Chapter 650 — The Might of the Sacred Wheel
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 1 of 5
That Shen Mu could bring forth the Heaven and Earth Seal Art was not the doing of an Overlord Body, but of a single sentence from the Primordial Ancestor: You and I are both orphans of the Shen clan. Those words made him feel they were spoken of himself, and his heart resonated with the Primordial Ancestor's state of mind. He could understand what it was to see the Kaihuang Era destroyed, to be the only orphan of the Shen clan left in all the world, to wish to shoulder Heaven and Earth alone and feel utterly powerless.
That feeling was the Primordial Ancestor's, and it was his own as well. And more than that: what the Primordial Ancestor wished to shoulder was the Kaihuang Era, to keep it from falling; what Shen Mu wished to shoulder was the world of today, the Jingping Era.
Jingping seemed stable enough now, its people living and working in peace, yet Shen Mu knew well that peril was closing in step by step, that threats were stealing upon them in silence: the demon race of Taihuangtian, the stone statues within Jingping's borders, the false sky, and the Heaven above, far away in the Western Land.
. .
He knew well that even the remnants of Chiming were a threat. The Jingping Era had only just begun to show itself, and at any moment it might be reduced to ashes. Jingping, this newborn age, had not yet risen before it was already battered by wind and rain, its Heaven and Earth liable to overturn at any moment and be destroyed in a single breath.
It was precisely this state of mind that let him bring forth the full might of the Primordial Ancestor's Heaven and Earth Seal Art.
Beneath the power of the seal art, Shen Mu was not merely a sea-anchoring divine needle; he was more like a pillar holding Heaven and Earth steady, and what his heart desired was to dissolve the calamities that might come into nothingness, to keep the history of era after era from repeating its destruction!
Though his heart was heavy with gloom and grief, he did not carry the decadence and despondency of the Primordial Ancestor, the Human Emperor; his seal art, though likewise a Heaven and Earth Seal, concealed a vigorous striving, a spirit that grew the more resolute and enterprising the nearer danger came! This was where he differed from the Primordial Ancestor, the Human Emperor!
And it was also why the Primordial Ancestor, the Human Emperor, turned around, saw this seal of his, and could not help but be struck dumb.
Shen Mu performed his Heaven and Earth Seal, one move after another. The Primordial Ancestor's seal art differed greatly from any seal art Shen Mu had seen before: every move of his was a two-handed seal, not one of them possible without both hands, one seal for Heaven, one seal for Earth. The Heaven Seal: the palm lines within the hand were the cloud vapors of the sky, and the fingerprints of the five fingers were the sun and moon, or the five luminaries and the stars.
The Earth Seal: the palm lines within the hand were rivers and mountain ranges, and the fingerprints were lakes and seas. When the Heaven Seal trembled, the cloud vapors shifted, the five luminaries, the sun and moon revolved, and the five fingers burst forth with the power of the five luminaries and the five elements, or of the sun and moon. When the Earth Seal trembled, rivers ran, mountains rose and sank, and every finger seemed to hold an ocean, its power without limit.
And when Heaven collapsed, when Earth split, the power grew more terrifying still: the Earth Seal stored within it earth, water, wind, and fire; the Heaven Seal was the Great Dipper turning and the stars shifting as they crashed against the earth.
As for the seal art transforming into the Annihilation Seal Art, its power rose many times over again - but that was already a divine ability among the Three Styles of Heaven's Fall, not to be used lightly.