Chapter 798 — Unceasing Dissection and Study
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 4 of 4
The Ancestral Dragon King asked with solicitude, "Senior Sister Feng, how are the Earth Mother's injuries? We old subjects have had no word of the Earth Mother these many years, and our hearts have truly burned with anxiety. Today, meeting a disciple of the Earth Mother again after so long, we must go and pay our respects and kowtow to her venerable self."
Feng Qiuyun's scalp went numb.
Suddenly Shen Mu laughed aloud: "Ancestral Dragon King, be at ease a while. There is still important business at hand! Does this sister have more to say? Why do you pretend to be the Earth Mother's disciple? What is it you seek?"
He changed the subject, drawing everyone's attention to the girl.
The girl burst out laughing: "A traitor and villain has stolen the Earth Mother's treasures, and now dares to pass himself off as the Earth Mother's disciple to pad out the ranks. Those who do not know the truth have all been taken in by you. Cult Master Shen of the Heaven Sacred Cult is indeed a dragon and phoenix among men."
Shen Mu smiled faintly.
The girl said leisurely, "Yet even if you talk until flowers rain from the sky, you cannot change one fact."
She suddenly bowed and said, "This disciple beseeches the Earth Mother to descend!"
Scarcely had her words fallen than an aura of unimaginable terror, unimaginable solidity, descended!
That aura, heavy as the earth, in an instant enshrouded the whole Jade Capital City: towering, profound, heavy as the continent of the Yuan World, deep as a bottomless abyss.
Everyone was awed by a natural divine power, and felt the space around them grow solid and weighty.
The Lingxiao Hall came apart on the instant; countless tiles flew up with a clatter, and the beams, the walls, the pillars, the very floor, all flew up and drifted into the distance.
In a moment the whole hall had vanished, leaving only the ground on which the crowd stood.
Beneath their feet, mountains rolled and swelled unceasingly, stretching away in every direction.
The peaks were majestic, towering into the clouds.
Yet looking closely, the crowd found that these were not mountain ranges at all, but roots, roots unimaginably thick!
With difficulty they raised their heads, and saw a divine tree beyond measure in age standing between heaven and earth, its roots sunk into the ground of the Yuan World: ancient, vast and dim, the patterns on its bark seeming to be natural dao-lines and dao-traces.
The trunk of this divine tree was so thick that it seemed made of Mount Sumeru, thicker even than Mount Sumeru; and looking upward, all the heavens and all the worlds seemed to float amid the tree's crown.
Such a spectacle dazzled the eye!
Beneath the tree, the girl bowed: "I beseech the Earth Mother Venerable God."
From the crown, a goddess of ten thousand graces drifted down from the tree, her bare feet touching the ground as light as air.
Her dao-rhyme was heaven-made, bearing the thickness of the earth, nurturing all things; she had a bearing no one else could imitate.
And her appearance was exactly the same as the Earth Mother's statue that Shen Mu had seen in the temple of the Earth Mother Venerable God!
The corner of Shen Mu's eye twitched violently. He looked at Feng Qiuyun, then at the girl, then raised his eyes to this Earth Mother Venerable God before him, somewhat at a loss.
Though he had seen the Earth Mother's remnant soul in the underground palace, a voice within him told him that this Earth Mother Venerable God before him was no counterfeit.
"More complicated than I thought... Did we not come to settle a score with the Red Emperor Qi Xiayu? Feng Qiuyun struck at Sister Qi, was killed by Sister Qi, and then I gathered up the treasures and ran. Why has it all turned so tangled and strange?"
Shen Mu's head swelled with a splitting ache; quietly he lifted the willow leaf from the point between his brows.
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