Chapter 1403 — The Prison Locks the Heart, the Dao Endures Forever
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 2 of 3
Nor was that all: Shen Mu even marshaled the cultivation newly gained to him, preparing to open a Nine Prisons Platform on the reverse face of his own Ancestral Court, besides the ones to be opened in his heavenly palaces. And his ambition did not stop there — within his own Ancestral Court he would raise four heavenly gates, cultivate Yao Terrace and Yao Pool, and forge his own God-Slaying Platform and Jade Capital City.
In that tiny inch-square space, his cultivation grew ever more majestic and his pacing ever faster.
The inch-square space seemed to him an endless road for the tempering of the dao heart; from within his body came crackling detonations as his sealed consciousness and great Dao broke their seals without cease.
His blood and qi surged like a wild tide, pouring out of the Ninth Prison to fill the Eighth, the Seventh, the Sixth.
After a moment, all at once from the Nine Prisons Platform came a roaring like surging tides, each cry louder than the last, each wave higher than the one before; amid an earth-shaking thunder, a vast ocean of blood and qi poured forth, filled the heavenly prison, and turned it into a sea of blood and qi.
Boom — A heavenly palace leapt out from the sea of blood and qi of the Nine Prisons Platform and settled upon its surface, ten thousand beams of dao light shooting from that palace in every direction.
At the same instant, one heavenly palace after another came leaping out as well, pressing down upon the sea of blood and qi and joining into a single heavenly court, a thousand palaces and ten thousand halls arrayed in ordered splendor. Shen Mu's figure rose slowly from the sea of blood and qi, his body towering, his bearing vigorous yet composed, as he walked slowly out of that sea.
Within him, nearly two thousand ancient god imprints dwelt in the orifices of his flesh, spirit clear and Dao bright, the great Dao pure and undivided.
This was a phenomenon he had never known before.
His understanding of the ancient gods' great Dao came chiefly from the records of the Archive Pavilion, supplemented by the analysis of microscopic divination arts and by the Great Emperor's Daluo Supreme Divine Consciousness.
By these means he had forged nearly two thousand ancient god imprints and stored them in the orifices of his flesh to strengthen his body; yet those imprints were all incomplete, their great Dao impure.
The Daluo Supreme Divine Consciousness above all — he had not received it as a transmission from the Great Emperor, but had refined the Great Emperor's consciousness and seized his memories by force; and never having seen those ancient gods lost to history, he could not refine his flesh to the Great Emperor's level.
But this time, after the prison locked his dao heart and the dao heart was recast, the great Dao stored within those ancient god imprints was baptized as well; his various comprehensions deepened, and his sense of the Dao grew purer.
Though his flesh still fell far short of the Great Emperor at his peak, he now possessed the potential to stand abreast of the Great Emperor — even to surpass him.
His primary primordial spirit rose, boundless and vast, enthroned in the heavenly court, while one subordinate primordial spirit after another flew out and settled into its own heavenly palace.
The primary primordial spirit commanded the subordinate spirits as a great emperor who rules heaven and earth commands the sovereign lords who guard the many daos and the many realms. The sea of blood and qi seethed, then gradually rose and merged into his flesh.
Shen Mu lowered his head and looked toward the Nine Prisons Platform: the Ninth Prison appeared utterly empty, and yet in his eyes he saw the dao heart that had once been locked there.
The Ninth Prison lay beneath his feet; and yet in the Ninth Prison within his heart, he was still striving onward there, his steps firm, measuring out his own inch-square heart one step at a time.