Chapter 1235 — The Old Senior Who Set the Formation

Shen Mu lifted his head and looked up at the "Firmament". Whether it was that firmament, the ground, or the four walls, the cubic prison was all great continents, and every continent was seamed with every kind of god-devil seal.

These lands existed to imprison the Heavenly Artisan God Clan aboard the Ark of the Other Shore, and to imprison the Ark itself. Mojiang's clansmen had spent who knew how many lives to force open a single road.

Countless clansmen died, and at last they bought Mojiang's living exit from the seal.

And at that time, Mojiang was still a child.

Alone he walked out of the seal, and what faced him was the incomparably vicious Desolate Ruins; yet Mojiang survived, and walked out of the Desolate Ruins. What awaited him then, however, was the human heart, a thing countless times more vicious than the Desolate Ruins.

Shen Mu looked at the face surfacing upon the "Firmament", expressionless. To break through seal after seal so easily, to make the continents swell up into his own features, and yet leave those seals unbroken, still lying upon his face, such an ability belonged naturally to none but the one who had laid the seals with his own hands.

To fold six continents and compose this enormous seal, such cultivation was unfathomably deep, and such methods supremely brilliant! His face seemed made of countless tiny cubes; each cube was a sealing formation within a continent, and countless cubes composed his facial expression: forehead, nose, ears, mouth, even his eyeballs were made of cubes.

"Heh heh.

. . " That incomparably gigantic face opened its mouth and laughed, and from it countless fragments of stone shot out, howling as they smashed toward the Ark of the Other Shore.

His facial expression shifted, and the countless cubes that made up his face surged along with it, heaving, changing their heights and their positions.

His face was even more gigantic than the Ark of the Other Shore; the laughter echoed back and forth within the cubic prison, setting eardrums buzzing, so that for a time no other sound could be heard.

"At last you have come, leader of the Heavenly Artisan God Clan, War Heavenly King of the Kaihuang era!

" Just then the land beneath the cube changed of itself as well, becoming another equally gigantic face, which spoke in a hurried voice and laughed: "Li Youran, as a Heavenly King of an age, you are a fine wastrel of a human leader. All you cared for was billing and cooing with the Red Emperor, and you could not even protect your own clansmen!

" The other four walls of the cubic prison each revealed a face as well, laughing: "I had so looked forward to a battle with you, to see what the War Heavenly King of Kaihuang was made of.

Yet you turned out to be a silver spearhead with a wax tip, fair to the eye and good for nothing. So I had no choice but to kill your clansmen, and seal the old, the weak, the sick and the crippled that remained in here. " He had six faces, speaking from six different directions, one taking up where another left off: "I always wanted to carry your head away and claim reward and favor for it, but you ran off, and so I had no choice but to torment your clansmen.

" "You were billing and cooing with the Red Emperor then, weren't you? The two of you, all fondness and love, besotted man and grieving woman, so pitiful, so melodramatic! And all the while, I was slaughtering your clansmen!

" "I watched them struggle with all their might to flee this place, struggle with all their might to break the seal, while the officers and soldiers under my command raised their butcher knives and slaughtered those fragile lives! " "They were only a band of blacksmiths, with nothing to their name.

They could not resist me at all, could not resist my army! " Over the face of Emperor Shitian Li Youran came grief and fury, and aboard the Ark of the Other Shore, monk after monk slowly raised their heads and looked at the faces in every direction.

"Yet my soldiers grew sick of killing. So I sealed them in, to be trapped here to death over the twenty thousand years to come.

Still, I am a playful sort, and I left them one weak place in the seal, and gave them hope.

" The faces on the six walls of the cubic prison were delighted, their very smiles distorted: "With hope, they would burrow into that trap, and then they would spend the whole of their lives trying to open the seal. And one by one they died inside it!

Hee hee hee hee—" "Killing them all would have been too much trouble and too much time. Letting them die themselves meant I never had to dirty my hands! " The smiles on those six faces grew more twisted still, so twisted that even the eyes were deformed: "In the end, every last one of the Heavenly Artisan God Clan was dead!

Hee hee hee hee! They were so foolish, moths to the flame, walking into the net on their own, each one plunging into that road which seemed to offer escape. Not one of them got out alive!

" He laughed aloud: "After I left this place, I made up my mind to go and find you, and little did I expect that you would run off to the Buddhist realm and become a bald donkey!

Yes. You destroyed Kaihuang's Heavenly Artisan God Clan, so you were emptied of the four marks, you were left utterly alone, ha ha ha ha, and you stopped seeking revenge! Indeed, how was it that you cut the threads of the dust of the world so utterly and took refuge in the Buddhist gate?

Because you believed that the one who annihilated your clansmen was the Red Emperor—" "But it was me! " His voice, coming from every direction, was filled with pride: "It was me, Heavenly Lord Han of the Heavenly Court's Rampart Formation! " Emperor Shitian Li Youran was furious beyond measure, and was about to wake from the dream, when at that very moment Shen Mu's voice rang out, piercing into his dream: "Buddha King, I have come to stand guard over your dharma. You need only concentrate on repairing the Ark of the Other Shore.

" His consciousness burst forth, driving the Scripture of Immeasurable Kalpas, and Emperor Shitian Li Youran sank into the dream once more.

Shen Mu rose, and looked without expression at the faces on the six walls of the cubic prison: "Heavenly Lord Han of the Heavenly Court's Rampart Formation, you are still mistaken.

The Heavenly Artisan God Clan was not exterminated. " "Heavenly Venerable Mu?

" Heavenly Lord Han's gaze fell upon him, and with it eighteen gazes in all, giving one an exceedingly uncomfortable feeling.

All six of his faces smiled: "So it is Heavenly Venerable Mu. Heavenly Venerable Mu consorting with traitors, is he plotting rebellion and making trouble?

Can it be that you are a descendant of the Heavenly Artisan God Clan?

No, you are a descendant of the rebel Shen Ye. . . " Another of his faces laughed: "Inside my great seal, killing a Heavenly Venerable ought to count for nothing at all, I should think?

" "Kill Heavenly Venerable Mu, and the Heavenly Court's Ten Heavenly Venerables will be beside themselves with joy.

Promotion and riches for me!

" His other faces brightened, and one after another they laughed: "Promotion and riches, and more than that! They will grant us glory and wealth beyond exhausting, and it may even be our chance to ascend to the Emperor's Throne!

" He laughed aloud, and the six vast continents, like an incomparably viscous slurry, dripped from six different directions toward the Ark of the Other Shore at the center. These six continents had actually become six giant water droplets!

Shen Mu looked toward those six great water droplets.

Every droplet was exceedingly turbid; yet what made up the droplets was not mud, but cubes, one upon another. The whole "droplet" was composed of cubes arranged in order, and within each cube stood a god or a devil, arms spread, limbs splayed, standing inside the cube.