Chapter 924 — Chronicle of Void Creation

Qi Jiuyi had originally meant to go gather up a few of the rhombic crystals, but hearing this he abandoned the notion at once and said with a smile, "Master Shen, your divine consciousness is strong enough. Using this treasure to create from the void—just how strong is the Tubo you make? Could it surpass you?"

Shen Mu shook his head, picked up the little Tubo he had just created from the void, and set it on his palm. "He has little strength. He has no soul either—just a muddled, witless creature that happens to look rather fierce."

Qi Jiuyi stretched out a finger and poked the little Tubo. "Then these crystals are of no use at all. The life they create is so much weaker than you—it is not even a divine-ability wielder, and it has neither soul nor spirit, so it cannot cultivate. What use is it?"

His finger pressed against the little Tubo; the creature was savage, and latching onto the finger it tried to fling it away, but its strength was far too small—it could not budge it at all, and it howled and bellowed in fury.

Shen Mu set the little Tubo down. "Unless I am mistaken, the prehistoric creators must have possessed something extraordinary in their divine consciousness. Their consciousness must have been incomparably powerful, their minds terrifying in strength. Look—in the reliefs, every one of them could use the crystals to create from the void, whereas I had to cultivate the indestructible divine consciousness of the Three Primordial Spirits before I could manage it. Which is to say, every one of them had a divine consciousness no weaker than mine!"

Qi Jiuyi saw nothing amiss in this, but Long Qilin and Yan'er understood the meaning behind his words.

Shen Mu's indestructible divine consciousness was already terrifyingly strong. Once he had fathomed the cultivation methods of Yan Shaoqing—the Lingxiao powerhouse reputed to be first in divine consciousness in all the Heavenly Court—he could fashion illusions and dreamscapes to trap Yan Shaoqing whole!

Shen Mu's divine consciousness might not run as deep as Yan Shaoqing's, but its quality far surpassed his.

And if every prehistoric creator possessed a divine consciousness no weaker than his, how horrifying would that be?

Shen Mu pointed at the prehistoric creators in the reliefs and went on, "And what is even stranger is that their bodies grew far larger than before. I think they were using void creation to enhance their own flesh."

Long Qilin was puzzled. "Master, how can void creation enhance one's own flesh?"

"Through these crystals, using one's powerful divine consciousness to remake the body—it cannot be any harder than creating a little Tubo."

Shen Mu explained, "Earlier, in the Blood Rust Zone, we saw a skull as vast as a planet, and its body must have been even larger than its head. Who could grow to such a size? It must be that the prehistoric creators used these crystals to remake their bodies, making themselves larger and larger."

He paused, then returned to those earlier reliefs and said, "The giant who first obtained a crystal—his body too became taller and mightier than the others', which shows that using the art of creation to enhance the flesh is feasible. And there is one point of the utmost importance: they were undying, one might even say they were gods!"

Qi Jiuyi frowned deeply.

Shen Mu's expression turned grave, and his voice deepened. "Once the art of creation is cultivated to a certain realm, one may live forever without dying, and the body will never perish. Even if you are nothing but a petty divine-ability wielder of the Spirit Fetus realm, so long as you have mastered the art of creation, you too can be like a god—ageless, deathless, imperishable! These prehistoric creators were most likely a race of undying, indestructible gods as well!"

He felt this keenly, for he was such a person himself.

To a divine-ability wielder, a god was one whose primordial spirit had reached the Heavenly Palace realm—deathless, of mighty dharma power, possessed of vast divine abilities.

But to an existence like Shen Mu, the ordinary divine-ability wielder's definition of a god was nothing short of a joke.

First of all, the realms themselves had been created by the seven Heavenly Worthies—and Shen Mu had taken part in the very process of establishing them.

In the early years of Longhan, he had, on behalf of Heavenly Worthy Yu, taught the multitudes the method of becoming a god, and together with Heavenly Worthy Hao he had established the seven divine realms stretching from the Southern Heavenly Gate to the Heavenly Court, known as the seven realms of the Heavenly Palace.

Afterward, Shen Mu, Xu Shenghua, and other geniuses of Jingping repeatedly shattered the barriers between realms, fusing the seven realms of the Divine Treasury into a single realm.

Shen Mu had even reopened the Primal Fetus Divine Treasury and remade his soul.

Ordinary people revered the realms, cultivating within their bonds, following them step by step.

But geniuses created realms, and leapt free of their bonds.

They were the founders of realms.

Qi Jiuyi studied the figures in the reliefs and shook his head. "Even if they are deathless, it means nothing. They have only powerful bodies; of the great Dao and divine abilities they know nothing. And this method of creation, apart from making one a bit more robust and granting deathlessness, is really of little use. The things it creates are far too weak."

Shen Mu said, "And what if countless prehistoric creators simultaneously stirred their indestructible divine consciousness and imagined the same thing?"

Qi Jiuyi froze. Suddenly he thought of the altar outside, and of the corpses scattered all around it. His voice slipped out of him: "You mean the Heavenly Lord that attacked us was fashioned by their void creation?"

Shen Mu walked on to look at the other reliefs. "The bones around the altar were in fact the priests among the prehistoric creators. They gathered the divine consciousness of all their people, and through the amplification of these crystals, their consciousness could create a Heavenly Lord under their control."

Qi Jiuyi shook his head, deeply shaken. If tens of thousands of prehistoric creators all imagined the same powerful being at once, how powerful would the creature born of their gathered consciousness be?

And if even more prehistoric creators joined forces?

Would not the beings they created be stronger still?

Was there any limit to such might?

Suddenly Qi Jiuyi burst out laughing. "Even if they can create from the void and fashion a Heavenly Lord, it is nothing compared to the true Heavenly Lord! The true Heavenly Lord is the incarnation of the great Dao of Heaven, the Lord of Xuandu, the foremost of the true gods under heaven!"

Shen Mu stood before another relief. "Come, look here."

Qi Jiuyi looked. In the relief were prehistoric creators with crystals set in their brows; they had created beings far more powerful than themselves, and drove those beings to battle, slaughtering the other races of prehistoric creators.

He also saw a relief in which the chief of one band of prehistoric creators stood amid an altar, holding a golden scepter, arms spread wide, head tilted back toward the sky.

Around the altar, the other creators encircled it, worshipping this man together, making this leader ever more powerful.

This leader possessed inconceivable powers—divine abilities were even born in him!

Qi Jiuyi's heart pounded as he watched, and his voice came out hoarse. "Divine abilities cannot be born that way! Divine abilities come from the ancient gods grasping the great Dao of heaven and earth—bringing forth the power of the great Dao, that is a divine ability! And the divine abilities of we who are born after—we gain them by observing the ancient gods, learning the great Dao of heaven and earth from them and drawing it out!"

Shen Mu shook his head and walked on.