Chapter 1516 — Heavenly Punishment Descends
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 1 of 4
"Heavenly Lord Mu, why must you always have so many strange and outlandish ideas?"
The girl Tai Yi could not help but say, "Every one of your ideas is absurd and unorthodox, yet they brim with a wicked allure. Even I, at times, cannot help but be stirred, and think that if your schemes were only put into practice, they would surely prove splendid!"
Shen Mu's eyes shone.
The little girl sniffed up her runny nose and said, "But by my experience, every one of your ideas turns out to be utterly rotten. Tai Di counted as half a Dao-attainer, yet after hearing only two or three of your rotten ideas, he lost his mortal body. And I listened to your idea, lent you the Chaos Axe, and so you cut down the World Tree and could not bring it back to life."
Shen Mu laughed heartily, his voice ringing loud and clear.
The girl Tai Yi waited quietly for him to finish the laughter with which he masked his embarrassment, then went on, "How do you know that this idea of yours is not another rotten one? Even I dare not say whether that World Tree can be revived. And even if it is revived, do you know the consequences?"
Shen Mu's expression changed drastically. He ventured, "You mean that once this World Tree enters my God Treasury, it will burst my God Treasury apart?"
"Burst your God Treasury apart? That it should not. When this tree comes back to life, its roots and tendrils will grow slowly, but the tree itself will not grow for a time."
The girl Tai Yi dispelled his misgivings and said, "I am speaking of another matter. The water in my bucket is no ordinary water, but the Dao dew from my Dao Tree. The Dao dew condenses at night and vanishes by day. Every leaf upon my Dao Tree is a measure of my cultivation, and each leaf can condense only a single drop of Dao dew each night. The total amount of Dao dew is fixed. Each time I can gather only this one bucket of water, and this one bucket is just enough to repair the peaks of Black Mountain that crack open at night, and to stop the experts of the previous universe from smuggling themselves through."
Shen Mu understood her meaning and said, "In other words, if you use the Dao dew to revive that World Tree, then experts from the previous cosmic era will surely slip through?"
The girl Tai Yi nodded. "That is precisely the reasoning. If you had the means to hold them off, that would be easy enough, and lending you a bucket of water would be no great matter; you could simply go and kill the intruders. But it happens that you lack that means."
Shen Mu was overcome with shame.
The girl Tai Yi glanced at him and said unhurriedly, "Let me point you to the proper path. Go beneath the World Tree and comprehend the Dao as Lan Yutian and Xu Shenghua do. When in the future you have attained something, you may use the Dao runes of your own great Dao to plant a Dao Tree in your own ancestral court. With this Dao Tree, when you one day cultivate to the point of attaining the Dao, you will discover how vast the benefits are, and that all your former hardships were not spent in vain! Such attainment of the Dao is nothing like Tai Di's, so full of water."
Shen Mu's face was suffused with shame. He glanced about, and seeing that no one was near, he bent down to the little girl's ear and said softly, "Let me tell you a secret. Do not tell anyone else. To be honest..."
He hesitated again and again, then mustered his courage and told the girl Tai Yi the secret he had hidden deep in his heart for many years: "In truth, I am not as clever as Xu Shenghua and Lan Yutian, my comprehension is not as high as theirs, and my Dao heart is not necessarily stronger than theirs."
The girl Tai Yi rolled her eyes and looked at him with boredom, plainly having known this all along.