Chapter 1561 — Zither Music on the Great River
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 2 of 4
Yet there were also Dao-achievers who came beneath the tree and tried to burrow into its roots, hoping to crawl out of this ruined universe into the next life, the universe to come. Upon the World Tree, the three who fought could no longer endure that tribulation at its most intense, and one after another they too burrowed into the roots.
The whole Fourth Universe was annihilated, leaving only the World Tree adrift in the chaos energy, brewing the opening of heaven and earth once more, the evolution of a new cosmos out of the primeval wild. Then Shen Mu saw the Jade Capital, and could not help but start.
He saw a divine city of the utmost splendor collapse and collapse again in the final tribulation of that universe's destruction, and yet it was not wholly destroyed! Within that divine city stood a dao tree, lush and green, anchoring the chaos energy, and beneath the dao tree a figure stood erect, and did not go to the World Tree.
Alone he stood in the utterly destroyed universe, and in his eyes there was only grief and desolation, as though he mourned the ruin of that cosmos.
"The Master of the Miluo Palace!
" The Golden Ship of Salvation paused, then came to the far shore, and the ruins of the Fourth Universe's Jade Capital appeared before him.
Shen Mu pondered a while, his brows locked tight.
He had watched for so long, and yet he had never once discerned any trait of Tai Yi's!
A person's traits were hard to change, yet with every form Tai Yi took, his traits changed as well; not one of them ever repeated!
Whether in his speech and bearing, the subtlest expressions of his face, or his divine powers, nothing at all was ever the same twice.
"Thinking back carefully, even at Great Black Mountain, Tai Yi seemed to have no traits at all.
" Shen Mu let out a turbid breath, and urged the golden ship over the ruins of the Jade Capital between the two great rivers of chaos.
"When I recall anything about him now, every memory is vivid, and yet when I try to summon up his face, there is only chaos.
That is the trait of chaos, is it not?
" But the crux of the problem lay precisely here: though he had held Tai Yi fast in his sight through the tribulation of the Fourth Universe, as to what Tai Yi had become in the tribulation of the Fifth Universe, he knew nothing at all.
Without a trait to seek, there was no way to find Tai Yi's traces in the Fifth Universe.
And in the Sixth Universe, the Seventh Universe after that, there was even less hope of finding him!
"He told me to seek him by the map; could it be that it has something to do with that map of the land? " Shen Mu mused: the map left upon Tai Yi's staff was exceedingly complex, a place he had never seen, and he did not even know whether it was a map of the present universe at all!
If it were a map of a prehistoric universe, then there was even less chance of finding the place! "Wait.
Tai Yi does have one obvious trait.
" Suddenly Shen Mu's eyes lit up, and he clapped his hands and laughed.
"Every time he changes, his voice and face, his speech and bearing, his nature and habits, his divine powers and arts are all different; but there is one form he has used more than once!
The giant Tai Yi! " He could not help but grow elated.
The giant Tai Yi ought to be his first body, the body that held the Chaos Axe, that companion treasure born with him, and the body of his greatest strength.
Tai Yi had once used that body when he came to fell the World Tree; later, when the World Tree revived, he had become the giant Tai Yi again, bearing the Chaos Axe on his shoulder and coming to fell it.
And in the long river of chaos of the Fourth Universe, when Tai Yi was struck down into the Fourth Universe, the body he used at the outset was that same one! "In other words, this is Tai Yi's trait!