Chapter 936 — The Chess Piece Falls in the Heavenly Palace, Deciding Victory
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 1 of 4
All was silence within the Manhui Corridor Pavilion.
Que Jingxue and the others had fallen mute, their faces complicated, their hearts tangled beyond words.
The Heavenly River Divine Treasury had shaken them deeply; but what shook them more were Shen Mu's words, each one stabbing straight into the heart.
Shen Mu had not been wrong. The reason the Heavenly Court regarded the Reform with hostility was not fear that the lower realm might threaten its rule. At the Heavenly Court's present scale, even if Jingping were granted several thousand years, even ten thousand, Jingping would still not be its match.
The Heavenly Court hated the Reform because those who held power there could gain nothing from it; to support the Reform, or even to ignore it, would shake the very foundations of their rule.
If the men who held the Heavenly Court's power accepted the Reform, they might fall; they might be undone by their political rivals.
And even if they did not reincarnate, they would have to rewrite their own cultivation arts, to comprehend them all over again, to start from the beginning once more.
The Reform consumed too much strength and too much time. What if some newcomer of the younger generation surpassed them in the interim? What if some newcomer took their place?
How could they be willing to hand over power and station with open hands?
And to ignore the Reform would mean new gods replacing the old, gods stronger than these old ones, more driven, who would sooner or later overthrow their rule, just as they themselves had overthrown the rule of the ancient gods.
Therefore the simplest course was to brand the Reform as treason, its followers as rebels against Heaven and Dao, as a thing that must be strangled at birth.
Only thus could they guarantee that they would never fall, that their rule would endure, that those who came after would have no chance to take their place.
And yet, even understanding all this, Que Jingxue and the others still faced a dilemma.
Should they cultivate the Heavenly River Divine Treasury? Should they accept the Jingping Reform?
Refuse, and they would one day die on the battlefield; the benefits of the Heavenly River Divine Treasury were unmatched by the traditional divine treasury of the Divine Bridge, and should they ever meet on the battlefield one who had opened such a treasury, they would surely be slain by him.
Accept, and their own sect would be the first to cast them out. The elders who had raised them would in an instant turn a new face upon them, put them to death, and drag their clans down with them.
Qi Jiuyi came in from outside and sat down in silence, saying nothing.
A faint smell of blood hung about him.
Everyone in the pavilion was startled. Just now Qi Jiuyi had said he would see off the few who were leaving; now he carried the reek of blood on him, and those few had most likely met with disaster.
Shen Mu's look asked the question; Qi Jiuyi said calmly, "It is all taken care of. The Heavenly Court sent them here for no other purpose than to kill Heavenly Venerable Mu, so it is only fitting that they died at Heavenly Venerable Mu's hand."
Shen Mu frowned. "Why did you have to kill them? Letting them go would have been enough."
Qi Jiuyi sneered. "Let them go? Sect Master Shen, you mean to use their mouths to sow disorder in the Heavenly Court, don't you? You underestimate the Heavenly Court. Once they had gone, every young one who came to the Jade Pool today would have died inexplicably, not one of them left alive, myself included."
Que Jingxue and the others felt a chill; some were frightened after the fact.
Shen Mu asked with concern, "Then, Brother Qi, was it done cleanly?"
"Soul and spirit scattered utterly. Very clean."