Chapter 1561 — Zither Music on the Great River
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 1 of 4
The Golden Ship of Salvation came to the long river of chaos that was the Fourth Universe, and its speed eased.
Shen Mu stood at the prow, gazing down, searching the waters inch by inch for any trace of Tai Yi.
Tai Yi had been struck down into the Fourth Universe, and to comb an entire cosmos for a glimpse of him was no different from fishing a needle out of the sea. But in the Great Tribulation of Destruction the universe was collapsing, all living things were being extinguished, the whole of it shrinking without pause, space turning to nothingness and matter to energy; the only room left in which anything could stir, perhaps, was the region around the World Tree of the Ancestral Court.
So Shen Mu need only watch the few mighty ones still surviving in the Fourth Universe, and he would find Tai Yi.
Yet Tai Yi was a master of transformation, and the very fact that he had been driven into the tribulation of destruction by the Master of the Miluo Palace and the mighty ones of the Fourth Universe meant that the Fourth Universe held beings who could match him.
Moreover, from what Wei Suifeng had let slip, Tai Yi had been gravely wounded by the Master of the Miluo Palace, and most likely had changed his face and form the moment he fell into the Fourth Universe; Shen Mu therefore had to fix his gaze on Tai Yi's transformations from the very start of the tribulation, if he was ever to learn what the man had become. Shen Mu searched on, patient and minute, and the Golden Ship of Salvation sailed neither fast nor slow; after he knew not how many days, he suddenly saw the body of Tai Yi, beneath the surface of the river, go plunging down at furious speed into the long river of chaos!
His spirits surged. This was the very scene of Tai Yi being struck down into the Fourth Universe!
He gathered all his attention, and the vertical eye set in the center of his brow locked hard upon Tai Yi's falling figure.
It was two Dao-achievers who had dragged Tai Yi into the long river of chaos, and the three of them fought without pause as they fell, spinning like figures on a revolving lantern, dazzling to the eye.
The golden ship sailed on, and as it sailed, the battle below seemed to quicken a countless times over.
The giant Tai Yi, too gravely wounded, could not hold against the two Dao-achievers; but he changed his form, becoming a youth, and the wounds on his body vanished into thin air.
Yet the youth Tai Yi could not match the two in strength, and was wounded again and again; each time his injuries deepened, Tai Yi changed form once more, until the two Dao-achievers could do nothing with him.
Suddenly Tai Yi turned into a wisp of chaos qi and fled far away, and the two Dao-achievers gave chase, fighting him all the way.
Aboard the golden ship, Shen Mu held the three of them fast in his sight, and saw them cut their way down to the World Tree amid the tribulation of destruction; even standing upon the tree they never ceased to shift and strike at one another.
As the ship moved on and the far shore drew nearer, he saw that the universe below had all but annihilated itself: nearly all matter had turned to energy, compressed together, chaos qi wreathing the World Tree, terrible beyond words!
Before such dreadful energy even a Dao-achiever could scarcely escape death; only the World Tree was as it had always been, slowly stretching out its roots and tendrils in that tribulation of destruction at its most intense, drinking in its power. Not a speck of soil remained upon those roots and tendrils; the whole Ancestral Court had been reduced to ash, and many Dao-achievers who had not reached the World Tree in time were turned to tribulation ash.