Chapter 1019 — Identity Exposed

"This altar is an altar of the Creators," Shen Mu mused, "but the strange thing is, why should the Creators have visualized an egg? The Ancient God Heavenly Lord was hatched from an egg, yet surely the Creators ought to have visualized a living being directly. There is no reason for them to visualize an egg first and then hatch the Ancient God Heavenly Lord out of it. .

.

" Misgivings filled Shen Mu's mind. An inexplicable strangeness hung over the birth of the Ancient God Heavenly Lord. Judging by the Heavenly Lord's birthplace, the egg must have come first; then the Creator race, having somehow obtained this egg and sensed the life within it, built an altar.

Day and night they offered sacrifices, and the mighty power of their offerings poured into the egg, bringing the life inside it into the world.

Yet the Ancient God Heavenly Lord's coming also brought about the decline and decay of the Creator race, until it withered away and was even forced to open up another void and take refuge in the Great Void. Many mysteries in this conjecture remained unsolved.

Where had the egg come from?

How could a being as mighty as the Ancient God Heavenly Lord be born from within it?

And why had the Creator race gathered so many of its members to hatch him?

Shen Mu vaguely felt that this imitation of the Heavenly Lord's body could not hold out much longer, so he had to fall back to ease the pressure.

"That cracked eggshell should be extremely useful.

I wonder if I can take it away.

" His eyes flickered as he tried to marshal the power within the Heavenly Lord's fleshly body and remove the shell that had split in two. Yet although that fleshly body possessed strength surpassing the Imperial Throne realm, the magical power it sent surging forth was still ground to nothing by the purple Great Dao glow of the birthplace.

Shen Mu frowned. The eggshell lay right there, and the Ten Heavenly Venerables of the Heavenly Court had not taken it away in all these years — which said enough about how difficult it must be.

He could call upon the power of this body, but the body could not withstand the Dao pressure of the birthplace and could never reach that altar. "If I had the true body of the Heavenly Lord, I could take the shell, but the true body is trapped within Heavenly Venerable Ling's divine ability.

Come to think of it, even when the true body of the Heavenly Lord was still alive, the Ten Heavenly Venerables never took the shell either. Could it be they feared it would fall into other hands? " Since the Ancient God Heavenly Lord died, the Heavenly Alliance had ceased to be a single whole, its various forces checking one another, so it was hardly surprising that even while they controlled the Heavenly Lord they had not been able to take the shell.

"All divine arts and dharma methods in the world fail to hold here. Even a supreme divine-sense domain cannot cope with the pressure of this birthplace.

Yet there is one divine power that can deal with the purple glow of the Great Dao! " Shen Mu's eyes glinted. He took out Heavenly Venerable Ling's peach-wood hairpin.

Only Ling's divine power of Immutable Matter could bring the purple Great Dao glow and the vapors here to a standstill.

Steering the Heavenly Lord's fleshly body, he channeled the power within it, activated the peach-wood hairpin, and gave a light wave.

Instantly, the streams of light flowing toward the eggshell ahead froze, utterly motionless! Overjoyed, Shen Mu stepped forward into the purple glow.

But the moment his foot touched that light, a stabbing pain shot through the Heavenly Lord's fleshly body. Whenever this body came into contact with that glow and those vapors, it could not resist them in the least, and was eaten away into countless wounds.

Shen Mu frowned.

He now had to draw upon the power of the Heavenly Lord's body to sustain the Immutable Matter ability, and no surplus power remained to call upon. "Can my own primal qi and divine sense reach the altar?

" With that thought, his primal qi and divine sense surged out, vast and mighty, straight for the altar.

The altar did not look far off, but the actual distance was immense, and it was far larger than it appeared; the eggshell split in two was unimaginably huge as well!

His primal qi and divine sense merged, moving with the utmost agility, and at last arrived at the altar, where he tried to lift the shell. But the half that still held the egg white was so dense and heavy that it could not be moved in the slightest.

He turned instead to drag the other half, and this one swayed a little.

Joy welled up in Shen Mu's heart.

He roused his primal qi and divine sense, tugging with all his might, and shifted this half of the shell bit by bit until it reached the edge of the altar.

The shell fell from the altar and came to rest upon the frozen purple glow as if floating on water. His heart pounding wildly, Shen Mu drew it closer.

The nearer it came, the more he felt its towering vastness; by the time it was before him, the half-shell stood higher than the Heavenly Lord's body, so tall that he had to crane his neck to look up! In alarm, Shen Mu did not pause to examine the runic marks on the shell; straining with effort, he sent it into the Shen-character continent.

Boom! A violent tremor shook the Shen-character continent.

The shell fell from the sky, yet did not land completely; it hung inverted in the sky above that continent, covering nearly half the land! At once Shen Mu found his third eye's vision growing hazy; he could see only countless flickering runes and nothing of the outside world.

That was because his third eye was a most peculiar thing: it used the Shen-character continent, transformed from Tubo's horn, as its iris, and the Primal Origin Stone as its pupil.

The Heavenly Lord's eggshell had fallen precisely over his pupil. "I have no other treasure in which to keep this colossus; I can only leave it in the Shen-character continent. Still, it will not do for the shell to block my sight.

" A thought stirred in Shen Mu's mind: "There is nothing on the far side of the Shen-character continent. I wonder if I can move the shell over there?

" He did not act at once. He put away the peach-wood hairpin and retreated slowly, not stopping until the Heavenly Lord's body could once more withstand the Dao pressure here. Then he drove the Heavenly Lord's power into his third eye, shifted the shell, and sent this enormous half-shell to the far side of the Shen-character continent, where it hung inverted at its center.

In that moment, the shell seemed to become the vitreous body of his third eye. Light entered from outside, passed through the Primal Origin Stone at the center of the Shen-character continent, and fell upon the inner wall of the shell, illuminating the countless runic marks upon it.

Then something marvelous happened. Shen Mu found that when he looked about him with this eye, everything was utterly different.

He could see the microscopic structure of anything, even the fine structure of the purple glow, with perfect clarity! The composition of the Great Dao radiance and the vapors, and even the subtlest intricacies of his own divine sense, were all reflected in his third eye with incomparable distinctness!

He looked down at the Heavenly Lord's fleshly body, and the structure of that body, which had been indiscernible before, was now clearly reflected in his pupil! He could even see every arcane structure within this imitation body, and see through the mysteries of the art of Creation itself!

He turned his gaze to the altar amid the purple glow, and his sight pierced the glow, revealing the altar with perfect clarity! "This eggshell is of enormous use. If only I could get my hands on the other half as well.

. .

" Shen Mu shook his head. As things stood, he did not have the strength to drag that other half.

"Time is short. After all, I am only borrowing this Heavenly Lord's body.