Chapter 977 — The Far Side of Nothingness

Within the bottle was indeed a great sea; his earlier shaking had raised hurricanes and giant waves upon its surface, roaring and crashing, joined by lightning and thunder. His divine consciousness looked upward, and at the bottle's mouth he saw a sky full of starlight, a river of stars spiraling there, with six star vortices.

His divine consciousness flew over the ocean to the wall of the bottle, and found that the bottle's wall was in truth land standing upright from the surface of the sea, forming a ring.

The land was exceedingly vast, with mountains and rivers and all things complete.

Just then he saw a sun rise out of the sea.

"This little bottle actually contains a world!

" Shen Mu was startled.

Strangely, though the bottle held a world, it did not feel at all heavy.

"So that old woman just now was the clan chief of the Cangshan Clan," Shu Jun's voice sounded in his mind.

"The Cangshan Clan was a very great tribe in the ancient era, and the Creators of this tribe were skilled at creating heavens. This bottle of yours is in fact a heaven-world. " Shen Mu was taken aback, hardly able to believe it.

How immense a heaven-world was; could this little bottle hold one? Moreover, when his divine consciousness had entered the bottle just now, the world within was vaster even than the heavens of many Origin Realms.

"In the ancient era, the Cangshan Clan visualized countless heavens," Shu Jun said.

"This heaven she gave you must be a Gourd-Heaven; the bottle that holds a Gourd-Heaven is called a Gourd-Heaven Bottle, a rare treasure indeed.

That she gave you the Gourd-Heaven Bottle shows how highly she regards you. " Shen Mu solemnly stowed the Gourd-Heaven Bottle into the Shen-Character Continent, placing it together with the crystal coffin and the mortal body of Yun Tianzun.

The Gourd-Heaven Bottle was of the utmost importance; should the Jingping Reforms fail in the future, he would surely need a way out, and this Gourd-Heaven Bottle could give the people of Jingping refuge.

"But that old woman is no easy mark; her things are not so easily taken," Shu Jun said with a laugh. "Now that you have her treasure, you must certainly do what you promised her.

That old woman was a ruthless figure even in the ancient era, and though she is dead, her divine consciousness remains.

If you cannot fulfill what you promised her, you will die a death too horrible to look at. " There was a note of gloating in his voice. "When you took up that basket, her divine consciousness planted itself on you.

She has countless ways to kill you. " Shen Mu's face darkened.

"For instance?

" he said sourly. "For instance, visualizing all manner of things inside your body: making countless needles grow in your belly, making you unable to see your enemy's moves in battle, or visualizing a sun inside you to burn you to death, an ocean to burst you to death. Killing you would be all too easy.

" Shu Jun chuckled.

Shen Mu's scalp went numb.

He took out paper and brush and wrote down what he had promised the Cangshan Clan in his notebook, lest he forget. Ten days later, they came to the end of the desert.

Along the way they saw more ruins swallowed by the desert: what they had met with earlier were cities, later mere walled strongholds, and later still simply camps thrown up in haste.

Wind blew the golden sand, and beneath the desert lay bones everywhere. This must date from the Tai Emperor's assault on the Great Void; his divine consciousness was immeasurably powerful, covering the whole of the Great Void Land, transforming into all manner of attacks, hunting down the clans of the Creators.

The environment of the Great Void had grown harsher and harsher. Creators could command nature according to their own will, but after the Tai Emperor's ravages the Great Void was filled with masterless divine consciousness and Great Void monsters, and had become nearly uninhabitable for Creators. These must have been the last batch of Creators in the Great Void Land; they had fled here, leaving behind the corpses of countless clansmen.

"The migration of the Great Void Creators must have taken place around the time the Tai Emperor was killed, that is, the middle and late Longhan Era.

" Shen Mu mused, "In that age the Heavenly Court knew nothing of another world, nor of a bloody war. The only one who knew was Yun Tianzun.

" For some reason the Tai Emperor had blood-washed the Great Void Land; Yun Tianzun must have come here and, together with the Great Void Creators, devised a trap to confine the Tai Emperor unto death in the Supreme Divine Consciousness Domain. "But why should Yun Tianzun's mortal body appear in the Tai Emperor's brow?

" Shen Mu was somewhat doubtful. Yun Tianzun ought not to have died in that battle, but in the struggle for dominion over the Heavenly Court; his body could not possibly have appeared here.

Moreover, the bloodline curse of the Yun family should also have been planted by the Creators at the time of Yun Tianzun's death, and by then the Tai Emperor had long since died in the Great Void.

He sighed. The more secrets he knew, the more doubts filled his heart.

Though he had been to the Longhan Era, it still hung before his eyes like a fog. There were too many doubts he wished to ask Yun Tianzun to resolve.

"Once I leave the Great Void Land, I will borrow the power of the Lord of Heaven and Tubo to revive Yun Tianzun.

" Shen Mu looked ahead and saw the edge of the Great Void Land; beyond the end of the Great Void Land lay the endless dark void, with no more land.

The last gathering place of the Creators that Yue Tingge had spoken of was built there: rude walls, a towering altar, and upon the altar a few broken lights flickering.

Those Great Void Creators must have made another void here, the void bridges linking the worlds they had created, and migrated into that world.

Shen Mu and Luo Wushuang came to the gathering place. It had long since been emptied, with only the ancient altar left.

The light upon the altar was an intermittent bridge, leading who knew where; the void bridge was very unstable, the bridge of light collapsing from time to time and re-forming from time to time, and beyond the bridge was a scene of doomsday. Shen Mu frowned, studying the void bridge and reckoning how he might cross it, when suddenly he saw that at the far end of the void bridge a woman was crossing.

Around the woman was a scene of world-annihilating ruin, the void twisting and collapsing, terrible beyond words, and behind her floated one heavenly palace after another, forming a fragmentary Heavenly Court, as she made to cross the void and reach the far shore of the void bridge. "Xutianzun!

" Luo Wushuang said in a low voice.