Chapter 1401 — Gathering the Scattered Dao Heart
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 2 of 3
Mu Tianzun, can you truly not break through the prison-sealed Dao Heart?
" . .
. Shen Mu curled up feebly; around him was utter darkness, without a glimmer of light.
"Listen — there's a child crying outside! " "I think little Shen must have another kind of constitution — an Overlord Body that combines the strengths of all four great constitutions!
" "So long as you have conviction, even a mortal body is an Overlord Body!
" "It is hard to destroy the gods in a temple, but harder still to destroy the god within your heart!
" "The way of the sages is nothing other than the daily use of the common people; whatever differs from it is heresy!
" "To act according to one's nature, to follow nature purely — that is what is called the Dao.
" "The reforms I and Imperial Preceptor Jingping have pushed forward are meant to change the situation in which the sects hold the lifeblood of the common people and the nation in their grasp.
I will not merely reform — I will revolt, revolt against these sects, revolt against myself!
" "The Kaihuang Reform accords with Heaven and answers to the people.
" "What use do I have for this sword?
What use? This sword — damn it, it just will not sharpen! " "There is no such place as a Land of No Sorrow in this world!
" "If we rot in the future, there will be those who come after to overthrow us.
There's no need to think about it so much.
" "Take care!
I entrust the future to you too, my friend!
" "Sect Master, you were right.
" .
.
. After a long while, Shen Mu opened his eyes.
His Dao Heart was still sealed, and he was still like a mortal; yet hope for life had been kindled in him. "Taiyi was right.
I never had a Dao Heart before — it was tempered into being. Nor was I ever a being of divine powers, much less a god; I cultivated my way to it.
In the past I was not Sect Master Shen, not Human Emperor Shen, not Mu Tianzun — I won all of that step by step!
In the past I had no soul of my own, no body of my own, but I had my own consciousness!
In the past I had no fellow cultivators of my own, but I had many friends of my own!
In the past I was an orphan with no kin, but I had Yincan Village, and I had Jingping!
In the past I had no path of my own! But now—" He gritted his teeth against the piercing pain, staggered to his feet, and did all he could to control his spiritual consciousness and keep his mind clear.
"But now, I have my own Dao and my own path!
" The pain contorted his consciousness, yet he still desperately roused his spiritual consciousness, forcibly driving the Mysterious Body Three Elixirs Art. He took a step, then another, as though he had returned to Yincan Village, to those bitter days of running while he trained.
Only this time, his steps were utterly unsteady, his body twisted and swaying, as he struggled to walk within that tiny patch of ground at the very bottom level of the Nine Prison Platform of the heavenly prison.
His spiritual consciousness marshaled the vital essence that had already grown rigid, making it circulate in its wake; he desperately drove the art onward, feeling pain as if his bones were being scraped wherever his consciousness and essence passed. He trembled, each step bringing agony beyond enduring.
The Taishi Egg still said nothing. It was watching this scene, watching how a lowly being who had fallen into absolute despair walked out of it, and what it was that sustained him to keep going.
It had always been full of prejudice against the later-born living beings, and its view of the ancient gods was no better: it had been a creator among the later-born who dug it out of the Taishi ore vein, and it was the ancient god, the Heavenly Emperor Taichu, who had imprisoned it.