Chapter 995 — Heroic Spirits of the Ancients (Second Update)

In the sky, the huge rhomboid eye slowly closed, leaving behind only a single slit running from north to south, like the eyelid of a sleeping beauty that twitched faintly from time to time. And the light spilling out from the Ancestral Spirit Realm was the very image of a beauty's eyelashes — save that these lashes were not black, but shot through with every color imaginable.

Had Shen Mu been here, he would have been utterly astounded.

Unfortunately, he was not here now; he had already entered the Ancestral Spirit Realm.

Shen Mu could hardly have described how he felt.

He stood in the palm of Langwan the God King, floating in the boundless radiance of thought, and those endlessly flickering thought-consciousnesses were like the light-wave signals of a brain.

As they threaded their way through them, from those brain-like thoughts they heard vast sounds, like the long cries of giant kun fish swimming at ease through the sea — their meaning unknowable — and they saw magnificent mountains and rivers hurtling backward past their eyes. Again he saw the starry sky, and the footprints of giants appearing amid the River of Stars, roaming through the cosmos.

He saw the birth of worlds great and small; so vast and entrancing were they before him that they spun and swallowed him whole. He saw one world after another destroyed, and that, too, possessed a beauty that shook the soul. These were the memories of the ancestral Creators; he and Langwan the God King were passing through the thought-consciousness of those Creators, glimpsing certain scenes from their memories.

He heard many magnificent voices — some whispered secrets in his mind, others seemed to fight upon a battlefield, with war drums rolling and the roar of slaughter shaking the heavens — and he heard strange and wonderful chanting, as though countless people had gathered in solemn ceremony to make sacrifice to something.

Within those voices, too, were insights into nature, cognitions of the world.

These, as well, were memories of the ancestral Creators; memory is not only pictures, but sound.

After a time, Langwan the God King brought Shen Mu to the center of the Ancestral Spirit Realm. There Shen Mu saw the ancient beings who had sacrificed themselves and fused with the Primordial Origin Stone to give birth to the Ancestral Spirit Realm.

They were towering figures, dim and indistinct, standing in crimson radiance like giants who bestrode heaven and earth. There were twenty-seven of them, and these twenty-seven Creators were the leaders who, bramble cart and ragged cloak, had guided the last of the Creator race across ten thousand perils to hew out the Other Shore World. Every race has its heroes who offer their wisdom and their lives for their people, and the Creators were no exception.

At the Creators' hour of greatest peril, a band of Creators worthy of songs and tears had arisen; they took the burden upon themselves of their own accord, gave their lives to battle Emperor Tai, and imprisoned him to his death within the Supreme Divine-Consciousness Domain.

After that, another band of heroes arose among the Creators, leading the surviving clansmen in flight from their pursuers, crossing the great desert to the very end of the Land of the Great Void.

It was they who built the Void Bridge there, wrought the wondrous Three Chambers, and led the last survivors to open up the Other Shore.

It was they, too, who, when their strength was exhausted and they knew death was unavoidable, fused themselves with the Primordial Origin Stone and transformed into the Ancestral Spirit Realm, so that even after death they might keep watch over their people.

Some were overflowing with natural genius, some of surpassing wisdom, some possessed of boundless battle power — and so they could devise so exquisite a Void Bridge and Three Chambers that even Xu the Heaven Lord and Huo the Heaven Lord would be trapped within.

"Worthy of reverence," Shen Mu said, struck with awe. Langwan the God King set him down, rippled her divine consciousness, and roused the ancient Creators, telling them of the Holy Infant.

The twenty-seven Creators awoke; abstruse divine consciousness wove and collided among them as they exchanged their views.

Shen Mu stood in the void, his heart ill at ease. He even began to doubt whether, if those ancient thoughts and divine consciousnesses resolved to kill him, Langwan the God King could withstand them.

Would the twenty-seven Creator leaders listen to her words? A vast thought rippled softly and turned into a voice that resounded through the Ancestral Spirit Realm.

In that instant, Shen Mu felt as though countless gazes had fallen upon him, seeing through everything he was, leaving him not a single secret.

"A child of an alien race becoming the Holy Infant of our Creator race — this is nothing short of absurd. Yet the prophecy did not come from an empty cave; the consciousness of our forebears in the Ancestral Court never said the Holy Infant must be a Creator.

" That vast thought went on, unhurried: "Since the God King and the clansmen have sent you here, you must possess something remarkable with which to win them over. " Another vast thought said, "Still, the Holy Infant is one who bears the wisdom of our race, one who must not only face our enemies but also lead our people to revival.

We have some questions we would have you answer, to see whether you truly possess such wisdom.

" Shen Mu assented.

A weighty thought said, "A man named Shen Ye came to the Other Shore World.

He had ties of old with Yun the Heaven Lord, our race's benefactor, and came asking for a sword's-breadth of land; in the end, with a single stroke of his sword, he cleaved away nearly half the territory of the Other Shore World and established the Carefree Territory.

The enmity between the Creators and the Carefree Territory has lasted nearly twenty thousand years.

How will you rid the world of Shen Ye and the Carefree Territory and restore peace to the Other Shore World?

" Shen Mu said, "I can restore peace to the Other Shore World, but I will not destroy the Carefree Territory. " "Pray, elaborate. " Shen Mu said, "I am the hundred-and-seventh-generation descendant of Shen Ye of Kaihuang.

Once I am the Holy Infant, I can preside over the peace between the Creator race and the Carefree Territory. " One by one, the towering figures shook, causing the Ancestral Spirit Realm to tremble violently; a terrible storm of thought erupted throughout it, divine consciousness sweeping and seething without rest.

Langwan the God King frowned faintly, inwardly vexed that Shen Mu had revealed his identity so soon. Had he been able to win the ancestral spirits over gradually, and only then disclosed who he was, even if they wished to strike they would have hesitated.

To reveal his kinship with Shen Ye of Kaihuang at this moment was rather rash. "You are of another race and a descendant of Shen Ye besides — are you perhaps a spy? " Another vast thought shook, saying, "We will give you a chance to explain.

If you cannot satisfy us, then perhaps we would rather do without this Holy Infant.

" Shen Mu said, "May I ask you ancestral spirits: what is a Creator? What is the Creator race? " The towering figures each started. Shen Mu said, "I now possess the Primordial Origin Stone; my divine consciousness is vast, and I can create things.

Am I a Creator?

" One ancestral spirit's divine consciousness rippled: "You may indeed be called a Creator.

" "Since an outsider like me can become a Creator, can become one of your own kind, why then must you cast out Kaihuang and insist on the downfall of the Carefree Territory? " Shen Mu asked, perplexed.