Chapter 1076 — Ancient Gods and the Sarcophagus

Luo Xiao hastily drove his beast aside, and the huge claw scraped past above their heads, leaving slit after slit of riven void. More void beast claws appeared in the void, clawing wildly on every side, and Luo Xiao, handling such a primeval colossus for the first time, failed to dodge in time, so that his beast gave a piercing scream and bore many wounds upon its body.

With a rush, one Void Beast after another burst into that first void, excitement in their great eyes as they lunged at them.

As these void beasts pounced their eyelids lifted and their huge mouths gaped to take up more than half their heads, while their pupils were squeezed into a straight line.

Luo Xiao hurriedly drove his beast, which abruptly shrank its body and slipped out of the encirclement of the many Void Beasts, then leapt again into the second void.

In the second void the company could already see their own skeletons, like transparent shrimp in the sea, their entrails starkly visible within. Yet the many void beasts came flying and likewise forced their way into the second void.

These void beasts could be great or small, shifting their bulk with matchless agility.

Shen Mu's divine consciousness bloomed and poured into the brow of the nearest void beast, seeking to control a Void Beast.

Though that colossus had shrunk its form it was still immensely towering, and once invaded by Shen Mu's divine consciousness it let out a piercing shriek.

Shen Mu's mind suddenly darkened, for the cry of the void beast could pierce his divine consciousness and disorder his thoughts, catching him off guard.

That cry was no true cry, but spikes formed from the void beast's own divine consciousness once it sensed danger, stabbing into its foe's consciousness to disrupt its actions.

Plainly the void beasts had learned a thing or two in battle with the Creator race.

"Da Luo Unsurpassed Divine Consciousness! " Shen Mu's divine consciousness shifted into heaven upon heaven to block the beast's cry, and then his Da Luo Unsurpassed Divine Consciousness branded itself toward the void beast's mind.

That void beast was fiercely strong, actually holding his Da Luo Unsurpassed Divine Consciousness at bay with its cry alone, attacking and defending in good order, so that Shen Mu could not defeat its consciousness in a short time.

"My attainment in divine consciousness is much like Luo Xiao's, and even if he is stronger than I, it is not by much.

I have obtained the Tai Emperor's Da Luo Unsurpassed Divine Consciousness, and my arts of consciousness surpass his by I know not how much, so how did he subdue that void beast so quickly? " A chill crept through Shen Mu, for Luo Xiao had subdued that void beast too fast, and could it be that the one who subdued it was not Luo Xiao at all, but someone else?

Luo Xiao drove the void beast onward in crossing after crossing, leaping into the third void, the fourth, the fifth. By the sixth void the company could basically see only their own primordial spirits, their flesh no longer visible.

The sole exception was the vertical eye at Shen Mu's brow, which had not been assimilated by the void but still floated before his primordial spirit. Of course the flesh of Gu Xiao and Da Hong still showed no change whatever.

"Gu Xiao and Da Hong are indeed the Heavenly Emperor and the Tai Emperor! " Shen Mu thought sternly.

Behind them countless Void Beasts still pursued without pause, though some of the younger beasts could not plunge so deep into the void and were stopped at the fifth.

Shen Mu was still trying whether he could control that void beast, yet it kept warding off his Da Luo consciousness with its keen howling.

Shen Mu raised an eyebrow.

"The one controlling the void beast is by no means Luo Xiao, but the Tai Emperor!

" Luo Xiao felt a faint unease and cried, "If we sink deeper into the void, it will assimilate flesh and primordial spirit!

" The void beast leapt into the seventh void, and upon the altar Shen Mu, Yan Er and the others at once felt the void assimilating primordial spirit and flesh, which only divine consciousness could withstand!

Shen Mu still plied his divine consciousness against that void beast in an effort to master it, and he too felt the voiding of flesh and primordial spirit, though fortunately the voiding of the sixth void was not yet so fierce, and he could still endure.

That void beast could scarcely resist his Da Luo Unsurpassed Divine Consciousness any longer and was about to fall under his control.

Luo Xiao drove the beast into the seventh void, many void beasts following in pursuit, and the flesh of the company could hardly bear it.

At that very moment Shen Mu finally mastered that void beast, abruptly withdrawing his divine consciousness to shroud Long Qilin, Yan Er and the six heavenly dragons. The pressure upon Long Qilin, Yan Er and the others greatly eased.

Luo Xiao kept driving his void beast ever deeper through the void in crossing after crossing, while Shen Mu did not make the beast he had tamed follow, but let it slip out of the void. Borrowing the eyes of that void beast he surveyed the world of the Ancestral Court, and under his control the beast ran onward, soaring into the sky, boring into the earth, diving into the sea.

He studied the lay of the Ancestral Court, yet the more he saw the more alarmed Shen Mu grew.

The Ancestral Court held no other living beings, every species exterminated, leaving only Void Beasts beyond counting!

All was desolate here, without any other life, without even a plant to be seen, leaving only vast relics of battlefields, abandoned Creator cities, ruined tribes, with bones scattered everywhere.

Their party was perhaps the only living beings to set foot in the world of the Ancestral Court in countless years.

Just then, through the void beast's eyes Shen Mu caught a touch of green. It was a lode stretching thousands of miles, with grasses and flowers among the ore, yet suffused with a strange rosy radiance in dazzling hues.

Shen Mu drove the void beast to that lode, where it suddenly halted, and no matter how he urged it the colossus would not set foot within.

Only then did Shen Mu notice that around this lode there lay heaped the bones of countless void beasts!

He looked ahead and beheld a still more dreadful sight, for beneath the plants of the lode lay white bones beyond counting, each forehead inlaid with a Taichu divine stone!

Shen Mu's heart started as his gaze sank deeper and the skeletons of colossi came into view. Those eight giants were reduced to bone alone, their bones suffused with Dao light, standing amid the mountains in the posture of striding forward, a huge golden coffin borne upon their shoulders, as if they had died on the way while walking toward the deepest heart of the lode!

"Those are.

.

.

eight ancient gods!

" Shen Mu's heart quaked: "Who lies buried in the golden coffin?

" Abruptly he felt his body drawn sharply upward, an illusion of sight wrought by entering a deeper level of the void.

Luo Xiao had driven their beast with them into the nineteenth void, where Shen Mu could scarcely control his own void beast, and that beast he had mastered, freed from his divine driving, shook its huge head and stared at that lode with terror in its eyes, then turned and fled, vanishing without a trace in an instant.