Chapter 1723 — The Simplehearted Venerable
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 1 of 4
Shen Mu was briefly taken aback; he knew something of the feud between the Cyan Emperor of the Eastern Heaven and the Eastern Emperor Azure Dragon.
After the Jingping Calamity, the Martial Ultimate God Venerable had come to Shen Mu and spoken to him of the Cyan Emperor's past.
Before the Heavenly Court was founded, Yu the Heavenly Venerable had sat beneath a withered tree to comprehend the Dao, and there he had grasped the method by which the Primordial Fetus Divine Treasury is opened; the withered tree beneath which he attained enlightenment received a share of that fortune, and so the old tree met spring again and came back to life. That old tree was the future Cyan Emperor of the Eastern Heaven — though the road it walked was a tortuous one.
Because it had become a divine tree, men felled it and refined it into a treasure; passing from hand to hand, it came at last to the Jade Pool Grand Gathering in the early years of the Longhan era, where it heard Shen Mu and Heavenly Venerable Hao transmit the method of becoming a god. Afterward the divine tree's owner was slain, and the tree fell into the Yuan Realm and took root there, drawing on the spirit of heaven and earth, its cultivation rising ever higher. Yet in the Chiming era it was felled once more, by humans, and refined into a treasure, which came into the hands of Emperor Ming, who forged it into an Imperial Throne divine weapon of tremendous power.
Then came the Shanghuang era. By then the Cyan Emperor was the mightiest divine weapon under heaven, and had bred a spirit within itself — only to be broken by the Eastern Emperor Azure Dragon, who nearly shattered both its form and its soul. Reduced to a worthless thing and cast aside by men, the Cyan Emperor survived nonetheless by sheer force of conviction, shed the body of a treasure, and cultivated its way to the Imperial Throne, where it was valued by the Heavenly Venerable Xiao of that day and granted the title Cyan Emperor of the Eastern Heaven, to serve as a check upon the Eastern Emperor Azure Dragon.
From this, too, sprang the feud between the two. The Eastern Emperor was master of the Eastern Pole Heaven, the Cyan Emperor the great emperor of the Eastern Heaven; of course the two set themselves against each other, and grievance piled upon grievance, deeper and more numerous with every passing year.
In the palace of the Martial Ultimate God Venerable, the mural of the Eastern Emperor Azure Dragon showed him crawling at the Cyan Emperor's feet, lingering on the edge of death, fawning and begging for life — so deep was the Cyan Emperor's hatred of the Eastern Emperor. Heavenly Venerable Yun said, "The Imperial Preceptor of Jingping is demanding the Eastern Emperor's dragon scales.
He must mean to revive the Eastern Emperor, so that the Eastern Emperor will draw out the Cyan Emperor and force him into all-out war, and thereby create the chance to shatter the armies of the Eastern Heaven and wipe out its gods and devils in one stroke. Only so can he free his own hands to aid Carefree Village.
" Shen Mu glanced at Ling Yuxiu, and she rose at once to go in search of the Eastern Emperor Azure Dragon's dragon scales. "The Eastern Emperor Azure Dragon," he said, "was arrogant and untamable, holding himself above all others, yet his methods were base and filthy, and men held him in contempt.
He was the first to surrender to the Heavenly Court and take the title Heavenly Venerable Azure Dragon, thinking he could keep his life — but how could Heavenly Emperor Hao ever let him off? " Shen Mu laughed. "To kill Heavenly Venerable Fire, Heavenly Emperor Hao sacrificed him.
When my wife and I were married, Taichu sent men with the Eastern Emperor's dragon scales, to test whether I had truly lost all heart; so I did not revive him.