Chapter 1481 — The Nine Nether Great Prison Suppresses High Heaven
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 1 of 3
"Dead?"
The Lord of Heaven's primal spirit came out to welcome them and invited them into his own heavenly palace, saying with an air of leisure: "I have been waiting for this day, waiting for my own death, for release from the bonds of the Heavenly Dao. Shepherd Heavenly Venerable, you are free and unfettered. You are not an ancient god born of the Great Dao, so you do not understand the oppression the Great Dao lays upon me. This is my body. Look — can I still command my own body now?"
"Do you know what it means to have no say over yourself?"
He said bleakly: "The Dao-born gods are born with no say over themselves. Now the consciousness of the Heavenly Dao has taken complete control of my body — even of my primal spirit. Though I have a consciousness of my own, my every movement, my every word, is commanded by the Heavenly Dao. Do you think it is I who controls this body now? No! It is the Heavenly Dao!"
"It is the Heavenly Dao that goes its slow way through this universe! I am no free being — I am nothing but a puppet of the Heavenly Dao! You envy the Lord of Heaven's strength, the Lord of Heaven's eminence, his boundless authority and boundless power — while I hate. I hate that from the moment I was born I was imprisoned in this body, caged in this prison!"
At this moment he was in fact somewhat exhilarated; only, in front of Shen Mu and the others, he suppressed his exhilaration.
"I even envy the Sacrifice Gods. They were born of sacrifice and bear none of the many constraints of the Dao-born gods. I envy too the countless living things of the great thousand worlds. They are as small as ants, and yet they are free and unfettered..."
"No! You do not envy them!"
Shen Mu halted and looked at him coldly: "How could the Lord of Heaven envy such ants? Lord of Heaven, your aim is to leap out of the Heavenly Dao's grasp — and in leaping out, you do not mean to become an ant, but to keep the Lord of Heaven's power, to remain high above! What you wish to do is not to become one of the living, but to rule the living!"
"Wrong!"
The Lord of Heaven's primal spirit stopped as well, turned, and looked at Shen Mu and the other four, and said gravely: "You are right that I do not envy the ants, but the second half of what you said is utterly, utterly wrong! I do not mean to rule the living. What I mean to do is transcend! To transcend the Heavenly Dao and reach a state as utterly unbound as that of my Daoist brother Taiyi!"
Shen Mu pointed at him and laughed heartily: "Do you know what the Grand Heavenly Venerable thinks? Do you know that what the Grand Heavenly Venerable calls transcending the Heavenly Dao means letting the Lord of Heaven that once was die utterly, becoming one of the Ten Heavenly Venerables, becoming the sovereign of this universe? You cannot transcend!"
Though he laughed heartily, there was not a trace of joy on his face or in his heart.
Zai Fu frowned.
He knew Shen Mu well; after all, Shen Mu had been raised by him and the other elders of Yincan Village, and this expression of Shen Mu's usually meant that his care and his regard had reached the point where he would throw reason to the winds!
At such a time Shen Mu had only one way of doing things: at any cost!
He quietly turned the hilt of the Heaven Blade, and Zhe Huali, Luo Wushuang, and the others understood at once; Tian Shu abruptly threw back his head and gulped down two fierce mouthfuls of wine to steady his nerve.
They were prepared. Even if Shen Mu truly tore off all pretense with the Lord of Heaven on the Lord of Heaven's spirit platform, even if they were to face the assault of the Heavenly Dao, they would not flinch.
"Of course I know."