Chapter 1212 — The Plain Maiden Descends to the Dust
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 1 of 3
"The Taisu Mine Vein must be that vein of the Nüxin clan — Gong Tianzun's domain.
" Shen Mu murmured to himself, then took out the Taisu Divine Stone Gong Tianzun had given him and turned it over and over in his hand.
The stone was a cube, yet it was changing at every instant; inside was not inside, outside was not outside, and the boundary between them had gone hazy. Back when he first entered the Ancestral Court, he had drawn out the Lapis Azure Heaven Banner and driven it into the Void Beast's skull, and the first place the Void Beast had gone was the Taisu Mine Vein.
Which meant this stone ought to be called the Taisu Divine Stone, and the divine egg within the Lapis Azure Heaven Banner ought to be called the Taisu Divine Egg. The Taisu Divine Egg's purpose was the Taisu Mine Vein; only by obtaining the divine stones and raw stones from that vein could she refine the egg fluid and be born smoothly into the world.
"Gong Tianzun promised to give me a tenth of the Taisu Divine Stones, and I in turn promised to explore the mysteries of the Taisu Divine Stone for her. But now that I have drunk a mouthful of the egg fluid, I fear I will never get to study its workings.
" He gripped the stone and tried to draw its power into himself, but the stone, as though it were no substance at all, bored straight into his hand and raced up his arm to his belly! Shen Mu was startled.
In his organs that mouthful of egg fluid was still shifting through endless transformations, but the instant the Taisu Divine Stone arrived there, a wondrous scene unfolded. The egg fluid changed in a thousand ways, and the Taisu Divine Stone changed with it, matched against it. With every change the two made, Shen Mu felt a vast and boundless Dao resonance of unfathomable subtlety rise from the depths of his heart, while a power pure and exquisite came surging in, reaching every limb and bone, every divine treasury, every heavenly palace.
More than that, his primordial spirit suddenly began to waver between void and solid, now congealing into substance, now dissolving into nothing. The Taisu Divine Stone gradually shrank, and the egg fluid grew ever less, until bit by bit Shen Mu gained a thread of understanding of the Dao of Taisu.
Taisu is the beginning of substance; it is the process by which energy turns into matter, by which the formed becomes the substantial. Energy becomes formed substance — and this is why it can answer every plea.
And because what people beg of the Taisu Divine Egg is a change in matter, the Taisu Divine Egg is able to answer every plea.
This is not the same as the Dao of Taishi. Shen Mu had studied the Taishi Egg and the Dao of Taishi, and had won no small mastery of that Dao; the Dao of Taishi is the Dao by which energy becomes formed yet unsubstantial, holding no matter at all, and therefore it can break Ling Tianzun's divine ability of the immutability of matter. "The Dao of Taichu should be the Innate Primordial Qi — nothing but energy, without matter.
The Innate Primordial Qi is the general principle of all innate Great Daos, which is why the moment Taichu was born he became the leader of all ancient gods, and why his becoming the Heaven Emperor of the ancient gods was only natural.
It is merely that he was polluted by Taidi, and so never attained a perfect form. " Shen Mu pondered for a moment.
"The Dao of Taiji, then, is the principle by which yin and yang become the ten thousand things.
Thus in the Taiji Mine Vein, living things and matter pass through every form — grass and trees can become huge beasts, men and women can become mountains and stones; no constant form, no constant state, mystery beyond mystery, wonder beyond wonder.
" "By rights, the ancient gods of these four great mine veins should not rank above or below one another; once mature and born into the world, any one of them is foremost among the ten thousand Daos, sovereign of the ten thousand gods. Yet Taiyi stands a level higher still.