Chapter 977 — The Far Side of Nothingness
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 3 of 4
Within the bottle was indeed a great sea; his earlier shaking had raised hurricanes and giant waves upon its surface, roaring and crashing, joined by lightning and thunder. His divine consciousness looked upward, and at the bottle's mouth he saw a sky full of starlight, a river of stars spiraling there, with six star vortices.
His divine consciousness flew over the ocean to the wall of the bottle, and found that the bottle's wall was in truth land standing upright from the surface of the sea, forming a ring.
The land was exceedingly vast, with mountains and rivers and all things complete.
Just then he saw a sun rise out of the sea.
"This little bottle actually contains a world!
" Shen Mu was startled.
Strangely, though the bottle held a world, it did not feel at all heavy.
"So that old woman just now was the clan chief of the Cangshan Clan," Shu Jun's voice sounded in his mind.
"The Cangshan Clan was a very great tribe in the ancient era, and the Creators of this tribe were skilled at creating heavens. This bottle of yours is in fact a heaven-world. " Shen Mu was taken aback, hardly able to believe it.
How immense a heaven-world was; could this little bottle hold one? Moreover, when his divine consciousness had entered the bottle just now, the world within was vaster even than the heavens of many Origin Realms.
"In the ancient era, the Cangshan Clan visualized countless heavens," Shu Jun said.
"This heaven she gave you must be a Gourd-Heaven; the bottle that holds a Gourd-Heaven is called a Gourd-Heaven Bottle, a rare treasure indeed.
That she gave you the Gourd-Heaven Bottle shows how highly she regards you. " Shen Mu solemnly stowed the Gourd-Heaven Bottle into the Shen-Character Continent, placing it together with the crystal coffin and the mortal body of Yun Tianzun.
The Gourd-Heaven Bottle was of the utmost importance; should the Jingping Reforms fail in the future, he would surely need a way out, and this Gourd-Heaven Bottle could give the people of Jingping refuge.
"But that old woman is no easy mark; her things are not so easily taken," Shu Jun said with a laugh. "Now that you have her treasure, you must certainly do what you promised her.
That old woman was a ruthless figure even in the ancient era, and though she is dead, her divine consciousness remains.
If you cannot fulfill what you promised her, you will die a death too horrible to look at. " There was a note of gloating in his voice. "When you took up that basket, her divine consciousness planted itself on you.
She has countless ways to kill you. " Shen Mu's face darkened.
"For instance?
" he said sourly. "For instance, visualizing all manner of things inside your body: making countless needles grow in your belly, making you unable to see your enemy's moves in battle, or visualizing a sun inside you to burn you to death, an ocean to burst you to death. Killing you would be all too easy.
" Shu Jun chuckled.
Shen Mu's scalp went numb.
He took out paper and brush and wrote down what he had promised the Cangshan Clan in his notebook, lest he forget. Ten days later, they came to the end of the desert.
Along the way they saw more ruins swallowed by the desert: what they had met with earlier were cities, later mere walled strongholds, and later still simply camps thrown up in haste.
Wind blew the golden sand, and beneath the desert lay bones everywhere. This must date from the Tai Emperor's assault on the Great Void; his divine consciousness was immeasurably powerful, covering the whole of the Great Void Land, transforming into all manner of attacks, hunting down the clans of the Creators.