Yan'er watched that ridiculous Great Emperor still trying to extinguish the demonic fire, flapped her wings, and asked curiously, "Young Master, why can they not put out your demonic fire? I look at their essential qi cultivation and the power of their divine abilities, and they are stronger than you by I know not how much. "

"They never learned how!

"

Shen Mu sneered.

"Or rather, the Fire Heavenly Venerable never taught them!

"

Dragon Qilin glanced cautiously at Shen Mu and said, "Cult Master, I think the Southern Heaven is not bad. At the very least the people live and work in peace; so long as they have not yet reached sixty, they need not fear natural disaster. The people here are all very happy, carefree and untroubled.

"

"Those who take no thought for distant troubles will surely have near ones. Born in sorrow, die in pleasure.

If no outside enemy invades, the Southern Heaven can go on like this, a turtle with its head pulled in, never knowing there is a heaven beyond heaven. "

Shen Mu sneered, "If an outside enemy invades, how long do you think the Southern Heaven can hold out, with all these wine-skins and rice-bags, these fellows who do not know how to adapt? Leaving all else aside, my third junior brother Jiang Baigui, leading an army of a few hundred in the Yujing realm, could wipe out all the great divine kingdoms of the Southern Heaven ten times over, including the millions of gods and demons of the Crimson Emperor's Heavenly Palace! "

Rage surged in him; he flicked his sleeve and said, "Yan'er, you go put out the fire! "

Yan'er thought for a moment.

This demonic fire was a divine ability of Youdu, and she had watched from the side while Shen Mu cultivated it.

So she flew forward, transformed into a chubby little girl, waved her hand, and the demonic fire vanished. The disciples of the Fire Heavenly Venerable in the divine city looked appalled and all turned to stare at her. That Emperor-Rank expert hastily paid his respects and said, "Young lady, your abilities are extraordinary.

Might I ask which divine mountain's divine sage you are? Yan Yazi salutes you! "

Yan'er was full of loathing for the Fire Heavenly Venerable, and had no patience for his disciples either.

With a humph she turned and left.

Yan Yazi was stunned.

He flicked his sleeve and said, "No manners at all! Unfit to be a son!

"

The crowd chimed in, "The Heavenly Venerable has said: 'Only petty men and women are difficult to deal with! ' Breeding of this kind is not something everyone has!

"

Shen Mu left the divine city with Dragon Qilin and Yan'er.

Suddenly he halted, staring blankly into space. Dragon Qilin and Yan'er had no idea why he had fallen into a daze.

Then all at once Shen Mu blurted out, "I know the Fire Heavenly Venerable's weakness! "

Dragon Qilin immediately caught on. "The Fire Heavenly Venerable's weakness is the Youdu divine ability! This is a fatal weakness!

No, a deadly weakness! "

Shen Mu nodded and said, "His disciples cannot extinguish my demonic fire, which shows that the Fire Heavenly Venerable does not understand it either, that his attainments in the Youdu divine ability are exceedingly low.

Which is to say, though the Fire Heavenly Venerable's primordial spirit is strong, his soul is very weak. This weakness can rightly be called a deadly weakness!

"

The Fire Heavenly Venerable had killed the Southern Emperor and refined the Southern Emperor's entire cultivation, taking it for his own.

His magic power was boundless; among the Ten Heavenly Venerables, even if he could not rank first, he stood among the top three.

His attainments on the path of fire-type divine abilities were unmatched by any; moreover, he had at the very least fused eighteen Emperor-Rank cultivation methods, and his strength ranked in the upper tier among the Ten Heavenly Venerables. Yet his weakness was too great!

The one who could easily put him to death was the Void Heavenly Venerable, daughter of the Earth Lord. "The Fire Heavenly Venerable must know this weakness of his, and that is why he keeps so close to the Void Heavenly Venerable.

He is not the hot-tempered man others suppose him to be; on the contrary, he is full of schemes. "

Shen Mu thought, "Besides the Void Heavenly Venerable, there is also the You Heavenly Venerable.

He seems to have quarreled with the You Heavenly Venerable. Could that be the reason?

"

"In fact, Yin Tianzi could threaten him as well.

His weakness is too great. Hide it as well as he may, traces will be left. .

. "

Only when an outside enemy invaded the Southern Heaven, plunging it into disaster and chaos, leaving it powerless to resist, the people massacred, would the Fire Heavenly Venerable's crimes be revealed.

Only then would he be the sinner who dragged down the human race. Only then would his ideals and convictions crumble and collapse, and only then would he realize his mistake.

Before that, he remained ever the one who sheltered a region's people; despite all manner of bizarre doctrines, he had after all sheltered a region's people. His merits and faults could not presently be seen by the people of the Southern Heaven.

Even if the people of Jingping came to the Southern Heaven, not a few might well feel that only the Southern Heaven was a pure land among men. If Shen Mu insisted that his crimes reached the heavens, he would only enrage the people of the Southern Heaven, and all would cry for his beating; no one would understand him.

To judge a man's merits and faults, his rights and wrongs, requires long years.

Only when the dust of history settles does one know where the error lay. Shen Mu calmed his mind and sought out a place in the Southern Heaven with clear mountains and waters. He visualized several houses and carefully studied the Ling Heavenly Venerable's manuscript.

These days, as he studied, many insights had come to him, only they were not yet systematic. Dragon Qilin and Yan'er, rare to have settled down in peace, ran about everywhere in high spirits, and no one disturbed Shen Mu's quiet.

He brought out the potted plant and set it on the table, then walked into the potted plant himself, arriving in the house within it.

The tea on the table was still warm.

Shen Mu picked up the teacup. This tea had likely been left by Wei Suifeng.

He sniffed it; the clear fragrance seeped into his belly. Shen Mu drank his tea while he read.

The Ling Heavenly Venerable's manuscript dealt mostly with the Way of Creation, but it exhausted the principles of number and was exceedingly obscure and difficult to grasp. Shen Mu was himself a master of the Way of Creation, yet reading the Ling Heavenly Venerable's manuscript still taxed him enormously.

At times he needed to use a calculation divine weapon to madly compute before he could understand the meaning of the words. "No wonder the Heavenly Court obtained the Ling Heavenly Venerable's manuscript forty thousand years ago and still never cracked its contents.

Even if this manuscript were taken to the Dao Ancestor to see, the Dao Ancestor might not necessarily make sense of it. "

Shen Mu could not help but marvel.

The knowledge touched upon in the Ling Heavenly Venerable's manuscript was exceedingly vast; much of it had already left the scope of divination arts, and divination arts could not answer it. And when it came to the later contents of her manuscript, her comprehension had left the Way of Creation behind and reached another realm: no birth, no aging, no death, no illness, no disaster, no pain.

She had comprehended that all changes are the changes of matter; a person's birth, aging, sickness, and death are changes brought about by the alteration of matter, and a person becoming a deity is likewise matter changing. Shen Mu even felt that nearly all ancient gods were composed of matter, and so long as matter existed, the Ling Heavenly Venerable's divine ability could restrain them.