Chapter 989 — That Venerable One Must Die

The ancient gods Shen Mu had visualized had only just taken shape when the consciousness arts of those nine Creators came crashing in.

The nine Creators sat motionless, yet their consciousnesses turned into dragons and phoenixes, hills and rivers, clouds and mist, and all manner of strange apparitions that surged toward the altar; at a single stir of Shen Mu's consciousness, the ancient gods upon the altar each went forth to meet the arts that swept at them, and the slaughter was savage. A divine dragon was torn apart by the Heavenly Lord he had visualized, but no sooner had the dragon disintegrated than it turned back into consciousness, and that consciousness rushed surging into the Heavenly Lord's body; the next moment a great sword split the Heavenly Lord he had visualized open from the inside out.

After the Heavenly Lord was cut open, the great sword became a dou vessel that turned mouth-downward and spun madly, and the Heavenly Lord Shen Mu had visualized was refined to ash, his consciousness refined away with him. Shen Mu was shaken to the core; before he could devise any countermeasure, the ancient gods he had visualized were slain one by one by those nine Creators.

Tubo had his ox-horns hewn off and his eyes put out, the Earth Mother was beaten until her bones snapped and her sinews broke and then burned to ash, and the other ancient gods likewise died miserably, holding out at most a blow or two before they could not escape being refined. Cold sweat started on Shen Mu's brow.

His visualized ancient gods were formidable in battle, true, but he had underestimated the Creators' consciousness arts, and Shujun had never taught him consciousness arts either, so that his array of ancient gods had been broken at the very first moment.

The Creators' consciousness arts were endlessly strange and impossible to guard against, for those arts had no fixed form: a dragon or phoenix might be visualized, and the next instant the dragon and phoenix would dissolve into other shapes, coming straight at the weaknesses of the ancient gods he had visualized. This was utterly unlike the arts transformed out of primal-energy runes.

He could command these visualized ancient gods, could even use them to deploy arts of his own, yet the ancient gods he visualized simply did not possess the strength to withstand the Creators' consciousness arts. The battle power of his visualized ancient gods did not even match that of deities who had attained the realm of Venerable Gods. He visualized madly, and one ancient god after another was born into being to hold the altar and block the consciousness-art attacks of the nine Creators.

Yet the arts the nine Creators visualized grew ever more numerous; it was only a matter of time before they broke his defense. "Are consciousness arts really so hard to deal with? " A thousand thoughts flashed through Shen Mu's mind in succession, and like sparks struck from flint he devised one counter after another, but to comprehend, in so short a time, the techniques for answering consciousness arts was still extraordinarily difficult.

Especially when he must fight one against nine, holding off nine full-grown Creators at once, the difficulty was compounded beyond measure. "Divine King Shujun, one of the Three Kings of the Ancient Age — are his arts really this crude and pitiful?

" Divine King Langwan glanced at the huge head upon the throne and said with a half-smile, "The Holy Infant inherited from you, and he is almost like a child who knows nothing of consciousness arts; the way he uses his consciousness is laughable.

That Shujun, one of the Ancient Age's Three Kings, should be of such a standard — that is beyond what I expected.

" Shujun gave a cold snort, thoroughly displeased.

"I never taught him my consciousness arts.

Had I taught him, heh heh, never mind nine grown Creators — even a hundred of them he could have taken down with ease! " Divine King Langwan knitted her brows slightly and said softly, "So then the Holy Infant has never learned consciousness arts?

" Shujun was silent.

Langwan's brows drew tighter still.

That Shen Mu had never studied consciousness arts was indeed beyond her expectations; she had assumed that Shujun, being Shen Mu's teacher, would surely have passed a Divine King's arts down to him, in which case Shen Mu's handling of the trial before him, though hardly easy, would at least have carried him through. It had never occurred to her that Shen Mu did not know a single consciousness art. "At this rate, he will not hold out much longer.

" Langwan's lovely brows smoothed out, and she thought, "After he dies, I will take back the Primordial Godstone, the Great Emperor's Seal and the Great Emperor's Altar, and make another Holy Infant. " Scarcely had the thought formed when Shen Mu, there upon the altar, abruptly fell into a stupor, lying on his side and snoring loudly in deep sleep.

Divine King Langwan was taken aback.

"To lie down at a time like this.

. . " Upon the altar, Shen Mu set the Scripture of Immeasurable Kalpas in motion, and at once countless tiny Shen Mus appeared on that little altar, jabbering and squabbling, striking at one another, a tremendous uproar.

These diminutive Shen Mus were in fact imitating the arts of the nine Creators, trying to make their consciousness as endlessly mutable as those Creators'; soon the tiny Shen Mus lay dead and wounded in swathes across the ground.

Some burst apart and died under the enemy's consciousness arts, some had their heads shorn off by flying swords that appeared from nowhere, some were crushed to powder beneath mountains that came out of the void, some were torn in two by a pair of dragons, some had divine fire well up from within and burned to death of themselves, and some gushed water endlessly from eyes and ears, mouth and nose, and drowned beneath the enemy's arts — a scene ghastly in the extreme.

The altar was in tremendous ferment, and the arts of the nine Creators had already overcome it, killing their way to its summit. Suddenly Shen Mu's eyes flew open; the world of the dream collapsed, and the tiny Shen Mus who had just died in such grotesquely varied ways dispersed at once like a dream.

Shen Mu sat up straight, both eyes shut, while the vertical eye at the center of his brow opened; lightning was born in the void, and in an instant thunderbolts filled the sky above the altar, gathering into a thundercloud of vast scale, and the lightning came crashing down like rain.

The space around the altar turned at once into a boundless ocean of thunder, and the consciousness arts of the nine Creators were blasted full of holes and fell into a state of stillness.

Those thunderbolts struck the ground and abruptly became numberless tender shoots, which swelled as they met the wind, until in a moment the whole altar was lush with green and had become a primeval forest. The nine Creators were just about to marshal their consciousness and respond when a wild wind blew up, desert sands burying the forest, and flames blazed; the divine wind rolled the divine fire onward, and a sea of fire came roaring at them.

In an instant the sea of fire rushed to their side. Light blazed from the brows of the nine Creators, and each stretched out a hand, pinched his own consciousness and slashed hard with it; the void split open, countless stars burst into being, and before each of them took shape a river of stars.