Chapter 1518 — That One Crossed the River and Was Gone
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 1 of 5
Shen Mu was still frail now, but much improved from before.
This ordeal had been truly terrifying — even he himself had feared the World Tree would devour him completely.
Yet he had never expected that at the most critical moment, after the World Tree consumed his spirit embryo and soul, the tree would finally bear his brand! In the past, no matter what he tried, he could never refine the World Tree, nor imprint his own mark upon it.
But as the World Tree devoured his spirit embryo and soul, the brand had been seared into it just like that! This experience could well be counted among the most perilous and horrifying he had ever endured, yet in the end he had turned danger into safety — a blessing born of misfortune.
His heavenly palaces were still being rebuilt and reorganized, and his mana continued to rise steadily.
Shen Mu rose to his feet and spread out his God Treasury domain.
A precious tree stood towering within the Ancestral Court, ringed by the five great mineral veins, and he felt as though his root tendrils could extend to every corner of the domain. For the first time, he experienced the wondrous sensation of complete mastery over everything that was his. He stood at the feet of his primordial spirit; his primordial spirit stood beneath the tree; the tree was hidden within the God Treasury domain.
His primordial spirit was many times taller than his physical body, and the World Tree many times taller still than his primordial spirit.
Above was the blue sky, clear and boundless for ten thousand li; below was the earth, deep and immeasurable. This vista filled one with a sense of profound depth and vast openness. "If I never take risks, never make attempts, never explore the unknown, then I will never be able to merge with the World Tree.
It seems that daring to venture and try may yield tremendous rewards!
" Shen Mu quietly contemplated. Though his God Treasury domain had now taken shape and his heavenly palaces were constantly being restructured and rebuilt, he keenly sensed that the former Mystic Body Three Elixirs Art no longer suited his current cultivation path.
Most people cultivated a single art from childhood to old age, but he was different — his arts needed to constantly evolve and transform, to better suit who he was. The self of each era possessed different depths of knowledge, different understandings and insights, and therefore the arts, too, required continual refinement and improvement.
Now the knowledge he had comprehended was simply too vast. After obtaining the World Tree and planting it within his God Treasury, his understanding of Tai Chu, Tai Shi, Tai Su, and Tai Ji had reached new heights — and more crucially still, he had begun to touch upon the Dao of Tai Yi!
The former Mystic Body Three Elixirs Art could no longer contain such knowledge.
Now he needed to expand his cultivation art. His original heavenly palaces had already numbered nineteen, and this art had grown exceedingly complex. But now, with the World Tree, coordinating them all had become much easier.
Different heavenly palaces represented different Great Daos.
If one cultivated according to the methods of the Ten Heavenly Sovereigns, it would be difficult to fuse twenty or thirty Imperial Throne arts into a single Heavenly Court art within a short time. Shen Mu had long since fused nineteen Imperial Throne arts — at his age, to have achieved this much was already an extraordinary accomplishment.
But the further one walked this path of cultivation, the harder it became. Existence like the Ten Heavenly Sovereigns had fused over thirty arts, spending time measured in tens of thousands of years.
Among the Ten Heavenly Sovereigns, several had already cultivated thirty-five heavenly palaces, yet all were trapped at the thirty-sixth. For this reason, they each had to display their own divine powers and seek their own unique paths.