Chapter 918 — Being and Non-Being Beget Each Other, Yet All Ends in Void
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 2 of 5
Yan Shaoqing walked slowly outward, his hands and feet cold, saying silently in his heart: "You have carried off Emperor Yanfeng and Jiang Baigui, and I have no choice but to cover it up for you. With my divine power of consciousness, even if the Heavenly Court sends men to inspect, so long as none of them stands at the Emperor Throne realm, they will not see that the Jiang Baigui and the Emperor Yanfeng in those cages are merely illusions of my spirit. You know I will not chase you down to demand Emperor Yanfeng and Jiang Baigui back, because you know I cannot break your divine power; even if I caught up with you, I would only fall once more into your illusions and your dreams."
"You also know I will cover for you, because I have already been dragged onto the God-Slaying Platform once; to keep my life, I must cover for you. You even deliberately let a flaw show, letting your shadow split into three. Those other two shadows are Emperor Yanfeng and Jiang Baigui, are they not?"
"Heaven Venerable Mu, oh Heaven Venerable Mu, you have grown so terrible..."
He came to the Hall of the Judge, opened the official records, took up his brush and wrote the words "Heaven Venerable Mu's prison visit: all as usual," then laid down the brush and sat silent, lost in thought.
Suddenly he clenched his fist hard; his nails pierced his palm, and blood welled there — yet he let it fall open again, powerless, gave a bitter laugh, and went on with his official business.
"I have lost, but your divine power of consciousness is not invincible. Your cultivation is shallow; to break your divine power is all too easy — it needs only that an outsider intervene, and your divine power unravels of itself. Your divine power can last no more than a quarter of an hour."
"Are you not going to the Heavenly Court? If you use this divine power there, you will surely die! And yet..."
He stopped writing; terror flickered across his face, and he shivered again and again. "And yet, if you were to cultivate to the Emperor Throne realm, and join the divine power of consciousness, the Immeasurable Kalpa Scripture and the Dao of Youdu together — that would be too dreadful!"
He did not dare imagine what a dreadful spectacle that would be!
He went on writing his official documents; then suddenly his brush tip halted, and the corners of his eyes were twitching.
"How do I know that I, as I am now, have truly escaped his dreams and his illusions?"
Yan Shaoqing's pupils shrank sharply: "What if this too is an illusion? Am I now in a dream, or in reality?"
Despair showed in his eyes: "Can it be, as he said, that only by abolishing my Spirit Bridge and my divine treasures and accepting the Jingping Reforms can I be utterly free of his dreams? But if I do that, what difference is there between me and those Jingping rebels..."
The terror on his face deepened.
Shen Mu had departed, and the divine power had ceased — yet the influence wrought by the divine power of consciousness was like a seed of demonic nature, taking root and sprouting in the depths of his heart.
Yan Shaoqing knew he must walk out of it; he must abolish his Spirit Bridge and his divine treasures, accept the Jingping Reforms, and cultivate the Heavenly River divine treasure. Otherwise he would be haunted forever, unable to tell dream from reality from illusion — and the flaw in his Dao heart made it impossible that he should ever attain the Emperor Throne!
Yet the Heavenly Court had strictly forbidden the Reforms; if he accepted the Heavenly River divine treasure, then he would be one of the rebel traitors of the Reforms.
"To abolish the Spirit Bridge and the divine treasures — my heavenly palace would come crashing down, and I would die... Jiang Baigui told me he had created a technique that can seal the Southern Heavenly Gate, so that one may abolish the Spirit Bridge and the divine treasures without dying... Why did he tell me such a thing?"