Chapter 1341 — The Primordial Supreme Sovereign

BOOM—

The one great divine art born of the clash between Shen Mu and Long Han came down upon the Grand Emperor's skull, and his head crashed thunderously into the void, vanishing from the skies above the Ancestral Court.

The Ark of the Other Shore beneath Shen Mu's feet dissolved away. His body stood erect in the air, three heads turning to survey every direction, the vertical eye in the center of his brow opening wide. Three eyes watched every stir within the void.

"Grand Emperor, surely you are not afraid?"

His voice was like a rot festering in the bone, following the Grand Emperor's skull through layer upon layer of void, entering his ears with perfect clarity. Laughing aloud, he said, "As the strongest emperor of the primordial age, you were put in your place by Heavenly Venerable Yun, put in your place by Heavenly Venerable Ling, put in your place by Heavenly Venerable Hao, and put in your place by the four Heavenly Venerables Lang, Xiao, Yan, and Zu. Your entire life has been a life of failure. Run."

The Grand Emperor's skull swept through layer after layer of void, his face dark as a storm. He could hear Shen Mu's voice distinctly; he could see Shen Mu's figure distinctly.

His skull was changing. Flesh and blood were growing.

His cultivation art was the mightiest in all the world: the Great Luo Supreme Divine Consciousness.

Even without the Taichu Primordial Stone, he could force the regeneration of his body — though mending flesh with divine consciousness was far inferior to the Primordial Stone. His injuries were now grievous beyond measure, and the wound to his divine consciousness graver still; to spend that consciousness rebuilding flesh would leave him a hidden affliction for ages to come.

"Keep running."

Shen Mu's voice came again: "It is no hardship for you. After all, these million years you have spent every day in flight. You did not even dare take the form of a man — only a woman's shape, hiding away in the Celestial Emperor's harem, forcing smiles. The august Grand Emperor, the first Celestial Emperor to rule the cosmos and the primordial chaos, reduced to a woman leaning upon the Celestial Emperor's favor, contending with his consorts for his affection, smiling for her keep..."

The Grand Emperor's face darkened further. Suddenly strand after strand of his curling hair lashed out, piercing the void with a shh-shh-shh and nailing his skull in place.

He halted within the twenty-seventh layer of void, his hair branching in every direction like a sea urchin, pinning him there. His Great Luo Supreme Divine Consciousness revolved at full speed; what little of it remained he spent to visualize a body.

Without a body, with nothing but a head, he judged he could not stand against a Heavenly Venerable like Shen Mu, one who had established his Way through divine arts. He needed his complete flesh.

In the early years of Long Han, the reason Shen Mu was enfeoffed as a Heavenly Venerable was precisely that he had established his Way through divine arts.

By the measure of today, Shen Mu's divine arts back then had been crude and green indeed — but the Shen Mu of now lived up to the name in full. His divine arts had truly established a Way; he had truly become the Heavenly Venerable Mu.

Such a being deserved respect. And he deserved a battle with the Grand Emperor.

Beneath his neck, flesh and blood sprouted, swiftly growing into a chest, growing into limbs.

The Grand Emperor visualized without cease, spending the last dregs of his divine consciousness to forge a new body.

"Becoming Consort Qiang, you did achieve something, I grant you — but every bit of it won by your face, by your figure, by your smiles for sale, was it not?"

Shen Mu's voice was utterly venomous as it entered his mind: "You hid your whole life long. When will you dare to fight openly, the way a man does? Or has becoming a woman for so long made you forget that you were ever a man?"

The Grand Emperor's face was cold and grim. His skull gradually shrank as he strove to make his frame identical to that of any ordinary Creator.

Shen Mu said no more.

The Grand Emperor's eye twitched. In that moment he felt Shen Mu's gaze — Shen Mu's gaze passing through the twenty-seventh layer of void, falling upon him, finding his exact position.

The Grand Emperor shut his eyes and drove the Great Luo Supreme Divine Consciousness. At once all manner of radiance blazed through the twenty-seventh layer of void, and one deity after another surfaced, imprinting itself in turn into the apertures of his body.

This method greatly resembled Shen Mu's Chiming Divine Body Art — but compared to Shen Mu, he was the authentic article.

It was by learning his Great Luo Supreme Divine Consciousness that Shen Mu had joined it to the Way of Creation and forged the Chiming Divine Body Art.

Yet no matter how powerful Shen Mu's creation divine arts might be, he could never return to the primordial age and behold those ancient gods long dead.

The shadows of ancient gods stored within the apertures of Shen Mu's body were many, but only the Dao runes of three hundred sixty-five ancient gods were complete. The rest he had never even laid eyes on.

For those ancient gods had died before Long Han — utterly extinct.

In the war of the primordial age, the Creators who fell were many indeed, but the ancient gods who fell accounted for more than half of all ancient gods. In that time there had been over nineteen hundred ancient gods in all.

"I was honored as the Grand Emperor not merely through the sacrifices of the Creators, and honored as the strongest flesh not through their sacrifices either — but through my wisdom, through my depths."

He suddenly roared. One by one his long hairs withdrew from the void.

He stood in the twenty-seventh layer of void, his curling hair pulled straight and falling over his shoulders; his sinewy frame was savage, brimming with vast and surging power.

He bared his chest — the most perfect of all Creator flesh, its muscle lines bearing the perfection of number and measure, carrying a terrifying beauty. It was his pride.

He was the handsome man of the prehistoric Creator race, the wisest and strongest of them all. Beside him, Boyang's world-weariness, Gongyun's loveliness, Shujun's boldness amounted to nothing.

By his own virility, his own strength, his own wisdom and charisma, he had conquered the Creators of the prehistoric age, made the Three Kings submit, made the ancient gods bow, and become the Grand Emperor.

Since the end of the primordial age, when he was defeated by the Celestial Emperor Taichu, he had seldom wielded his wisdom and strength to fight with all his might, to strive with all his power. He had grown used to dispersing his strength — becoming Dahong, becoming Ming Fangyu, becoming Consort Qiang — scheming, plotting, grasping at power and influence.

But now he would resurrect the virility of the Creator, the masculine beauty of the Creator, and crush Shen Mu — crush this greenhorn boy.

He waited quietly for Shen Mu's arrival.

Whoosh—

The Ark of the Other Shore crossed the void and appeared before him. Shen Mu stood at the prow, his robes snapping in the wind, and only when the ark came to rest did the snapping cloth fall still.

"Heavenly Venerable Mu," the Grand Emperor said, his voice deep and resonant.

Shen Mu inclined his head slightly: "Grand Emperor."

"Please."

"Please."

The Grand Emperor bellowed. Within his sinewy frame more than nineteen hundred ancient gods marshaled their power as one, making his body a blur of light and shadow, grinding the twenty-seventh layer of void into ceaseless ruin.

The next instant he was before Shen Mu. The overlord of the primordial age, the one and only emperor — all his domineering force lay within a single fist.

He struck.

BOOM!