Chapter 1435 — Red Dust Becomes the Dao Path

Her Majesty the Empress turned to look at Shen Mu.

His expression remained as placid as ever, as though he had long known of this and found nothing in it to surprise him. The Empress steadied herself, pondered for a moment, and said, "My late husband was born premature, dug out by the Great Emperor for sacrifice, and so he was greatly flawed in both his cultivation and his strength. But you two Daoist brothers have lain dormant here for countless hundreds of millions of years; by now your cultivation must surely be complete, and you should not suffer my late husband's fate. Why then are you likewise so terrified of what is to come?

" What she meant, in truth, was to ask the Taiji ancient gods this: hidden here, quietly absorbing the power of the lode, after so vast a span of time they ought to have been able to emerge complete — so why had they not emerged at all? But she was the Empress, after all, and so she put the question with some tact.

"By the ordinary reckoning, we could indeed have emerged," said the male voice within the egg.

"So long a stretch of time would have sufficed for us to absorb all the power and all the Dao of the mining ground. And yet the Ancestral Court has barred our emergence.

" The Empress was utterly bewildered, and Shen Mu could not help but feel his curiosity stir; almost against his will, he leaned forward a little.

"We have been absorbing the power of the Taiji lode without cease, from the opening of the universe even until now," said the female voice within the egg.

"When the race of the Creator rose, they began to mine the lodes, and all five great lodes were worked. One Daoist brother emerged before ever the Creator appeared; he left behind an empty mining ground and wandered free and unfettered. In his day there was no mortal world to trouble him, and the Dao was pure; the moment he emerged he transcended and became the Dao. " "Then came our brother Taichu," said the male voice.

"Taichu might have attained the Dao after him, but alas, he had grown only halfway when he was dug out and made the Creator's precious thing for sacrifice. Before ever he was born, he was defiled. If he is to attain the Dao now, it will be hard beyond words: he must sever the sacrificial power the Creator laid upon him, and recover the whole of the Taichu lode's strength. " "The third brother was Taishi.

He too was dug out and made a great treasure, worshiped and sacrificed to by the people of the world. Yet afterward he fell into the hands of the Great Emperor of the Juyu clan. When the Great Emperor was defeated, he fell into Taichu's hands. By then Taichu was no longer in the state of an egg; he had come to desire power, and fearing that Taishi's perfect emergence would threaten his own standing, he imprisoned him.

" "Taisu, too, was born to a bitter fate. She was dug from the lode by the Nüxin clan of the Creator race, then carried off to the Juyu clan, and afterward fell into the hands of the Northern Emperor Xuanwu, who made of her a precious thing and refined her into the Glazed Azure-Heaven Banner. She sought with all her heart the way of transcendence, yet little did she know how ill her company would be; she was brought by a certain man into the previous cosmic epoch, and had no choice but to emerge ahead of her time. " "She wishes to attain the Dao, and so her karma is vast.

She must take vengeance on the Nüxin clan, vengeance on the Juyu clan, vengeance for being refined into a treasure, and vengeance for her premature emergence besides; and the karma of the previous cosmic epoch still waits to be settled. " Hearing this, Shen Mu felt a chill of awe in his heart.

The man of whom the Taiji ancient gods spoke as "ill company," that man was him.

He had gone out from the Great Black Wood by night, and carrying Taisu's egg he had unwittingly come to the moment when the previous cosmic epoch met its destruction; he had no choice but to lift Taisu's egg high and try to return beneath the World Tree — and it was then, too, that Taisu emerged!

Taisu's emergence was bound up with him in no small measure. "As for us, we too have been defiled by the red dust," said the female voice with a sigh.

"When we observed what had befallen our Daoist brothers, wariness stirred in us first of all; and once we had a heart of wariness, our heart of Dao was no longer pure.

From that moment we stood one step further from attaining the Dao.

" "Yet at the time we did not foresee this. We fashioned a false lode to blind the Creator, and hid the true lode away. And so we stood yet another step from the Dao.

" "We marshaled the Taiji Starfield to strangle the Creator and the other living things that entered our mining ground; to protect ourselves we roused a heart of killing, and so stood still further from the Dao," said the male voice with a sigh. "At the time we did not realize it; we thought ourselves clever.

" "We hid ourselves away and lived in constant dread, in fear and trembling, ever afraid that the Great Emperor would discover us, that Taichu would discover us. It was only when Taichu led the other ancient gods to seal the Ancestral Court that we were set at ease, and thought that now we might absorb the Taiji lode and attain the Dao.

" The male voice sighed. "Only then did we discover that the red dust had long since defiled us. Though the red dust no longer troubled us, we had only drawn further and further from the Dao.

And that was not all: we discovered another, more terrible thing. " Both the male and the female voice fell silent. Shen Mu's heart stirred; a dreadful guess took shape in his mind, and he opened his mouth to ask — then held himself back.

The Empress was calmer than he; she simply waited quietly.

After a moment the male and female voices within the egg spoke together as one: "Though the Ancestral Court is sealed, we have found that we are not the only ones within it — there are others!

" Shen Mu was greatly shaken, and thought to himself: "It is as I guessed!

" "The Ancestral Court is sealed, yet it cannot seal in that Daoist brother who emerged ahead of his time. He comes and goes in uncanny fashion, unfathomable in his depths.

But the others within the Ancestral Court are not him.

" "The others come from beneath the earth — and yet they do not come from beneath the earth. They are remnants of the previous cosmic epoch.

They come from the previous cosmic epoch. " "They prepared long in advance, and within the Ancestral Court they have laid trap upon trap and scheme upon scheme; even our Taiji mining ground has come under their designs.

" "When you sealed the Ancestral Court and all departed from it, we sensed a dreadful prehistoric ruin travel to our mining ground and lock down our absorption of the mining ground's power and Dao, so that these years our progress has been slow. " There was dread in the Taiji ancient gods' voices: "We roused a heart of dread, and so stood another step from the Dao.

That is why, when the uninvited guest came visiting our mining ground, we lent out the Taiji primal stone: for these past million years we have been able to draw little power from the primal stone, and little from the mining ground; lending it to him for a while did no harm. " Shen Mu at once opened the vertical eye at his brow and looked down into the depths beneath the mining ground.

His sage pupils were unmatched; they could see even through to the fragments of Daluo Heaven beneath Yaochi. In an instant he took in all that lay beneath the Taiji mining ground. There, beneath the vast and boundless Taiji Starfield, he saw a fragment of ancient Daluo Heaven gnawing at the starfield and devouring the Taiji mining ground. Below the Taiji mining ground stood a mysterious ruin.