Chapter 1018 — That Thin Eggshell

The Crown Prince of the Eastern Palace was overjoyed and hastily withdrew, stopping only when he reached a safe place, where he settled down to cultivate.

Shen Mu's gaze fell upon the center of the place where the Heavenly Lord was born. There purple qi hung thick and dense, and something seemed to float faintly within it, exerting an immense pull upon him.

"Whether the Ancient God Heavenly Lord and the other Ancient Gods were born of heaven and earth, or created by the Creators with their divine consciousness — I need only reach that place to know for certain!"

He felt the pulsing of the Great Dao here; its resonance was deep and long, letting him perceive more and more of the mysteries of the Heavenly Lord's Great Dao, and unravel more and more of its runes.

Countless subtle messages surged in and became his own knowledge within his mind.

In the Primal Spirit World of the Other Shore World, he had obtained the knowledge of the Creators and Primal Spirits there; but those Creators held no memory concerning the creation of the Ancient Gods.

In the ancient primordial era, most of the Creators had been wiped out by the Ancient Gods, breaking the transmission of their civilization; and after the Great Emperor's invasion of the Great Void, the heritage of the Creator race had come to contain many blank stretches.

Because Shen Mu had seen the ruins in the Blood Rust Zone, he suspected that the Creator race had created the Ancient Gods of ten thousand ages, and had then been destroyed by them.

But this was only a guess; whether it was truly so, he would have to see the birthplace of the Ancient God Heavenly Lord with his own eyes to know.

If only he could reach the deepest part of the purple light, he ought to learn this secret!

Shen Mu could hardly suppress his excitement. This secret might be known only to the Ten Heavenly Venerables and the Ancient God Heavenly Lord — and now he was about to know it too!

He walked on, drawing ever nearer to the mass of purple qi that gathered ten thousand rays of rosy light. Suddenly Shen Mu halted, frowned, and looked at the feet of the Heavenly Lord's fleshly body.

At some point, the legs of this incomparably powerful body had been cut and wounded by the rosy light and mist!

The muscles of those legs had been squeezed thin by a dreadful pressure!

"This is not, after all, the Ancient God Heavenly Lord's true fleshly body, but an imitation made by the creation artifacts of Zaofu Palace; it cannot compare with the true body of the Heavenly Lord."

Shen Mu frowned. The Heavenly Lord's body had been fashioned from the Heavenly Lord's Great Dao, and the Dao runes the Daoist sect of the Heavenly Court had developed were inscribed according to macro-divination, without any micro-divination.

A Heavenly Lord's body fashioned in this way was far inferior to the true one, whether in toughness or in power and might.

Having come this far, the imitation could scarcely hold out any longer.

Shen Mu tried to rouse the nearly two thousand sources of power within the Heavenly Lord's body, and only then did the oppressive Dao pressure of the birthplace ease a little; yet whether he could reach that place, even he was not certain.

He looked around and was slightly startled.

From where he stood, he could actually see Xuandu, Youdu, and even the Origin Realm spread out before him!

Nor was that all: the four poles of the universe and even the heavens and myriad worlds were all vividly clear, so distinct that they seemed very near, close enough to touch with a raised hand.

Shen Mu pondered a moment, then looked toward the distant mass of purple light. The thing floating within it was gradually becoming discernible in outline — like a cracked chicken egg; yet below it there was something else, hidden by the purple light.

The Crown Prince of the Eastern Palace sat at the edge of the Heavenly Lord's birthplace, drawing upon the rosy light and mist and cultivating step by step. He felt his stagnant cultivation slowly rising, and joy filled his heart.

Watching Shen Mu go deep into the forbidden zone, his heart grew fervent. "Father Emperor kept me and the other princes at a distance for forty thousand years; only today do I understand his vexation. All these years he has borne so much pressure, and it was to protect us..."

Suddenly a look of doubt came over him. "Why has Father Emperor stopped?"

He stared blankly at Shen Mu, who had walked deep into the forbidden zone, and the expression on his face slowly turned to alarm.

He saw that the Heavenly Lord's legs, like his own, had been wounded by the rosy light of the birthplace!

A chill ran through him. If the true Ancient God Heavenly Lord came to his own birthplace, it was utterly impossible that he should be wounded by the rosy light here.

"He is not Father Emperor!" A terrible thought rose in his mind.

Under his gaze Shen Mu pressed on, drawing ever nearer to the mass of purple light and purple qi. His legs were already a blur of blood and flesh, and the Heavenly Lord's towering frame began to twist under the dreadful pressure of the Great Dao, muscles contracting, the body shrinking.

Even Shen Mu, hidden in the center of the Heavenly Lord's brow, gradually felt the Dao pressure seep into the Heavenly Lord's body and press upon him. So strong was that pressure that, were he exposed to it himself, he would in a single instant be reduced to ashes and cease to exist!

"I cannot go any further!"

Shen Mu halted and looked toward the mass of purple light through the Heavenly Lord's eyes, but all remained hazy; he could not make out the thing beneath the eggshell.

"The eyes of the Heavenly Lord's body are useless; my own eyes will serve better! Open!"

Shen Mu gave a low shout and roused all the power within the Heavenly Lord's body to guard the brow. The brow split open, his true body emerged, and he opened the third eye at the center of his brow to look at the thing within the purple light.

His mind was shaken to its core. Beneath the cracked eggshell, surrounded and drowned in layer upon layer of purple light, was an exceedingly ancient altar!

That altar seemed to possess a strange power, drawing the Great Dao of heaven and earth to gather ceaselessly at its center; upon the cracked eggshell, rosy light and mist had branded dense, unimaginably intricate rune marks!

The marks on the eggshell were profoundly mysterious and intricate, even more complex and more numerous than the runes on the jade slips he had seen in the Repository Pavilion!

But the eggshell was already empty, holding nothing at all; only those inexhaustibly subtle runes still flickered without cease, now and then bursting with a mystic light that waxed and waned.

"There seems to be some egg white left inside..."