Chapter 1018 — That Thin Eggshell
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 4 of 4
The Crown Prince of the Eastern Palace sat at the edge of the Heavenly Lord's birthplace, drawing upon the rosy light and mist and cultivating step by step. He felt his stagnant cultivation slowly rising, and joy filled his heart.
Watching Shen Mu go deep into the forbidden zone, his heart grew fervent. "Father Emperor kept me and the other princes at a distance for forty thousand years; only today do I understand his vexation. All these years he has borne so much pressure, and it was to protect us..."
Suddenly a look of doubt came over him. "Why has Father Emperor stopped?"
He stared blankly at Shen Mu, who had walked deep into the forbidden zone, and the expression on his face slowly turned to alarm.
He saw that the Heavenly Lord's legs, like his own, had been wounded by the rosy light of the birthplace!
A chill ran through him. If the true Ancient God Heavenly Lord came to his own birthplace, it was utterly impossible that he should be wounded by the rosy light here.
"He is not Father Emperor!" A terrible thought rose in his mind.
Under his gaze Shen Mu pressed on, drawing ever nearer to the mass of purple light and purple qi. His legs were already a blur of blood and flesh, and the Heavenly Lord's towering frame began to twist under the dreadful pressure of the Great Dao, muscles contracting, the body shrinking.
Even Shen Mu, hidden in the center of the Heavenly Lord's brow, gradually felt the Dao pressure seep into the Heavenly Lord's body and press upon him. So strong was that pressure that, were he exposed to it himself, he would in a single instant be reduced to ashes and cease to exist!
"I cannot go any further!"
Shen Mu halted and looked toward the mass of purple light through the Heavenly Lord's eyes, but all remained hazy; he could not make out the thing beneath the eggshell.
"The eyes of the Heavenly Lord's body are useless; my own eyes will serve better! Open!"
Shen Mu gave a low shout and roused all the power within the Heavenly Lord's body to guard the brow. The brow split open, his true body emerged, and he opened the third eye at the center of his brow to look at the thing within the purple light.
His mind was shaken to its core. Beneath the cracked eggshell, surrounded and drowned in layer upon layer of purple light, was an exceedingly ancient altar!
That altar seemed to possess a strange power, drawing the Great Dao of heaven and earth to gather ceaselessly at its center; upon the cracked eggshell, rosy light and mist had branded dense, unimaginably intricate rune marks!
The marks on the eggshell were profoundly mysterious and intricate, even more complex and more numerous than the runes on the jade slips he had seen in the Repository Pavilion!
But the eggshell was already empty, holding nothing at all; only those inexhaustibly subtle runes still flickered without cease, now and then bursting with a mystic light that waxed and waned.
"There seems to be some egg white left inside..."