform.

Shen Mu activated the formation, and the teleportation light shot up into the sky.

When the light receded, they had vanished from Longbo! When Shen Mu's feet touched solid ground, he saw that all around was dim and indistinct.

Low-hanging planets filled the sky, each pierced with great holes; near the broken places of those planets, scattered fragments hung quietly in the heavens.

Beneath their feet lay a dark, sunken ring of mountains; beside them stood a stretch of resplendent golden palaces; and around the ring of mountains spread a vast, boundless dark ocean. And at the center of the ring of mountains was a bottomless abyss!

The ring of mountains was immense, its circumference beyond reckoning. It seemed that even if the Twenty Heavens of Mount Sumeru were moved here, they could not fill the abyss at its center. This abyss was the Great Abyss of Guixu!

The Milky Way began in the Heavenly Court and ended in Guixu. Yet Shen Mu did not see the Milky Way flowing here.

He looked up into the sky and could faintly make out the riverbed the Milky Way had left behind.

That riverbed was a spatial trace pressed out by the weight of the Milky Way. But the Milky Way had been severed.

In the final years of the Shanghuang Era, Ling Tianzun had unleashed a divine ability in the Shanghuang Heavenly Court at Yuandu, cutting off the Milky Way and using his own body to replace the substance of the river, performing a divine ability that shook heaven and earth and ran through past, present, and future.

From that time on, the Milky Way no longer flowed toward Guixu, but poured instead into the Eastern Sea.

When the Yuan World was sealed, the Milky Way became the Yong River. The Milky Way had been cut off and no longer poured into Guixu.

The shattered planets in the sky must be the stars that had once revolved around the Milky Way; only because of a great war had so many of them been broken.

Shen Mu and the others stood before the Guixu Annex Palace and looked into Guixu.

At once their heads swam and their souls reeled, as though their spirits would be drawn into that abyss; they hurriedly looked away. "The geographical map of our senior brother points to this place.

" Shen Mu took a scroll of geographical maps from his Taotie Pouch, spread it out flat, and examined it closely.

Among the maps Wei Suifeng had drawn in star sand in the Star Canyon outside the Other Shore Ark, one was a geographical map of Guixu.

Twenty thousand years ago, he had come to Guixu to explore the secrets of the ancient past, hoping to achieve the Three Establishments and become a sage. Here he had encountered an inconceivable event: the Milky Way flowing once more.