Chapter 973 — The Supreme Divine Consciousness

The Tai Emperor's remaining divine consciousness withdrew, and in a moment it had vanished without a trace, leaving behind only a cold snort.

Shen Mu thought little of it; the Tai Emperor was, after all, the Tai Emperor, the foremost master of divine consciousness past or present, and to have captured even a fragment of his consciousness was already no small achievement. Divine consciousness was thought and awareness, bound up with memory, and his aim had been simply to wrest from the Tai Emperor's consciousness the supreme art of cultivating divine consciousness: the Daluo Supreme Divine Consciousness.

He had no power to refine the Tai Emperor whole; the consciousness he had taken was but the tip of an iceberg, a single drop of the vast ocean. Yet if he could refine this portion of the Tai Emperor's divine consciousness and obtain from it the method for cultivating the Daluo Supreme Divine Consciousness, that would be a stroke of immense fortune!

Drawing out the Tai Emperor's seal and the sacrificial altar to summon the Tai Emperor's divine consciousness had been a crisis for him.

But within a crisis there is both peril and opportunity; to pass through the peril and seize the opportunity, that is what a wise man should conceive of doing, and do. Many people, when faced with a crisis, see only the peril and do all they can to evade it, forgetting that a crisis has two faces, and that in dodging the peril they often let slip the opportunity as well.

Shen Mu, joining hands with the others, had driven the Tai Emperor back and captured a portion of his divine consciousness; he had advanced to meet the difficulty and seized the opportunity. When Yue Tingge and Luo Wushuang saw the Tai Emperor's divine consciousness retreat, they too flew out of his divine treasury.

Shen Mu thanked them both, and Shu Jun likewise returned to the Primal Divine Stone, where Shen Mu, sending his divine consciousness down, gave him thanks as well. "This concerns your life and death, but it concerns mine as well.

There is no need for thanks.

" Within Shu Jun's great head, two eyes bounced and hopped about in their sockets as he laughed.

"If you feel you owe me, then supply me with more divine consciousness and vital essence and blood, and help me restore my ears and my mouth and nose!

" Shen Mu laughed heartily.

"Rest assured, King Jun, I will grant you your wish! " Shu Jun sneered.

"King Jun?

Though I am one of the Three Kings of High Antiquity, my people do not call me King Jun, but the Divine King Shu Jun! You ought to address me as Divine King! You may have captured a portion of the Tai Emperor's divine consciousness, but do you know how to refine his divine consciousness and extract the memories within it? If you do not, then offer me more vital essence and blood and divine consciousness, and help me restore my brain. This bargain is no loss to you, is it?

" Shen Mu frowned and proposed, "How about this: you teach me how to refine the Tai Emperor's divine consciousness, and I will teach you the knowledge contained within it. Do you not wish to obtain the Tai Emperor's Daluo Supreme Divine Consciousness? Is not this bargain an even better one?

" Shu Jun was greatly moved. He pondered for a moment, then said, "That proposal is not bad. My Three Enclosures Supreme Consciousness is very strong, but compared with the Tai Emperor's Daluo Supreme Divine Consciousness it is still a shade inferior. Yet the reason the Tai Emperor is the Tai Emperor is not the Daluo Supreme Divine Consciousness alone; there are also countless clansmen who visualize him and aid his cultivation.

. . " Shen Mu led him on, step by step.

"If the Tai Emperor's divine consciousness contains the Daluo Supreme Divine Consciousness, I will teach you every part of it, without reservation!

Once the Divine King Shu Jun is reborn, and possesses the Daluo Supreme Divine Consciousness besides, becoming another Tai Emperor will be only a matter of time!

" Shu Jun laughed. "It is a deal!

" "It is a deal! " Shu Jun was overjoyed. "This brat is rarely so straightforward! Heh heh, the Tai Emperor's Daluo Supreme Divine Consciousness is better than my Three Enclosures Supreme Consciousness by who knows how much, and this fellow does not realize he has taken a great loss. .

. wait a moment!

" His two great eyeballs blinked their lids, and he suddenly came to his senses.

"If I restore my brain, I can seize the chance to take his body, wipe out this fellow's consciousness, and then slowly refine the Tai Emperor. Would that not be even better?

I teach him the refining method, and never mind whether the Tai Emperor's divine consciousness he has imprisoned contains the Daluo Supreme Divine Consciousness; even if it does, I have no brain and cannot cultivate it.

. .

I have taken a great loss!

" His great head raged atop the altar, the two eyeballs bounding to and fro, and he cried, "Little brat, you dare toy with a Divine King? You are dead, I tell you, dead! " Shen Mu laughed.

"Is the Divine King Shu Jun, one of the Three Kings of High Antiquity, going to break his word and grow fat on it?

" After a while, Shu Jun finally calmed down, and he did keep his promise in the end, teaching Shen Mu the method of refining divine consciousness to obtain the memories within it, though he was exceedingly displeased about it. The method he taught was likewise a divine ability of divine consciousness, called Treading Heaven, Transmuting Consciousness.

Once Shen Mu had learned it, he at once set about modifying it; Shu Jun was long accustomed to this, for whatever Shen Mu learned from him he would always modify, and Shu Jun had no way to object. When Shen Mu had finished his modifications to Treading Heaven, Transmuting Consciousness, he went off in high spirits to refine the Tai Emperor's divine consciousness.

Treading Heaven, Transmuting Consciousness was a divine ability within the Three Enclosures Supreme Consciousness art. It required mobilizing the seventy-eight star mansions and three hundred and twenty-eight orthodox star deities of the Three Enclosures Supreme Consciousness; the mansions and stars would turn and shift, the three hundred and twenty-eight orthodox star deities treading the heavens, moving the stars and changing the constellations, making mansions and stars revolve in strange patterns. Each movement generated a mighty refining force that refined the enemy's divine consciousness and took it for one's own. The memories within the enemy's divine consciousness would be refined and flow into one's own mind as knowledge, without altering one's own thinking, equivalent to providing nourishment for one's own divine consciousness.

Thus one avoided being assimilated by the enemy's divine consciousness, and could refine it to raise one's own divine consciousness cultivation. Treading Heaven, Transmuting Consciousness was a divine ability created in the ancient era by the Creators against other Creators; in that age battles among the Creators were exceedingly frequent, and so how to destroy one's enemies became a subject of study for the Creators of that time. Yet the divine abilities of that age were vastly different from those of the present day, and to Shen Mu it was still an unfamiliar field.

Within the Primal Embryo Divine Treasury he drove Treading Heaven, Transmuting Consciousness and began by refining the Tai Emperor's divine consciousness trapped in the Heavenly Vase.

In an instant a vast and tangled flood of knowledge surged in, exceedingly disordered, and all manner of images rose in Shen Mu's mind: the currents of the Tai Emperor's memory!

He at once discarded the chaff to keep the essence, searching the Tai Emperor's memory currents for what was useful and grinding away what he did not need. The Tai Emperor's divine consciousness contained far too much; the memories of the ancient era alone encompassed countless pieces of knowledge.

Shen Mu frowned deeply.