Chapter 1603 — The Turning Wheel and the End

After Heavenly Venerable Gong departed, Shen Mu was left alone in the Great Abyss of Guixu, facing Her Highness the Empress by himself. Smiling, he began to edge backward, step by step. The Empress frowned faintly. "There is no need to retreat, Heavenly Venerable Mu. You cannot get away. This is Guixu."

Shen Mu's figure abruptly became a streak of flowing light, howling outward in flight, and he laughed a long laugh: "How would I ever know, if I never try?"

The Empress did not stir. She gave a cold laugh. Just as Shen Mu was about to fly out of the twin lotus on its single stem, the petals suddenly revolved, and in an instant the two blossoms contracted into buds and sealed him inside the flower's chamber.

Shen Mu flew at breakneck speed around the bud, and found no exit at all.

He immediately brought out his teleportation art; but teleportation is founded upon space, and the space within this flower chamber was wholly severed from the outside world, so his art could not pierce through it.

Shen Mu landed, his brow deeply furrowed.

If there was any place left in this world that he feared, the Great Abyss of Guixu was certainly one of them.

The Guixu art was one of the few divine arts capable of utterly annihilating a soul. There were not many arts that could extinguish a soul completely: the arts of the Five Primal Supremes, and the Great Emperor's divine sense, the Great Luotian, could all accomplish it.

Beyond those, there was the art of Guixu.

And Guixu itself was a place that even Kaihuang, in the hour he attained the Way, could not see through. Ranked alongside the Jade Capital of the Ancestral Court and the Chaotic Space, its extraordinary nature was plain to see.

As the Dao-born deities of this place, Her Highness the Empress and Lady Yuanmu were strong enough to be counted among the ancient gods, though they were not the mightiest of them; yet the power of Guixu itself far surpassed both these ancient gods. That alone showed how uncanny the place was.

The Empress lifted her hand, and the twin lotus bloomed once more. Beyond the blossom the tides receded, and the lotus itself began to sink slowly into the great abyss.

"This is the place of this Empress's birth. Once I devour the little slut, I shall command all that is here. I shall control the twin lotus, make it bloom, make it close; I shall command the tides, and even command the abyss, and make the abyss devour all the heavens and myriad worlds, and numberless stars!"

The Empress's face was indifferent. "Heavenly Venerable Mu, however vast your powers, before this Empress your abilities have no ground to stand on."

Shen Mu sighed in helplessness. "Your Highness speaks the truth. The you of this moment has exceeded my understanding. When I look upon Kaihuang, upon the Great Emperor, upon Heavenly Venerable Xiao and Heavenly Venerable Hao, I can clearly reckon the measure of their strength. Only before you can I not plumb the depths. What manner of monster did the Ancient God of the Supreme Ultimate make of you..."

"A little scoundrel." The Empress's neck twisted, and her head turned half a circle, the back of her skull swinging round to the front to reveal the face of Lady Yuanmu, most bewitchingly lovely. "Calling me a monster. I want to eat you, to bite every inch of your skin, little by little..."

The Empress's neck twisted back again, and her voice turned shrill. "Little slut, do not test this Empress's limits!"

"You have limits?" Lady Yuanmu turned the head round once more and giggled. "I have only ever talked; I have hardly done anything truly beyond the pale. But you? How many things have you done that even you find revolting? Sister, can you even count them all?"

The two fell to quarreling again. Shen Mu quietly retreated, thinking, "So long as I am fast enough, I ought to be able to walk out of here..."

Suddenly the quarreling stopped. Shen Mu knew at once that something was wrong; and indeed, the faces of Lady Yuanmu and the Empress had merged upon a single countenance, and their eyes were fixed straight upon him.

Shen Mu cleared his throat twice, looked about him, and exclaimed in admiration, "The scenery here really is quite fine."

The Empress sneered. "Heavenly Venerable Mu, teach me the complete Way of Reincarnation, and I will grant you a way to live."

"Teach it to me, and I will make you feel good!" Lady Yuanmu said, thrilled.

Shen Mu's face went black as iron. He simply sat down. "Whichever one of you I offend, I cannot escape death. So let it be this way: I will recite the Way of Reincarnation aloud, and each of you may listen. As for whichever of you comprehends it first, and which of you refines the other to death first, that will have nothing to do with me. What say you both?"

Without waiting for their answer, he began chanting the scripture on his own. The Empress listened at once, intently, not daring to let a single word slip past her. Before long she had grown calm, all her mind bent on comprehending the Way of Reincarnation.

Shen Mu's eyes flickered. Chanting all the while, he raised his head to look up, and his face turned ashen.

The twin lotus had already sunk completely into the dark abyss, deeper and deeper; looking up, he could see only a single thread of sky.

And still the twin lotus kept sinking, to no place he could name.

Shen Mu watched the dead stars sinking ceaselessly past the twin lotus outside, and the Styx pouring down into the abyss, and could not help but fret in secret.

The Empress and her sister were comprehending the Way of Reincarnation; sooner or later they would wake. And they had grown clever: though they still kept the lotus open, they had sunk it deep into Guixu, so that Shen Mu could not escape.

Were Shen Mu to leave the lotus, he would be seized by the terrible gravity of the Great Abyss of Guixu and dragged down into an unforeseeable darkness.

"Those two madwomen do not even know that they are not two people, but two minds in one body."

Shen Mu shook his head and thought, "This time I am finished. I have fallen into the hands of the one being in all the world who can restrain me. With the Goddess of Guixu commanding this lotus, I fear that even Kaihuang, who has attained the Way, would be no match for her... Hmm, so what exactly lies beneath Guixu?"

Curiosity stirred in him once more. Chanting the Way of Reincarnation, he craned his head out to look down.

The very instant his head emerged from the lotus, he felt his skull grow immeasurably heavy; an inconceivable gravity drew his head out long and thin, and at the same time boundless heat came surging in.

Shen Mu hastily roused his mana and hauled his head back, his heart still pounding with the fright of it.

"Whether the Empress or Yuanmu, I have studied their bodies for decades. The Great Way of Guixu has two faces: one is destruction, one is birth. Though I have never fused these two Ways, surely I would not be killed outright by the Great Abyss of Guixu?"

He thought it over. With the Way of the Supreme Ultimate, the Ancient God of the Supreme Ultimate had fused the Empress and Yuanmu into one person; because their minds and consciousnesses differed, the Goddess of Guixu thus born was mad and addled.

Then what if he, too, used the Way of the Supreme Ultimate to fuse the Way of Guixu he had cultivated?

"I have only one mind and one consciousness, so naturally I could not go mad the way the Goddess of Guixu has."

Shen Mu blinked and thought, "If I can accomplish this, Guixu will no longer be able to hold me, and the Goddess of Guixu's powers will no longer be unknown to me. Then I shall have a chance at life."

The twin lotus was still sinking. The last time Shen Mu had come here, the twin lotus had sunk only to a certain depth and then stopped of itself; this time the lotus was under the Empress's control and fell without cease, and Shen Mu could not keep a secret dread from rising in him.