Chapter 1043 — Nine Farewells to the Heavenly Worthy
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 2 of 5
"Only, what he never expected was that the Heavenly Worthy Mu is a Heavenly Worthy too."
Long Qilin shook his head. From the very start the East Emperor had miscalculated, thinking he could control Shen Mu and take advantage of him.
Yet as an ancient god he had always stood high above, never seeing that the times had changed—that in this world the ancient gods were no longer the mightiest of beings.
And Shen Mu, as one of the three heroes of the Jingping Reforms, did not aim to surpass the ancient gods; rather, whether ancient gods or new, all gods were to serve mankind.
Shen Mu's aims and those of the ancient gods were fundamentally at odds—one might even say opposed. The East Emperor wished to control Shen Mu; how could Shen Mu ever submit willingly?
What was more, this Heavenly Worthy Mu of theirs had once been somewhat inflated, but in recent years the inflation had dwindled steadily. The Jingping Calamity had been a tremendous trial, and both his cultivation and his foundation, his cunning and his depth, had grown enormously.
And after his journey through the Great Void, though Shen Mu would not dare claim to be invincible among Heavenly Worthies of his own realm, defeating the reincarnated body of an ancient god was nothing worth mentioning.
Suddenly another thunderous crash rang out—a massive dragon-shaped archway came crashing down.
Yan'er had just begun to relax, but at the sound she could not help clenching her claws, prying a dragon scale off Long Qilin's head.
Long Qilin smarted with pain, but endured it without a word.
In the sky, many dragon clans, great and small, seemed to be roused by the sound of the archway's collapse and came back to their senses one after another. None of them had expected this outcome; likely even the East Emperor himself had not foreseen it.
Their gazes turned toward Shen Mu. He stood on Dragon Island, his sword core already withdrawn. As the saying went, when a thousand men point at a man, he dies without illness—yet beneath the stare of so many dragon experts, Shen Mu remained perfectly composed.
"Big brother, what do we do?" The civil and military officials of the Azure Dragon Heavenly Palace asked the Crown Prince Yuanlong one after another.
Crown Prince Yuanlong had no ideas either. Though he was an existence of the Imperial Throne realm capable of holding his own, in the Eastern Pole Heaven he was like that archway which had just fallen—fine to look at, but of little use.
The one who truly held sway in the Eastern Pole Heaven was still his father, the East Emperor. The power in his own hands was scant.
The East Emperor enjoyed long life and deep vision, and his hunger for control was strong. As his eldest crown prince, Yuanlong had been able to cultivate to the Imperial Throne realm only by relying on the chaos of the Shanghuang era: he had gone down to the mortal realm to do battle, escaping the East Emperor's shadow, and only thus had he attained the Imperial Throne.
Yet once the Shanghuang era ended and he returned to the Eastern Pole Heaven, he had returned to the East Emperor's shadow.
Beneath his father's shadow, he could make no decisions.
Just then, an ancient and boundless aura rose from the Azure Dragon Heavenly Palace, growing stronger and stronger. The East Emperor's enormous body coiled about the palace, round after round, his azure scales catching the sunlight like mirrors, mirroring the surrounding palaces with utter clarity.
The East Emperor's dragon head hovered above the Lingxiao Hall, then slowly lowered, his dragon whiskers dancing. Arriving above the Dragon Island in the Jade Pool, his whiskers struck the water's surface, raising wave after wave.
Shen Mu lifted his head and gazed up at the descending dragon head of the ancient god, then smiled. "Your Majesty the East Emperor, I suppose I have passed this trial?"