Chapter 1397 — Cultivation Unstable, Foundation Unsettled
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 2 of 3
She alone truly wished to exterminate the Ancient Gods.
The Ten Heavenly Venerables of the Heavenly Alliance were her support. On the far side of the Ancestral Court, Shen Mu searched the whole way along, and of a sudden raised his head: before him two lofty mountains stood like a heavenly gate, and that gate was the Southern Heavenly Gate. "Longxiao cannot be far now.
Since I have come this far, I may as well go into the Southern Heavenly Gate and have a look. " He looked up at this portal wrought naturally by heaven and earth.
This was the Ancestral Court's Southern Heavenly Gate, many times more towering and magnificent than the Heavenly Court's Southern Heavenly Gate. The two great mountains were wreathed in Dao fire; the Dao fire was built of dao patterns, and within every tongue of flame lay a different construction of great Dao veins.
"If the Dao Ancestor were here, it would likely take him no more than a few days to parse all this Dao fire, and to comprehend a great many runes from it.
" Shen Mu walked into the Ancestral Court's Southern Heavenly Gate.
The Dao fire touched his body, and it was most peculiar; it carried no heat at all when it met him, and did not even set alight his clothes or a single hair.
Shen Mu gave a cry of surprise and passed through the Southern Heavenly Gate.
Nothing happened at all. He stepped back again, studying the gate, musing in silence.
All at once his primordial spirit left its shell and strode toward the Ancestral Court's Southern Heavenly Gate. He would try passing through the Southern Heavenly Gate without borrowing his fleshly body, with his primordial spirit alone.
The instant his primordial spirit stepped into the Southern Heavenly Gate, a thunderous roar broke at his ear, booming and shaking like a great ceremonial bell. Immediately at his primordial spirit's ear came a Dao sound of incomparable magnitude, so vast that he seemed to have entered the very gate of the Dao, and it struck his Dao heart with a force beyond compare.
"No wonder none in the ancient age could discover the secret of the Four Great Heavenly Gates; in that age the Creators had no primordial spirit at all! " Enlightenment dawned upon him, and in that moment he felt the might of the Southern Heavenly Gate's Dao fire. The Dao fire invaded his primordial spirit, scorching it from every direction, penetrating even into his consciousness, into his vital essence, into the great Dao runes he had forged.
This was a tempering: there was the peril that his primordial spirit might be burned to ash by the Dao fire, but he would also gain the tempering of the Southern Heavenly Gate and advance another step. He let the Dao fire scorch him and walked on, the wondrous Dao sound at his ear.
Shen Mu slowed his steps and let the Dao fire temper him.
Unawares, many feelings and insights came to him, and as he went deeper, the marvelous sensations the Dao sound brought him grew ever more numerous. But the deeper he went, the greater the Dao fire's might, until it dimly began to threaten his primordial spirit's safety.
Of course, Dao fire of such power could no longer harm him, yet it gave Shen Mu a feeling that his foundation was unsteady.
That unsteadiness of foundation came precisely from the realm of the Southern Heavenly Gate within the Heavenly Palace system.
The Southern Heavenly Gate realm was also called the True God: it was when a divine arts practitioner who had come before the Heavenly Palace's Southern Heavenly Gate walked into that gate, passed through that portal, and by the grinding tempering of the great Dao laws of the Southern Heavenly Gate raised both his primordial spirit and his fleshly body to the level of the True God.