Chapter 1431 — Fragments of the Great Luo Heaven
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 1 of 4
Through the vertical eye in Shen Mu's brow he gazed down into the depths of the earth—yet what his sight fell upon was no earth at all, but a horrific vision of a cosmos in the throes of destruction. The Great Dao, the stars, the galaxies, space, the heavens, countless living beings—all were ground to dust, and even the indestructible divine consciousness of mighty beings perished along with the collapsing cosmos.
Most dreadful of all was the sight of layer upon layer of the Void being annihilated in turn. The Void is everywhere, yet only powerful gods can perceive its existence; fewer still can enter it; and those who can brand their divine consciousness and the Great Dao upon the Void, existing alongside it—rarer yet.
As for branding one's cultivation into the higher layers of the Void, such beings are rare as phoenix feathers and unicorn horns.
Among the Heavenly Venerables of the present day, only the Great Emperor and Kai Huang have achieved this, and the mighty leaders of the Creators in the Ancient Age could do so as well. The Great Emperor transformed his divine consciousness and Great Dao into the Great Luo Heaven of Consciousness, branding it into the thirty-sixth layer of the Void, the Ultimate Void. Kai Huang branded his Sword Dao into the thirty-fifth layer of the Void, while the leaders of the Creators and a great many primal spirits of the Ancient Age branded their divine consciousness into the other layers of the Void.
In those years, to eradicate the Creator race once and for all, the Ancient God Heavenly Emperor led the Ancient Gods and a number of powerful Demigods deep into the Void, erasing bit by bit the brands the mighty Creators had left there; Divine Emperor Langxuan, then the progenitor of the Demigods, had followed the Heavenly Emperor to obliterate those brands, and the memory was seared into him. He knew well how difficult it was to erase a Creator's brand—those brands of divine consciousness gnawed into the Void like woodworms, hard to find, hard to utterly destroy.
And now, he had seen the thirty-fifth layer of the Void collapse utterly within but a short span, the brands of the mighty entrusted to that layer shattering and perishing one after another.
Boundless dread rose in his heart; his eyes went wide despite himself, cold sweat broke out on his forehead, and his face turned pale. Then he saw the destruction of the thirty-sixth layer of the Void.
The thirty-sixth layer of the Void—the Void in which the Great Emperor had entrusted the Great Luo Heaven of his divine consciousness, also called the Ultimate Void, the Great Luo Heaven, the Supreme Heaven—in the great calamity of the cosmos's destruction, this Ultimate Void burst apart entire, like an eggshell hurled from the heights onto the ground, like a water-filled sphere pierced by a needle. Divine Emperor Langxuan trembled and trembled again; the dread of this great annihilation swept over him, reaching the deepest recesses of his Dao heart. His Dao heart had never been as strong as Shen Mu's—such was the weakness of the Divine Treasury Heavenly Palace system. Shen Mu could remain composed when beholding the great annihilation; he could not.
"This annihilation that destroys all things—even. .
. even a Heavenly Venerable could not withstand it.
.
.
" he thought in terror. Yet what was strange was that all he saw were motionless images. Countless rivers of stars shattered, the heavens annihilated, the Void disintegrated, the Ultimate Void exploded—and all of it was still, motionless.
Images, yes—and yet not so, for an image is flat, whereas the scene he beheld through Shen Mu's vertical eye was three-dimensional.
Then he saw the "big thing" Shen Mu had spoken of. It was a coffin—a coffin that had flown out from the Great Luo Heaven of the Ultimate Void.
He knew not what divine metal it was cast from; it gleamed with a metallic luster, yet it had rotted with the cosmos's destruction and was covered all over with rust.