Chapter 1517 — Ere Chaos Was Divided, This Tree I Planted

Everyone hurriedly crowded around, only to see that although Shen Mu had already become a dried corpse, the vertical eye between his brows had not dried out — its eyeball was still rolling and swiveling about. "No harm, no harm! Everyone disperse, disperse!" The Blind Elder waved his hand, shooing away the onlookers. "Nothing worth seeing here. He won't die." "A pity the Deaf Elder isn't here," Grandmother Zhu said regretfully. "Otherwise he could have painted a portrait of this, and it would have been handed down through the ages." The vertical eye between Shen Mu's brows turned to look at her with a resentful glare, and Grandmother Zhu hurriedly fled. This World Tree was still devouring and absorbing the energy within his body, leaving him with not a shred of cultivation. Not only that — the Great Dao runes he had cultivated, his Dao patterns and Dao chains, had all been absorbed, not one trace left behind! His mana had been stored in the myriad heavens and worlds of his Yuan Embryo God Treasury, and in each of the great heavenly palaces. Yet in but a short span, his myriad heavens were annihilated, and even the Ancestral Court kept shrinking! Even his heavenly palaces were collapsing one after another, transformed into pure, attribute-less energy and devoured by the World Tree! What was more terrifying still: one root tendril after another had coiled around his primordial spirit, seizing the power of his primordial spirit! Shen Mu's primordial spirit, too, shrank at flying speed, until at last it lost all its energy and became a tiny soul and spirit embryo, standing alone and forlorn beneath the tree, looking utterly helpless. In but a brief moment, the Ancestral Court had shrunk to its limit, leaving only four mineral veins and a single piece of Taiyi's eggshell. Then the four mineral veins vanished one by one; block after block of divine stone had all its power devoured by the World Tree and crumbled to dust! After the four mineral veins disappeared, only the Tai Chu eggshell, the Tai Su eggshell, the Tai Ji eggshell, and the Taiyi eggshell remained, along with one whole Egg of Tai Shi. Crack— The Tai Su eggshell suddenly split, and was at once ground to powder by the World Tree's power, transformed into utterly pure Tai Su Dao and absorbed by the World Tree! Even the Tai Su primal liquid was absorbed utterly clean by the World Tree! From the Egg of Tai Shi in the air came a shriek of alarm. The great egg went whistling away, trying to flee this place, but Shen Mu's God Treasury was now no longer large — only the land shrouded by the World Tree remained. However it rammed and crashed, it could not escape! Crack, crack — the two Tai Chu eggs shattered of their own accord as well. Then the two Tai Ji eggshells were destroyed. Only that one Taiyi eggshell was firm enough, and was not ground away by the World Tree. Whoosh— The Egg of Tai Shi flew over and hid trembling within the Taiyi eggshell. Root tendrils stretched toward it; the Egg of Tai Shi rolled with a lurch, propping up the eggshell, while it hid beneath the shell, striving to shrink the divine egg. A crunching, cracking sound came, as though something were gnawing at the eggshell. On the surface of the Taiyi eggshell, fine cracks actually began to appear. Before long the cracks multiplied and grew dense. The Egg of Tai Shi thought to itself, This is bad — and then the Taiyi eggshell burst apart, each fragment annihilated by the World Tree's power, transformed into Taiyi Dao and absorbed by that World Tree! The ancient god Tai Shi within the egg nearly fainted. He saw the World Tree's root tendrils rolling toward him — they would surely crush his eggshell too, and even absorb the primal liquid within his egg! Absorbing the Tai Shi primal liquid would be one thing, but if this monstrous tree absorbed him as well, would he not die and have his Dao extinguished before he was even born? Just then a beam of light shone down from the sky. The Egg of Tai Shi immediately flew up, racing toward that radiance. Behind it, root tendrils danced wildly like tentacles, grasping after it. Just as the tendrils were about to seize it, the Egg of Tai Shi finally flew out through that beam of light, by the narrowest of margins. Bursting out through the light, he discovered that the place from which the light shone down was none other than the eye between Shen Mu's brows. That eye had opened and let the light shine down, giving him the chance to escape. Otherwise, once caught by the World Tree's root tendrils, he would surely have been absorbed utterly clean! The Egg of Tai Shi, having escaped death, finally let out a breath of relief. He saw Shen Mu lying on the ground like a dried corpse, and hurriedly landed beside him — only to find Shen Mu's body stiff and immovable, while the eyeball of the vertical eye between his brows rolled wildly about. The Egg of Tai Shi stood upright beside him, having just recovered from the fright, and said, "You always love to meddle and make a mess of things, and now you've stirred up a great disaster, haven't you? This tree wants to absorb the power of the Great Dao of heaven and earth. With no power of the Great Dao of heaven and earth left, it has no choice but to absorb you..." As he said this, the World Tree in Shen Mu's Yuan Embryo God Treasury had nothing left to swallow, and so it stopped absorbing. In his Yuan Embryo God Treasury, apart from Shen Mu's spirit embryo and soul, only that World Tree remained — everything else was gone! Fortunately, most of the treasures Shen Mu had collected were stored in the vertical eye between his brows, not placed in the Yuan Embryo God Treasury. These treasures had all been preserved, and had not been devoured by the World Tree. Suddenly, the World Tree swallowed Shen Mu's spirit embryo and primordial spirit into the tree as well. At that very moment, something wondrous happened. Shen Mu felt himself merge into one with this tree. His primordial spirit seemed to fuse completely with the World Tree, able to sense the tree's branches, its leaves, and its root tendrils. Those branches were like his arms, the leaves like his palms, the root tendrils like his sensory nerves, able to perceive all things outside with perfect clarity. Not only that — he also felt that his body seemed to be composed of the Dao. Some of those Daos were ones he had comprehended through a thousand hardships, such as Creation, such as Divine Consciousness, such as the various innate Daos and the various acquired Daos. Some were Daos whose edges he had only just touched, such as Tai Chu, Tai Su, Tai Ji, and Tai Shi. And some were Daos he had never come into contact with at all, such as Taiyi! And now, all the Daos became incomparably clear, as though they had become his instinct, his consciousness; the mysteries hidden within the Daos seemed to have become his very thoughts. Within his Yuan Embryo God Treasury, the World Tree suddenly gave a gentle tremor. Chaos was split open. In an instant, his Yuan Embryo God Treasury seemed to have undergone the dividing of heaven and earth! In the briefest moment of the cosmos's creation, first there was boundless, limitless void — a void in which there was nothing at all, like the legendary ultimate void, Daluo Heaven. Yet the next moment, this creation of heaven and earth evolved to the birth of qi — the primal qi of the Innate, surging forth within his God Treasury! The primal qi of the Innate emerged, and the cosmos, like thick primal liquid, became a pure state of energy; formless yet substantial energy filled the entire primordial cosmos. Energy erupted; the primordial cosmos expanded violently outward. Space was born; primal matter, along with the pouring energy, sprayed forth into countless dimensions, and did not gather together — thus it had form and substance, but no body. In the end, the primordial cosmos expanded to a certain degree; primal matter grew rich and gathered together, forming brilliant stars, form