Chapter 448 — Night Raid
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 1 of 4
In the last years of the Kaihuang era the heavens underwent a great change, and the gods of that age built the Dawn Ark and the Soul Ark to drive back the darkness and let all things grow, so that the common folk might live. Yet those two ships were weapons of war as well: the Sun Warden of the Dawn Ark and the Moon Warden of the Soul Ark could each call upon the power of those vast and magnificent vessels, lifting their own strength to the level of the heavenly gods, a might that could remake heaven and earth.
Shen Mu had once sailed the Dawn Ark and had borrowed the Soul Ark's power besides, and he knew well how formidable those two ships were, how far beyond the ordinary. By the Dragon-Commanding Art of the Dragon-Rearing Scripture he could borrow the strength of the Flood Dragon King and his shoal of dragons, open the Divine Bridge and the Divine Treasury, and send his primal spirit straight up to the Heavenly Court; yet he could go no farther than the Southern Heavenly Gate, and was never permitted into the depths of the Court.
But with the power of the Dawn Ark and the Soul Ark he could reach the Jade Terrace itself and stand beside the Jade Pool.
Yet the Dawn Ark and the Soul Ark had their bane, and that bane was the Myriad Gods Natural Art of the True Heaven Palace. The power the Dawn Ark lent the Sun Warden and the power the Soul Ark lent the Moon Warden came from the bodies of the two ships themselves, not from the Wardens' own strength; those ships held within them a vast and terrible energy, and with the god-made sun and the god-made moon for their driving force, they could drive back the darkness. The Myriad Gods Natural Art, by contrast, held to the creed that all things have their god and all things have their spirit; through perception of nature it created primal souls, awakening the things of heaven and earth and rousing them to life to fight on its practitioner's behalf.
What if a god who cultivated the Myriad Gods Natural Art could awaken the spirits of the Dawn Ark and the Soul Ark and make them fight for him?
Then nothing would await the Sun Warden and the Moon Warden, or the Sun Herders and the Moon Herders aboard those ships, but bloody slaughter and death; even the Wardens themselves could not escape. "Many years ago there must have been a terrible battle here," Shen Mu said. "The Dawn Ark and the Soul Ark met gods who cultivated the Myriad Gods Natural Art, and one after another they perished.
And this. .
.
" He looked west, his gaze flickering bright and dim like a candle in the wind. "This has surely something to do with the True Heaven Palace of the Western Lands.
" He had always taken it for granted that the True Heaven Palace of the Western Lands must be a holy place like the Great Tingming Temple or the Daoist sect: its master's divine powers and Daoist arts might be godlike and beyond all mortal mastery, but he was a mighty one still trapped in the Divine Bridge realm, and this holy place could be no different from any other. But now it seemed the True Heaven Palace of the Western Lands must hide a great many secrets, and perhaps even some dreadful being.
More than that, the very name of the True Heaven Palace was worth pondering.
The Heaven-Sage Sect was so called because the woodcutter had passed down its scriptures there and the woodcutter was revered as a sage; the Great Tingming Temple took its name because Mount Sumeru stood so high, amid the thunder layer, where the sound of thunder and the voice of the Buddha rolled and pealed together, rousing even the deaf. The Daoist sect was named for the Dao Sword and the gate of Mount Kunlun, and Little Yujing itself was a shard of the Yujing of the Kaihuang era; the names of the holy places each betrayed something of their origin. Then what was the origin of the True Heaven Palace?
Why had the gods of the True Heaven Palace destroyed the Dawn Ark and the Soul Ark?