Chapter 1671 — I Held a Dream: The Youth Chapter

Throughout the Yuji Heavens, Shen Mu and the Haotian Emperor stood beyond the sky, with a hundred or so great ministers of the Heavenly Court at their backs, and looked down. The Yuji Heavens, once so incomparably rich, were now everywhere ravaged by war.

The Yuji Heavens could well be called one of the rare wealthy great worlds among the myriad heavens. This heaven had once been famed for its forging and supplied the Heavenly Court with divine weapons. The celestial artisans of Yuji forged with exquisite beauty; their divine weapons reached the highest artistic attainment, while their practical worth was heavily discounted.

The great and powerful of the Heavenly Court took pride in owning a divine weapon from the Yuji Heavens. Yet once Jingping's forging trade rose, it smashed the iron rice bowl of the Yuji Heavens.

Jingping's divine weapons were mighty, and no whit inferior in artistic achievement—all the more since the Painting Sage of Jingping took painting as his Dao and had disciples by the tens of thousands; in every academy and hall of learning in Jingping, cultivating the Dao of painting had become a required course.

After all, a better-looking divine weapon fetched a higher price.

What mattered more: Jingping's divine weapons were cheap!

And so, within a few decades, no small number of the Yuji Heavens' imperial foundries were squeezed out of business. When the various powers of the Heavenly Court commissioned divine weapons, they usually chose Jingping first; only the Zaofu Heavenly Palace would now and then hand some unimportant work to the Yuji Heavens, keeping a handful of Yuji foundries on life support.

But then the Ancestral Jade Capital City appeared, and Shi Qiluo "died" within the Jade Capital. The Zaofu Heavenly Palace was left without a master, and the Yuji Heavens' only source of wealth was severed.

From Shi Qiluo's "death" to this day, a mere thirty-odd years, and the Yuji Heavens had collapsed at a stroke.

The Yuji Heavens had long been hard to sustain; the people could barely live, and gods and demons ran amok everywhere. Once the pillars of the Yuji Heavens had utterly fallen, the divine generals and divine officials who had formerly upheld the Ruler of Yuji saw that the people's wrath could not be quelled, and so they simply rebelled, killed the Ruler of Yuji, and raised the banner of revolt.

The Heavenly Court had long known of the turmoil in the Yuji Heavens, but the Haotian Emperor had not long ascended the throne and taken the title of emperor, and naturally those below reported only glad tidings and no ill; the turmoil in the Yuji Heavens was suppressed and never reported to the Haotian Emperor.

The Ruler of Yuji was a member of the Heaven Alliance. His murder could no longer be suppressed.

More terrifying still, the rebellion of the Yuji Heavens was only one corner of the myriad heavens. Riot had erupted at the very same time in Shixiu, Lingshu, and Lingyuan, and the other heavens too were faintly showing signs of disorder.

If it were suppressed any further, and the Haotian Emperor found out, heads would surely roll; and so the Chief Minister came forward at last to report it to the Haotian Emperor.

"This realm is destined to become an unequaled golden age, far surpassing all that came before! Yet these obstinate commoners cannot bear even this little hardship."

The Haotian Emperor stepped first into the Yuji Heavens. Everywhere in the Yuji Heavens were starving folk and refugees; most of the races of the Yuji Heavens were demigods, yet now all was in chaos.

Demons and monsters ran wild everywhere, burning, killing, and plundering; some gods and devils unleashed their divine powers, conjuring seas of fire ten thousand li wide, or raising monstrous waves to drown their enemies' cities.

When two rebel armies went to war, they might even summon stars from beyond the sky and hurl them down into the heavens, like the end of days!

Nor was the whole of the Yuji Heavens starving and freezing; on the contrary, certain great clans and powerful houses still possessed untold wealth, but knowing these were chaotic times, they moved out of Yuji and fled elsewhere for refuge.

Along the way, Shen Mu, the Haotian Emperor, and the rest encountered more than a dozen such tower ships, heaped with treasures, sailing out beyond the sky, with rebel troops in hot pursuit at their sterns.

The spiritual-energy transfer bridges had been wrecked by the rebels to keep the Heavenly Court from attacking, so they could only take the road of migration through the starry sky.

The Haotian Emperor watched coldly and said, unhurried, "These obstinate commoners always rebel at the slightest dissatisfaction, always stir up trouble, thinking We have treated them ill. Truly heinous! Did We cause all this? We have only just taken the throne—do We have such great power as to leave them unable to live within a few short years? This was wrought by the previous dynasty, yet they lay the blame at Our feet!"

The more he spoke, the angrier he became: "It is not that they cannot live—it is that they see We have just ascended, that Our foundations are unsteady, and so they seize the chance to extort Us! These rebels are all ambitious schemers, all worms gnawing at the Heavenly Court! Such a thing can never be tolerated; we must kill the chicken to warn the monkey, and make an example of them! Otherwise, once the breach is opened, the other heavens too will come to extort Us and beg favors of Us! We will make them know that this realm is not theirs—it is Ours!"

Ahead, two great armies of gods and demons were locked in battle over territory, fighting fiercely, in the thick of the slaughter.

Both sides had killed until their eyes were red; the battlefield had almost become a sea of blood, blades flashing, blood floating the oars.

Just then, all the gods and demons who had been fighting suddenly halted, frozen where they stood, holding the very postures of their killing, motionless.

Every god and demon on that battlefield, in an instant, was bereft of the breath of life!

Between heaven and earth it was as if all at once had fallen profoundly silent; only the sound of wind remained, and no other sound at all.

"The Void Celestial Venerable has struck!"

The Haotian Emperor smiled, and his figure rose slowly into the air; Shen Mu and those hundred-odd great ministers of the Heavenly Court rose with him.

Shen Mu looked around. The distant cities were the same: a whole city turned in an instant into a city of the dead, everyone within still holding the postures of life, yet all bereft of the breath of life.

One after another divine kingdom of the Yuji Heavens—all life, gods and demon gods alike—died in an instant.

In that moment flowers withered, trees wilted, beasts crouched low, birds fell from the sky; even the water tribes in the rivers, lakes, and seas, even the fish and shrimp, died in the very same instant!

The entire Yuji Heavens died in an instant. Apart from Shen Mu, the Haotian Emperor, and their company, not one living thing remained!

The company looked around: demonic qi swept in, and the land of the Yuji Heavens swiftly turned black, became dark soil; the mountains lost their color, the rivers, lakes, and seas darkened at flying speed, demonic qi spreading everywhere.

They raised their heads: the stars beyond the sky were dimming at flying speed, the moon had no light, and the sun too was invaded by a vast darkness, gradually swallowed by the dark.

The Yuji Heavens were utterly dead.

Shen Mu's hands and feet were cold as ice.

Though he had long foreseen that the Yuji Heavens' rebellion must end thus, to see it with his own eyes brought him a shock and a shudder beyond compare!

When Kaihuang died, he had already foreseen that Jingping could no longer contend with the Heavenly Court for Youdu; if it kept fighting the Heavenly Court, then Jingping too must meet the same end.