Chapter 1018 — That Thin Eggshell

The Crown Prince of the Eastern Palace led the way, while Shen Mu, steering the Heavenly Lord's fleshly body, strolled at his ease through the inner palace. Beauties beyond counting filled those halls, lovely enough to make a man forget to leave.

So many beauties in the inner palace meant, naturally, so many palaces; winding paths led to secluded places, and whichever small path one chose, its end was the love nest of some lovely, tender, water-soft consort. Truly a life of comfort.

Shen Mu looked at those paths one after another and could not help shaking his head. "The Heavenly Lord knew how to enjoy himself. But now that he is dead, the one enjoying all this is no longer him, but one of the Ten Heavenly Venerables. I wonder whether the Heavenly Lord has left any other children over the years? And if children were born, whose children are they really?"

His curiosity was boundless. Though his present situation was perilous in the extreme, like walking on thin ice, where a single careless slip would expose him and leave him without even a grave, he still could not stop his mind from wandering.

At last the Crown Prince of the Eastern Palace brought him to the forbidden zone within the inner palace. No human trace remained in the surrounding area, and ancient divine statues stood guard over the place. Each time they passed a stone statue, the stone sloughed away and it became a body of flesh and blood, holding various divine artifacts, bowing in salute.

Shen Mu gazed at them. These divine beings were all of extraordinary strength, their blood and vital force at its most abundant; even waking from petrification, they could in an instant rise to their peak.

"These soldiers must belong to one of the ten guards of the Heavenly Court, charged specifically with guarding the forbidden zone."

Shen Mu felt a chill of awe. The ten guards of the Heavenly Court — the Left and Right Feather Forest, the Left and Right Dragon Martial, the Left and Right Divine Martial, the Left and Right Divine Strategy, the Left and Right Divine Might — were all chosen from the strongest gods and demons under heaven, and the least of them had to be at the Jade Capital realm.

The fighting power of the god-and-demon guards stationed in the forbidden zone must be terrifying indeed!

Nor was that all: the divine artifacts in their hands were no ordinary divine weapons. Each one contained a Great Dao of the Ancient Gods, and presumably a small number of them joined together could condense into the form of an Ancient God and unleash appalling power.

One had to remember that even the Lord of Heaven was composed of no more than forty-nine kinds of heavenly Dao.

Yet here the gods and demons numbered in the tens of thousands, and the divine artifacts likewise numbered in the tens of thousands!

Though an assembly of divine artifacts could not compare with a true Ancient God, such numbers were nothing to be taken lightly.

"The Ancient God Heavenly Lord set great store by this place. I wonder whether the other Heavenly Venerables have ever come here."

Shen Mu walked on, thinking, "They must have. Those Heavenly Venerables would never overlook the place where the Heavenly Lord was born; most likely this place has been ransacked more times than anyone can count."

Ahead, the Crown Prince of the Eastern Palace halted and bowed. "Father Emperor, the forbidden zone lies ahead; your son dares not enter without leave."

Shen Mu stepped forward and smiled. "If your father tells you to enter, what is there to fear?"

Waves of music reached his ears — the wondrous sound and melody of the Dao, the Dao murmuring low.

Hearing it, Shen Mu suddenly found that the runes of the Heavenly Lord's Great Dao he had once been unable to read now opened before him one by one; the mysteries hidden in each kind of Dao rune flowed with the sound and melody into his ears and became messages of unfathomable subtlety.

The runes of the Heavenly Lord's Great Dao he had obtained from the Repository Pavilion were very numerous, yet they were profound and unfathomable, exceedingly hard to understand.

So Shen Mu had devoted more of his effort to the Dao runes of the Lord of Heaven, the Earth Lord, the Earth Mother, and other Ancient Gods. The heavenly Dao runes of the Lord of Heaven in particular were the ones he had unraveled most, and recalculating them with the Taiwei Calculation Classic had yielded him the greatest gains.

As for the Heavenly Lord's Dao runes, he had managed to unravel very few.

The Heavenly Lord, mightiest of the Ancient Gods and the being who ruled over all ten thousand Daos, had the most profound Dao runes of all; the Daoist sect of the Heavenly Court and the Dao Ancestor had likewise bent the most thought upon them.

Even though Shen Mu had mastered the Great Brahma Heaven King Buddha's Scripture of Immeasurable Kalpas, to parse the Heavenly Lord's Dao runes by entering the Dao in dreams was still immeasurably difficult.

He had never expected that, upon coming to the place of the Heavenly Lord's birth, before even entering the forbidden zone, merely hearing a little of the Dao's sound and resonance, he would unravel several obscure and difficult Dao runes.

A most bizarre thing indeed.

He looked ahead and was slightly startled. Before him rosy light washed and drifted, mist curled upward, and light and mist reflected each other, appearing utterly ethereal.

The purple rosy light seemed almost substantial, and it was from that light that the sound and melody of the Dao came.

Strangely, though the place looked small, as he walked into it the space gradually grew vast; stream after stream of rosy light swayed gently, like great purple waterfalls of flowing light, drifting and swinging about them.

"So this is where the Ancient God Heavenly Lord was born?"

Shen Mu felt the melody of the Ancient God Heavenly Lord's Great Dao; more Dao runes unraveled, and body and mind alike were at ease.

The flow of the purple rosy light and mist followed clear patterns. Some of it was like mountain ranges, upon which one could walk; some was like the celestial river, drifting and uncertain; some purple light held countless starlights within it, like a river of stars flowing through the purple, now taking the shape of a star ring, now of a jade clasp.

Other rosy light and mist formed unbroken continents, and walking upon them was like walking on true land; the light and mist shaped strange trees, flowers, and grasses of every kind.

And the sound and melody of the Dao that reached their ears were just as mysterious and wondrous.

More wondrous still, breathing in the rosy light and mist here, Shen Mu felt his own vital essence grow purer and more refined.

This place was simply a supreme holy ground for cultivation, possessed of supreme power.

Suddenly the Crown Prince of the Eastern Palace gave a stifled groan; at some point his legs had become drenched in blood — the rosy light and mist had eaten into him and wounded both his feet.

The rosy light and mist contained the purest of the Great Dao; walking amid them and enduring the assault of the Heavenly Lord's Great Dao, he had already done remarkably well to come this far — worthy indeed of one who could subdue the Red Emperor Qi Xiayu.

"Your cultivation is too weak."

Shen Mu shook his head. "Your father meant to let you enter this ancestral land and grant you some benefit, so that you might cultivate here and raise your strength, and in the future serve as your father's arm. A pity — you disappoint your father greatly."

The Crown Prince of the Eastern Palace was overcome with shame and lowered his head. "Your son's abilities are paltry; he cannot share Father Emperor's burdens or ease his troubles."

Shen Mu walked on. "The deeper you go, the greater the pressure on you. Withdraw to some safe place, use the spiritual power here to cultivate for a time, and do not fail your father's expectations."