Chapter 1232 — Making One Utterly Despair
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 1 of 3
Xu Shenghua changed his approach at once. His divine powers and Dao arts were all aimed at Shen Mu's Divine Treasury Domain: first he imitated Shen Mu's Divine Treasury and rebuilt it with Dao arts of his own.
Then he transmuted Shen Mu's Divine Treasury into a divine power to match himself.
Yet that was not the crux of it.
The crux was his formidable power of deduction: once Shen Mu broke one of his divine powers, he would immediately deduce, from Shen Mu's own power, the way to break it. He was like a mighty calculating engine—even when Shen Mu's divine powers far surpassed his in might, even when Shen Mu's mana was more vigorous than his own, he could still preserve himself and unravel Shen Mu's powers. He had even perceived the weakness of Shen Mu's Divine Treasury Domain: that domain was Shen Mu's own Primordial Fetus Divine Treasury, and every source of Shen Mu's strength lay in that Primordial Fetus Divine Treasury.
Destroy the Primordial Fetus Divine Treasury, and Shen Mu's strength would ebb lower and lower, until at last he was defeated. But the man he faced was Shen Mu.
When Shen Mu's Divine Treasury Domain unfurled in full, he finally understood, as Shen Mu had said he would, what despair meant.
Above his head came the assault of the forty-nine Daos of Xuan Capital; all around him the great Daos of Four Extremes Heaven slew and struck; on the ground the thirty-six great Daos of Yuan Capital cut and strangled; there were also the stealth attacks of the sixty-four great Daos of You Capital; and most despairing of all, the formation of the true gods of the stars of all heavens, interweaving and shifting without cease.
Yet this was not the cruelest part.
The cruelest were Shen Mu's primordial spirits within the sixteen Heavenly Palaces. Those primordial spirits were no projections, but spirits divided out from the undying consciousness of the Three Primeval Spirits. The primordial spirit of the Sword Heavenly Palace excelled in the Dao of the sword; the primordial spirit of the Formation Heavenly Palace excelled in formations; the primordial spirit of the Medicine Heavenly Palace was versed in the Dao of poison; and the primordial spirit of the Foundry Heavenly Palace took him for a lump of stubborn iron, to be flattened and hammered until he was round and lustrous as a pearl.
And the primordial spirit in the Consciousness Heavenly Palace struck in the manner hardest of all to guard against: with an incomparably overbearing consciousness it attacked his own, leaving his mind now muddled and dull, now plunged into illusory realms.
Most formidable of all, Shen Mu had unified the powers of all sixteen Heavenly Palaces—and not only those: he had even brought under his command the powers of Xuan Capital, Yuan Capital, You Capital, and even such worlds as Tianyin.
Xu Shenghua knew that Shen Mu had not used his full strength; even against him, Shen Mu still held something back. Only, Xu Shenghua did not know how much. He knew only that the gulf between him and Shen Mu had once been exceedingly narrow, but after Shen Mu left the Yuan Realm and set foot in the Heavenly Court, that narrow gulf had begun to widen, step by step.
Even so, Xu Shenghua wanted to prove himself—to prove that he had the strength and the means to contend with Shen Mu! He pressed forward with all his might, exhausting every scrap of his wisdom to unravel the divine powers that might come at him from any direction at any moment, and slew his way toward Shen Mu in the Ancestral Court.
He felt his essence, energy and spirit attain a height never reached before; for the first time he felt his mind so lucid, running at high speed in a state of utter clarity. He was like a lake of perfect stillness, mirroring every ripple that came from all around.