Chapter 1343 — The Five Meridian Seal

At the end of the Dao realm, upon the Great Luo Heaven, one's own Great Dao would bloom into Dao Flowers and bear Dao Fruits upon the World Tree?

Before Shen Mu could think further, the divine ability in his hands shifted—Longhan Contending—bursting forth with all the vast desolation and savage carnage of the Longhan age, while the Chiming Divine-Body Severance bound his flesh and his primal spirit into one seamless whole: spirit and flesh as one, god and flesh as one.

Shanghuang Completes the Human Dao; Kaihuang Opens the Post-Heaven Road; Jingping Comes at Last to Contend—the power of a single move of great divine ability erupted, and it was as though in a brief moment he had walked the whole million years of history from Longhan down to the present, living through the generations of forebears and martyrs, their grief and their grandeur, a history that stirred the heart to its depths!

His essence, his energy, his spirit—all reached an unprecedented peak in that instant!

Even so, the moment any of his divine abilities touched the Grand Emperor's Spiritual-Consciousness Great Luo Heaven, they collapsed on the spot, disintegrated on the spot, their power annihilated.

The Spiritual-Consciousness Great Luo Heaven might well be the most perfect divine ability Shen Mu had ever seen—more perfect even than Hao Tianzun's Innate Primordial Qi and the Great Dao of Guixu, more outstanding, more inconceivable!

The power of the Dao Flowers and Dao Fruits gave one a sense of utter irresistibility.

Only now did he understand why Hao Tianzun's primal spirit, once trapped in the Spiritual-Consciousness Great Luo Heaven, had been unable to escape!

The Grand Emperor's understanding of the Dao of Spiritual Consciousness utterly surpassed that of a being like Hao Tianzun; Hao Tianzun's Dao realm had never reached the Grand Emperor's level, and so he could not unravel it by his own cultivation, and in the end could only resort to brute force. And at that time, Hao Tianzun had possessed no such strength at all.

"If I were trapped in there, I fear I would fare even worse than Hao Tianzun—my flesh and my primal spirit alike would be refined away into the Grand Emperor's Dao of Spiritual Consciousness!"

Shen Mu let out a long whistle. His body had already fled into the thirtieth layer of void.

In the thirtieth layer of void, both his flesh and his primal spirit were subjected to tremendous suppression; it was an incomparably perilous void, and it had essentially reached his limit.

His flesh began to crumble, to turn insubstantial; skin peeled from his body.

And at this moment, as the move "Jingping Comes at Last to Contend" was unleashed, his essence, energy, and spirit likewise climbed to an unprecedented summit, breaking through again and again, surpassing his own limits one after another!

Taisu Suddenly Splits the Chaos Bud!

He abruptly grew somewhat clumsy, the divine ability in his hands turning awkward and unwieldy, and trembling, he brought forth the divine ability of the twenty-second heaven.

Taisu Suddenly Splits the Chaos Bud: when this move was made, the Dao of Taisu became a round egg and dropped into the Spiritual-Consciousness Great Luo Heaven.

Scarcely had the divine ability entered the Great Luo Heaven when the round egg burst apart, the Dao of Taisu surging out to become a goddess; she parted her palms outward, and the whole Spiritual-Consciousness Great Luo Heaven turned turbid and foul.

The Dao of Taisu has form and has substance. The Taisu Goddess pointed one finger at heaven and one at earth; the clear qi floated upward, the turbid qi sank down.

The Spiritual-Consciousness Great Luo Heaven ground to a halt at once.

Shen Mu's body was still retreating, drifting toward the upper reaches of the thirtieth void; he could now scarcely command his own body, as though the void were rendering him insubstantial, floating him toward ever higher voids.

His arms flurried, primordial qi becoming runes of the various great Daos, and all the clumsier for it.

At last his hand-seals were completed. The vertical eye at the center of his brow opened, and two rays of light—one black, one white—shot out: the divine ability of the twenty-third heaven of the Dao realm, Taiji Evolves, Yin and Yang Proceed!

Weng—

That single glance shot into the Spiritual-Consciousness Great Luo Heaven; the two qi of yin and yang revolved about the Taisu Goddess, shattered the Dao Flower, stripped away the Dao Fruit, and the Spiritual-Consciousness Great Luo Heaven crumbled and collapsed.

Shock and disbelief appeared on the Grand Emperor's face. He clenched his teeth, closed the distance, and brought a palm down at Shen Mu.

Shen Mu's body kept rising into the sky, nearing the thirty-first layer of void—a layer he absolutely must not reach; should he arrive there, his flesh and his primal spirit would surely be rendered wholly insubstantial and cease to exist.

And now, with all his strength pitted against the Grand Emperor, at the most critical juncture, he simply could not control his body.

It seemed some terrible force in the void were holding him up, keeping him rising.

This was somewhat akin to his divine ability "Gathering the Round into Completion in the Great Luo Heaven," which borrowed the power of the void to simulate the Great Luo Heaven, rendering gods and men insubstantial, turning them into a sheet of paper with no thickness, and at last into nothingness.

But at the thirtieth layer of void, the power of the void had grown so mighty that even he could scarcely contend against it!

The Grand Emperor's palm-force arrived before him. It was not the Grand Emperor's intent to slay him with the blow, but to drive him into the thirty-first layer of void and let the void grind him out of existence!

That he had shattered the Grand Emperor's Spiritual-Consciousness Great Luo Heaven had indeed astonished the Grand Emperor—yet it had also let the Grand Emperor see hope of killing him.

His body had already begun to flatten; his flesh was gradually losing its thickness, drifting beyond his control toward ever higher places.

Just then, Shen Mu, clumsier still, drove forth a divine ability. This move was crooked and slanted, nothing at all like the divine ability a Tianzun who had established his Dao through divine abilities ought to be capable of—an ugly technique indeed.

As a Tianzun who had established his Dao through divine abilities, Shen Mu's techniques had always united grandness with the beauty of the Dao—yet this move held none of that beauty of the Great Dao!

And yet at that very moment a clarion Dao-sound rang out, as though billions upon billions of living beings and gods had appeared in that instant, crying aloud in one voice the same name.

The Dao of Taishi.

Has form, no substance.

The divine ability enters the Dao, the twenty-fourth heaven: Taishi's Form and Substance Question the Azure Empyrean!

Shen Mu struck out with this palm and met the Grand Emperor's palm. The two palms collided, and the Grand Emperor smiled.

Then the smile on his face froze, and the smile became shock.

The shock on his face deepened and deepened: he saw the flesh and blood of his own palm stripping away backward, the very matter composing his palm seeming to become countless particles that sped away from him.

The same befell his arm; those minute particles were visible to the naked eye, flying backward like mist, and swiftly it spread to his shoulder, his chest, his other arm, and both his feet!

He stood there and felt that his body was still present, his body still whole—only without bone, without flesh and blood!

The body below his neck had become a transparent form possessed of shape but no substance whatsoever!

His primordial qi, his Spiritual-Consciousness Great Luo Heaven Palace, his seven great divine treasuries—every one of them had become this uncanny state of having form but no substance!