Chapter 985 — The Holy Infant's Unspoken Sorrow

Qin Hanzhen's heart was heavy. "Yes. Shen'er has suffered too much. When he learned that he was only the second consciousness of Shen Fengqing, I truly do not know how he held on without breaking apart."

Princess Zhen's eyes swam with tears. "When I learned that he had cut away his soul and dug out his eye to preserve Fengqing, my tears would not stop. This child — I do not know how he lived through it. Fengqing has a mother; he is an orphan, and on top of that he must bear such torment..."

Shen Mu was the second consciousness within Shen Fengqing's body. Shen Fengqing, that Divine Son of the Nether Capital, had done too much evil, and was sealed by Tu Bo and exiled to the mortal world.

At the very moment he passed from the Nether Capital to the ruins of the mortal realm, Shen Mu's consciousness was born. Thus he was an orphan from the instant of his birth — laid in a basket, with Aunt Ping'er carrying him as she fled all the way, dodging the gods and demons of the Heavenly Court who hunted them.

He drifted as far as the Yong River. Aunt Ping'er died too, and Yincan Village took him in.

From childhood to youth to young manhood, Shen Mu had always believed himself a life unique in all the world — until he learned that he was nothing more than the second consciousness born within this body, that the body did not belong to him either, and that he did not even have a soul of his own.

And later still, when the Jingping Calamity came and he fell into the thick of encircling enemies, crushed beneath a boundless despair, he resolved — so that Shen Fengqing, the Divine Son of the Nether Capital, would never fall into the Heavenly Court's hands — to resolutely dig out his own third eye, cut away his soul, and send Shen Fengqing back to the Nether Capital.

He kept only this body that was not his own, so that his consciousness might still survive, and became what others called a cripple — a waste of a Tyrant Body.

Princess Zhen and Qin Hanzhen could scarcely imagine how Shen Mu had lived through such hardships, or why he could still keep so fierce a fighting spirit — rushing about from place to place, journeying even here.

Their love for Shen Mu was not only the tender love of parents, but also a feeling of guilt and debt.

"This must be told to Emperor Kai. Emperor Kai will not let harm come to him, no matter what."

As Qin Hanzhen steered the tower-ship into the distance, he consoled her: "Emperor Kai has long wished to see him. His strength is unfathomable — he is sure to find a way."

Princess Zhen nodded in silence. But at the thought that Shen Mu was about to suffer every torment at the hands of the Creators, she could not help but grieve and weep.

"This is nothing but torment!"

In the territory of the Xiu people, Shen Mu had been dressed by the Creators in a crimson robe and seated in the highest place, and he felt rather ill at ease.

Just now, when the Creators were changing his clothes, they had even put a crimson bellyband on him; at the thought of it, Shen Mu felt an indescribable discomfort.

Still, it was only natural for a mischievous child not yet two to wear a crimson bellyband — after all, children that age all ran about bare-bottomed in their bellybands. Shen Mu had worn one too at two or three, and Blind Grandpa and Lame Grandpa would often pinch his little bird and flick it a couple of times, not letting him be until he wailed.

That is a thing of the past; best not to speak of it.

He sat in the highest place, and this high platform was shaped like an altar. Compared with an adult Creator it was not so large, but compared with him it seemed extraordinarily magnificent.

Shen Mu sat at the very top of the altar and felt as though he were an offering laid upon it; his heart was truly somewhat panicked.

The Creators of the Xiu people were all too warm-hearted: not only did they seat him in the highest place, but they came to look him over, each pausing a long while before him, staring intently at the eye at his brow, then slowly nodding and withdrawing from the altar in transports of delight.

Shen Mu sat there obediently, letting them look their fill — after all, Xiu Zhong was standing right behind him, leaving him no chance at all to slip away.

"These Creators who fled into the Other Shore have indeed fallen!" In his mind, Shu Jun, borrowing his eyes to look around, was grieved to the heart.

Though the Creators of today were still organized in tribes, they were vastly different from his own day. The greatest change was in their architecture: the buildings here carried luxury and extravagance to the utmost, with carved beams and painted rafters, intricate and exquisite.

Moreover, palaces, towers, pavilions, and terraces rose and fell in varying heights, artfully arranged. The Creators had even visualized the mountains and rivers around them, adorning the terrain encircling this city in rich and varied hues — mountains, waters, trees, grasses, and flowers forming patterns like ink-and-wash paintings. Seen from the sky, it was the image of a Phoenix City, a phoenix spreading its wings in flight.

Shu Jun was so furious that his two eyeballs trembled, bouncing about in their sockets, as he chattered endlessly that this was a betrayal of tradition.

Yet what struck both him and Shen Mu as novel was that the Creators here had actually begun to visualize and even cultivate divine powers!

They saw many small children, about Shen Mu's height and only a few years old, striving to visualize divine powers, trying by visualization to draw out those powers' full might.

Creators of one or two years, even those just born, could cultivate — because they transmitted inherited wisdom by divine consciousness: when a Creator infant was born, an elder would come in person and use divine consciousness to impart to it the wisdom of the Creator race.

Thus even a newly born Creator infant could speak, write, and marshal its divine consciousness to cultivate — formidably strong.

There were also Creators of towering stature teaching these children knowledge of runes, instructing them in the principles hidden within those runes.

What astonished Shen Mu still more was that the Creators — whom he remembered as crude brutes who smashed people with great bone clubs — had actually begun to learn the forging of divine weapons and sharp tools!

Those Creators skilled in forging refined and visualized weapons by a method of forging with divine consciousness; weapons forged through a thousand hammerings and a hundred temperings of divine consciousness were scarcely inferior to divine weapons wrought from divine gold and divine iron!

"The Creators have gone through a vast reform, and are nearly keeping pace with this era."

Shen Mu could not help but secretly admire them: "They are far more advanced than primitives like Shu Jun — and far cleverer."

Shu Jun did not know his thoughts, or he would have flown into another rage.

Xiu Zhong said to Shen Mu: "I have already informed the other tribes of the Holy Infant's appearance. The chieftains of the Zili, Zhuqiu, Yanlong, Xiatai, and other tribes will all come; there will be a great celebration. When that time comes, the chieftains will set a small trial to verify whether you are the Holy Infant."

Uneasy, Shen Mu said: "A small trial? Is it dangerous?"

"Not dangerous — absolutely not dangerous!"

Xiu Zhong thumped his chest heavily, louder than a drumbeat, and chuckled: "You are the Holy Infant. How would they dare set too dangerous a trial?"

Shen Mu was reassured.

Xiu Zhong said: "Coming this time as well is the common sovereign of all our Creator tribes, to bear witness to this great event! She is our king — the one and only Divine King of Creation!"