Chapter 1508 — Good Luck and Great Prosperity

"An old hand of the jianghu, and no mistake!"

Shu Jun could not help praising him. "With that trick of yours, we need have no worries behind us. But I too am an old hand of the jianghu; I need only take the road we took before, and I can withdraw unscathed!"

Wei Suifeng said, "Let us hope so."

"What do you mean, let us hope so? Jinx! Good luck and great prosperity!"

Shu Jun laughed heartily and stepped first into the Jade Capital City of the Ancestral Court.

Wei Suifeng followed behind him, his heart in a frenzy of alarm, and looked around. This Jade Capital City of the Ancestral Court was vastly different from the Jade Capital City of the Heavenly Court.

The Jade Capital City of the Ancestral Court was in utter ruin. Besides the vast, boundless aura of the Great Dao that had just surged forth when the seal was broken, there was also a strange aura of death, and under its influence he keenly sensed that the laws of the Great Dao he had cultivated were actually on the verge of collapse and disintegration!

This was the aura of the Great Dao withering away; his own laws of the Great Dao were dissolving without cease, and he was gradually losing the power of his Dao arts and divine abilities!

He also felt his mortal body and primal spirit under assault. His lifespan had once been as long as heaven and earth, yet now he could actually feel that his lifespan had an end; for every moment he lingered in this divine city, a day was shorn from his life.

And the deeper they went into the divine city, the faster his lifespan drained away!

Whoosh —

A hot wind blew up, stirring several skulls on the ground. Shu Jun's expression shifted slightly; he hurriedly dragged Wei Suifeng along at a run, came to a standstill beneath a withered great tree, and stared at the hot wind in a fever of alarm.

The hot wind swept past with a howl, carrying the skulls with it, and one skull rolled clattering to the foot of the tree.

Strangely, standing beneath this withered tree, one could not feel the hot wind at all.

Wei Suifeng reached out a hand, about to feel this wind, when Shu Jun suddenly struck him a heavy blow and knocked his hand down.

"You must not touch this wind!"

Shu Jun was in a fever of panic, his voice hoarse. "I call it the Wind of Heat Death. Touch it, and even your primal spirit burns to ashes!"

Wei Suifeng's heart lurched, and he said hastily, "How powerful is this Wind of Heat Death?"

"In those years our race, the Creators, brought many experts and ancient gods to explore this place. The first time we met this wind, all died but those who hid beneath the trees."

Shu Jun took out a great hammer and smashed it down at that skull. The skull must have belonged to a Creator; when it came to the foot of the tree, it suddenly grew the bones of four limbs and gave out a cackling sound — and then Shu Jun shattered it to powder with one blow of the hammer.

"Form and spirit annihilated together."

Shu Jun let out a breath, waved a hand to fling the shattered bone away, and said mildly, "Not even a shred of divine consciousness remains. Even the Great Dao of an ancient god is gone to dust and smoke."

Wei Suifeng looked at the shattered bone on the ground, his face showing bewilderment.

Shu Jun said, "It was the tree behind us that did it. This tree must be the Dao Tree that Sage Mu spoke of long ago, also called the World Tree. The Great Black Wood is a World Tree. Though this tree is dead, its lingering might remains; to stand guard here is to hold off the Wind of Heat Death. But this tree must never be touched. In those years, when we fled beneath the tree, some of us touched it and were changed."

His face turned strange. "Changed into another person — or perhaps not a person at all — and killed a good many of our experts..."

"Truly an ill-omened place..." Wei Suifeng shuddered several times and drew his collar tighter.

After the Wind of Heat Death passed, they left the withered tree. Wei Suifeng looked around and saw that the Jade Capital City of the Ancestral Court was everywhere strewn with broken halls and toppled buildings; even the Dao patterns on these palaces and structures had been worn away until only faint, indistinct lines remained.

And among the broken walls and ruined ramparts there was chaos qi, exceedingly dense and heavy, like so many small ponds; Wei Suifeng even saw that this chaos qi had frozen solid!

Just as they passed by, from one frozen mass of chaos qi a wisp of white vapor curled upward, like a head whose features could not be made out, and breathed a cold breath at them.

Shu Jun hurriedly dragged Wei Suifeng away, fleeing for their lives from that cold wind, and said at a rush, "That is the Wind of Cold Death, a cold wind formed when chaos congeals. If that cold wind blows upon you, everything melts away and becomes Void!"

Wei Suifeng had no choice but to flee for his life with him. They had not run far when Wei Suifeng's expression suddenly went blank: ahead of them, in the Jade Capital City, a thousand palaces and ten thousand halls stood in ordered array; though utterly ruined, one could still make out the grandeur of former days.

Yet before each of these palaces stood a withered tree!

Dead Dao Tree after dead Dao Tree!

Hundreds upon hundreds of Dao Trees came into his view. Wei Suifeng swallowed with difficulty, his throat parched, so shaken that not a single thought remained in his head — only blankness.

Shu Jun led him at a run, and coming beneath a withered Dao Tree he stopped at once and turned to look at the oncoming Wind of Cold Death.

Wei Suifeng stood obediently at his side. Shu Jun said, "Do not touch it."

Wei Suifeng nodded obediently.

Shu Jun stared fixedly at the Wind of Cold Death, in a fever of alarm, and said without taking his eyes off it, "In those years the God King Boyang was our elder brother. His cultivation of divine consciousness was exceedingly strong... mm, a tiny bit stronger than mine. He relied chiefly on Long Xiao. He and Long Xiao joined hands to probe this Wind of Cold Death, and told us that when this wind blows past, all matter melts away, no matter moves any longer, and the particles that compose matter split without cease, until they can split no more. And when they have split to the smallest, the distance between every particle of matter is infinite..."

Wei Suifeng could no longer imagine such a state.

"This is the Void. Even the thirty-five layers of the Void are not so formidable as this Void."

Shu Jun, his hair a tangled puff atop his big head, licked his lips and said, "Boyang and Long Xiao guessed that above the thirty-five layers of the Void there is one more layer of Void, most likely the Void blown out by this Wind of Cold Death. He called it the Ultimate Void, and guessed that perhaps the Wind of Cold Death in this city is a fragment of the Ultimate Void, and that this wind is blown out by the ghosts who died in the Ultimate Void..."

The Void has the power to void. Any living being or substance that steps into the Void is voided.

This so-called voiding means that when a person steps into the Void, his body grows larger and larger, thinner and thinner, gradually changing from solid form into a void-body.

The particles of matter that compose the person are stretched further and further apart, until at last the whole person becomes a host of mutually unrelated particles that vanish into the Void.

This state is voiding.

The third heaven of Shen Mu's Dao Realm, the Great Luo Heaven's Gathering of the Circle into Completion, employed precisely the principles of the Void and of divine consciousness; it was a Dao Realm divine ability he had comprehended from the knowledge of the Creators.

Wei Suifeng stared blankly into the distance.

Shu Jun watched the Wind of Cold Death, waiting for it to pass, when suddenly Wei Suifeng tugged at his sleeve. Shu Jun said, "Wait a little longer; this wind has not fully passed..."