Chapter 865 — The Walking Corpse Fiend
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 1 of 4
Shen Mu's body went rigid.
The Heavenly Emperor of the Heavenly Court Beyond the Domain—was he the Heaven Alliance?
Did the blind old man mean that the Heavenly Emperor was one man within the Heaven Alliance, or the Heaven Alliance entire?
He had never turned this question over in his mind before. Was it possible that the Heavenly Emperor of the Court Beyond the Domain was not a single man but a body of men, a faction whose members were tangled in a thousand conflicting interests?
If that guess held, he could sketch the outlines of the Supreme Emperor Era.
The Supreme Emperor Era had been stirred up by Earth Mother Yuanjun.
Earth Mother Yuanjun had nurtured her own offspring, supporting them as they opened up the Supreme Emperor Era and founded the Supreme Heavenly Court; they were called the Northern Supreme Emperor. The Heaven Alliance, for its part, had backed another group of people to establish the Southern Supreme Emperor and the Southern Supreme Heavenly Court, which stood opposed to the Northern Supreme Emperor.
The two courts fought and slaughtered each other, and the strife lasted nearly three hundred thousand years.
In those days the Court Beyond the Domain was little more than a bystander, sitting on the mountain to watch the tigers fight.
At that time the Court Beyond the Domain was still the Longhan Heavenly Court.
The Longhan Heavenly Court had swallowed up the Xiaohan Heavenly Court and the Longxiao Heavenly Court and grown into a bloated colossus, and within it were ancient gods, and demigods, and gods cultivated up from living beings born in later ages.
Through this period the Heaven Alliance grew stronger and stronger, and by a series of stratagems it gradually replaced the backbone of the Court Beyond the Domain and took the Court in hand. Every ancient god felt the danger to himself; both the Lord of Heaven and the Earth Earl sensed that their interests had been harmed, and that the peril of being supplanted hung over them.
Within the Heaven Alliance itself, too, rifts had opened over power and profit. And between the Heaven Alliance, which now held the Court Beyond the Domain, and the Southern Supreme Heavenly Court, an irreconcilable conflict had arisen; the creed of the Southern Supreme Emperor was that the lives of men outweigh Heaven itself, and that gods exist to serve men.
But the Heaven Alliance, holding the Court Beyond the Domain, had already grasped matchless power and authority, and the Southern Supreme Heavenly Court they had themselves raised had become a thorn in their eye, a colossus that threatened their rule.
The flashpoint came after the Heaven Alliance removed Mother Earth: with Mother Earth dead and the Northern Supreme Heavenly Court destroyed, the rooting out of the Southern Supreme became the Heaven Alliance's first priority.
The war broke out just when Heavenly Venerable Ling was cutting off a stretch of the Heavenly River to test the most perfect state of her divine art; so long as Heavenly Venerable Ling did not die, the Southern Supreme Heavenly Court would not fall. That dreadful existence charged into the mist and assassinated Heavenly Venerable Ling; and at the same moment, the great army of gods and men of the Court Beyond the Domain attacked the Southern Supreme Heavenly Court, bringing about the utter destruction of the Supreme Heavenly Court.
Such was Shen Mu's conjecture. Though many questions remained, he felt the guess came close to the truth. He followed the blind old man back to the bank of the Heavenly River, and the blind old man went on laying out for burial the "corpse" of Heavenly Venerable Ling that drifted up; and the same thing happened—the "corpse" once more turned to clear water.
Shen Mu could not hold back. "Elder, Heavenly Venerable Ling's divine art is that matter neither changes nor increases nor diminishes nor alters.