Chapter 1291 — Alliance of the Weak
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 1 of 3
The woman's voice came drifting toward him, slow and unhurried: "Kneel to me. Bow to me. Speak what is in your heart."
Hao Tianzun struggled with all his strength, then crawled flat before the woman's feet and knocked his head to the ground in worship.
No sooner had he spoken the thing in his heart than he felt his wounds closing at a speed beyond all imagining!
The divine blood he had shed was flowing back, returning into his body.
His frame swiftly grew light again.
Flesh and blood knit themselves between his neck and his head, soon merging into one, so that he need no longer fear that a surfeit of qi and blood would blow his skull off.
At the same moment he heard the clear ringing of the Dao; he felt his celestial palace reassembling within him, and the Dao-wounds upon his body receding one by one, until they were no more!
This was too wondrous.
This was no medicine, no spell, no art of creation, no art of making things; it was more like a wondrous Dao healing him according to his own will!
"Taisu?"
Shen Mu's voice reached Hao Tianzun's ears, and the prostrating Hao Tianzun stirred inwardly: "Taisu? My father is named Taichu, and this woman is named Taisu. Can she be... can she be an innate divinity born from the ore veins of the Ancestral Court?"
A faint panic rose in his heart. To be reborn by borrowing Taisu's power plainly carried enormous hidden peril!
Taisu might well seize the chance to take control of him!
Yet he endured. To restore himself with Taisu's power might be a terrible thing, but to refuse her power would be worse still; he might even die!
"Mu Tianzun." The woman's voice came to him, sweet and pleasing to the ear, like the most profound of divine melodies.
Shen Mu halted and looked toward the woman standing behind Hao Tianzun.
The goddess was flawless. As she stood there, Dao-lights of every hue flowed around her as in a dream, spreading gently, their canopy stretching wider and wider.
Shen Mu drifted lightly backward and laughed: "Taisu. Brother Taisu, do not forget: without me, you could never have been born. There is no enmity between us; in truth, you might even say I did you a kindness. Had I not freed you from the Lapis Lazuli Azure Heaven Banner, you would still be a treasure inside that banner, to be handled at another's whim!"
The Dao-light abruptly swept down upon Shen Mu and snapped shut with a swish. Shen Mu's eyes jumped; before the light could close, he escaped from the Dark Capital of the Great Void and arrived in the Great Void itself, laughing: "Brother Taisu, I will do you a courtesy today and spare Hao Tianzun's life. Brother Hao, I leave you your life; I will come to collect it another day!"
He appeared in the Great Void, and at once discovered to his horror that the Dao-light was still all around him!
Shen Mu's blood ran cold. The Dao-light was the manifestation of Taisu's own great Dao, marvelous beyond measure; in the mere blink of his horror it had already taken form as a divine object, inverted over his head!
It was a great bell. When Shen Mu had once probed Taisu's divine egg, sending his consciousness into it, he had seen only the vastness of Hongmeng, and the qi of Hongmeng had taken the shape of a great bell, identical to the one before his eyes!
Upon the walls of this bell were birds and beasts, insects and fish, the sun, the moon and the stars, rivers of stars and constellations, the ten thousand phenomena of heaven and earth; within it was stored a might close to that of the cleaving of heaven from earth!
Shen Mu's hair stood on end. Without another word he brought out the egg of Taishi, and the obscure, hard-to-fathom Dao-speech of Taishi issued from his mouth: "Brother Taishi, I care not what dealings you have with Taisu, but if you lend me an arm and help me escape this calamity, I will search with all my heart and soul for the Taishi divine stone and the Taishi primordial stone, seize back the Taishi ore vein, and help you be born!"
"Why did you not say so sooner?"