Chapter 1561 — Zither Music on the Great River

The Golden Ship of Salvation came to the long river of chaos that was the Fourth Universe, and its speed eased.

Shen Mu stood at the prow, gazing down, searching the waters inch by inch for any trace of Tai Yi.

Tai Yi had been struck down into the Fourth Universe, and to comb an entire cosmos for a glimpse of him was no different from fishing a needle out of the sea. But in the Great Tribulation of Destruction the universe was collapsing, all living things were being extinguished, the whole of it shrinking without pause, space turning to nothingness and matter to energy; the only room left in which anything could stir, perhaps, was the region around the World Tree of the Ancestral Court.

So Shen Mu need only watch the few mighty ones still surviving in the Fourth Universe, and he would find Tai Yi.

Yet Tai Yi was a master of transformation, and the very fact that he had been driven into the tribulation of destruction by the Master of the Miluo Palace and the mighty ones of the Fourth Universe meant that the Fourth Universe held beings who could match him.

Moreover, from what Wei Suifeng had let slip, Tai Yi had been gravely wounded by the Master of the Miluo Palace, and most likely had changed his face and form the moment he fell into the Fourth Universe; Shen Mu therefore had to fix his gaze on Tai Yi's transformations from the very start of the tribulation, if he was ever to learn what the man had become. Shen Mu searched on, patient and minute, and the Golden Ship of Salvation sailed neither fast nor slow; after he knew not how many days, he suddenly saw the body of Tai Yi, beneath the surface of the river, go plunging down at furious speed into the long river of chaos!

His spirits surged. This was the very scene of Tai Yi being struck down into the Fourth Universe!

He gathered all his attention, and the vertical eye set in the center of his brow locked hard upon Tai Yi's falling figure.

It was two Dao-achievers who had dragged Tai Yi into the long river of chaos, and the three of them fought without pause as they fell, spinning like figures on a revolving lantern, dazzling to the eye.

The golden ship sailed on, and as it sailed, the battle below seemed to quicken a countless times over.

The giant Tai Yi, too gravely wounded, could not hold against the two Dao-achievers; but he changed his form, becoming a youth, and the wounds on his body vanished into thin air.

Yet the youth Tai Yi could not match the two in strength, and was wounded again and again; each time his injuries deepened, Tai Yi changed form once more, until the two Dao-achievers could do nothing with him.

Suddenly Tai Yi turned into a wisp of chaos qi and fled far away, and the two Dao-achievers gave chase, fighting him all the way.

Aboard the golden ship, Shen Mu held the three of them fast in his sight, and saw them cut their way down to the World Tree amid the tribulation of destruction; even standing upon the tree they never ceased to shift and strike at one another.

As the ship moved on and the far shore drew nearer, he saw that the universe below had all but annihilated itself: nearly all matter had turned to energy, compressed together, chaos qi wreathing the World Tree, terrible beyond words!

Before such dreadful energy even a Dao-achiever could scarcely escape death; only the World Tree was as it had always been, slowly stretching out its roots and tendrils in that tribulation of destruction at its most intense, drinking in its power. Not a speck of soil remained upon those roots and tendrils; the whole Ancestral Court had been reduced to ash, and many Dao-achievers who had not reached the World Tree in time were turned to tribulation ash.

Yet there were also Dao-achievers who came beneath the tree and tried to burrow into its roots, hoping to crawl out of this ruined universe into the next life, the universe to come. Upon the World Tree, the three who fought could no longer endure that tribulation at its most intense, and one after another they too burrowed into the roots.

The whole Fourth Universe was annihilated, leaving only the World Tree adrift in the chaos energy, brewing the opening of heaven and earth once more, the evolution of a new cosmos out of the primeval wild. Then Shen Mu saw the Jade Capital, and could not help but start.

He saw a divine city of the utmost splendor collapse and collapse again in the final tribulation of that universe's destruction, and yet it was not wholly destroyed! Within that divine city stood a dao tree, lush and green, anchoring the chaos energy, and beneath the dao tree a figure stood erect, and did not go to the World Tree.

Alone he stood in the utterly destroyed universe, and in his eyes there was only grief and desolation, as though he mourned the ruin of that cosmos.

"The Master of the Miluo Palace!

" The Golden Ship of Salvation paused, then came to the far shore, and the ruins of the Fourth Universe's Jade Capital appeared before him.

Shen Mu pondered a while, his brows locked tight.

He had watched for so long, and yet he had never once discerned any trait of Tai Yi's!

A person's traits were hard to change, yet with every form Tai Yi took, his traits changed as well; not one of them ever repeated!

Whether in his speech and bearing, the subtlest expressions of his face, or his divine powers, nothing at all was ever the same twice.

"Thinking back carefully, even at Great Black Mountain, Tai Yi seemed to have no traits at all.

" Shen Mu let out a turbid breath, and urged the golden ship over the ruins of the Jade Capital between the two great rivers of chaos.

"When I recall anything about him now, every memory is vivid, and yet when I try to summon up his face, there is only chaos.

That is the trait of chaos, is it not?

" But the crux of the problem lay precisely here: though he had held Tai Yi fast in his sight through the tribulation of the Fourth Universe, as to what Tai Yi had become in the tribulation of the Fifth Universe, he knew nothing at all.

Without a trait to seek, there was no way to find Tai Yi's traces in the Fifth Universe.

And in the Sixth Universe, the Seventh Universe after that, there was even less hope of finding him!

"He told me to seek him by the map; could it be that it has something to do with that map of the land? " Shen Mu mused: the map left upon Tai Yi's staff was exceedingly complex, a place he had never seen, and he did not even know whether it was a map of the present universe at all!

If it were a map of a prehistoric universe, then there was even less chance of finding the place! "Wait.

Tai Yi does have one obvious trait.

" Suddenly Shen Mu's eyes lit up, and he clapped his hands and laughed.

"Every time he changes, his voice and face, his speech and bearing, his nature and habits, his divine powers and arts are all different; but there is one form he has used more than once!

The giant Tai Yi! " He could not help but grow elated.

The giant Tai Yi ought to be his first body, the body that held the Chaos Axe, that companion treasure born with him, and the body of his greatest strength.

Tai Yi had once used that body when he came to fell the World Tree; later, when the World Tree revived, he had become the giant Tai Yi again, bearing the Chaos Axe on his shoulder and coming to fell it.

And in the long river of chaos of the Fourth Universe, when Tai Yi was struck down into the Fourth Universe, the body he used at the outset was that same one! "In other words, this is Tai Yi's trait!

I need not concern myself with any of his transformations: so long as I see the giant Tai Yi in the universes that follow, then that man must be him! " Elated, Shen Mu steered the Golden Ship of Salvation ashore, flying over the ruins of the Fourth Universe's Jade Capital, and on toward the long river of chaos of the Fifth Universe.

He looked down, and found himself thinking again of that towering figure standing amid the ruins of the divine city, and of the grief in his eyes.