Chapter 1234 — The Holder of the Heavenly Emperor's Throne
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 1 of 3
Xu Shenghua returned to the Shangcang Divine Sect with hesitation and doubt written plainly on his face. Jing Yan saw it, and knew at once what it meant.
"Husband, do you mean to leave the Western Lands? " Xu Shenghua nodded.
"This visit, Sect Master Shen showed me the fruits of his cultivation over these years, and spoke to me of the Ancestral Court, and of Taixu, and stirred my interest. " Jing Yan laughed.
"Husband, you have always walked where your heart led.
In the past your mind was calm and unmoved, and that is why you could remain in the Western Lands all these years.
Now that your heart is stirred, why not follow it?
" Xu Shenghua said hesitantly, "I have a wife and daughter now, and so it is hard to follow my heart. " Jing Yan smiled faintly. "Does my husband think it is your wife and daughter who made you, or who confined you? " Xu Shenghua was struck dumb.
Jing Yan said with a smile, "Some men think that with a wife and children they are shackled, that their every ambition can never be fulfilled, and so they curse heaven and curse earth, and the household knows no peace.
Others think that with a wife and children they have all the more drive to strive, to press forward, to seek advancement. Husband, are you the common man of the first kind, or the strong man of the second? " Light broke upon Xu Shenghua. He bowed and thanked her: "I am grateful to my lady for pointing out the way. " Jing Yan hastily raised him up and laughed.
"Husband, you do me too much honor. The turmoil in the world will only grow greater and more ferocious; the scale of the chaos may well be no less than the Jingping Calamity.
If you cannot raise yourself up, then in days to come it will be hard enough to protect a single district's people, hard even to protect your wife and child, hard even to protect yourself.
Since you have the will to advance and the way to advance, then go. There is no need to fret over us, mother and daughter.
" Xu Shenghua made up his mind. At once he packed his bags, kissed Jing Yan and his daughter Xu Mengqing, and set out from the Western Lands for Jingping. Shen Mu, meanwhile, returned to the cubic prison where the Ark of the Other Shore lay.
It was still sealed, but the seal could no longer hinder Shen Mu. He stepped inside, and there he saw a great many monks laboring bitterly to repair that magnificent leviathan of a ship.
The Ark of the Other Shore could be called the grandest vessel ever forged by man or god since ancient times; it was like a flying continent, possessed of inconceivable powers, able to pierce the void and sail beneath the Void Bridge!
And how terrible the power of the Void Bridge was, Shen Mu had long known: the Void Bridge of Taixu was such that even a Celestial Venerable could not cross it in safety. Yet the Ark of the Other Shore could.
These monks of the Kaihuang Era must have slipped into this cubic prison from Fengdu, soundless and unseen, without rousing the gods and demons of the Heavenly Court. Repairing the Ark of the Other Shore was exceedingly difficult.
In the Kaihuang Era, it was because there existed such heaven-defying figures as Emperor Shitian Li Youran, who took forging as the foundation of his Dao, that the Ark of the Other Shore could be built at all, and the Land of No Sorrow with it.
The Heavenly Court possessed no such heaven-defying being as Emperor Shitian, and so it could only leave the Ark of the Other Shore blocking that place, unable to repair it.
Moreover, without the Ark's astrolabe, one could not reach the Land of No Sorrow either; and so the Celestial Venerables of the Heavenly Court did not concern themselves greatly with this ship. Shen Mu came aboard the Ark of the Other Shore.
The vessel had by now been repaired in large part.