Chapter 964: The Other Side of the Void

The golden desert was incredibly vast. Qin Mu and Luo Wushuang had traveled for over ten days, yet they still hadn't reached its end.

Many strange occurrences happened in the desert. At night, it was dark and moonless; the moon of the Great Void had been sent flying out of the sky by Qin Mu's Primordial Wood Core. As night deepened, a woman's crying could be heard from the desert, circling them, sometimes close, sometimes far.

Luo Wushuang's primordial spirit emerged, transforming into a divine being a thousand zhang tall, radiating immense light, and walked with a blade. Only then did the sound cease to approach them.

"That must be the crying of lonely spirits," Qin Mu remarked.

Qin Mu, somewhat puzzled, asked, "Don't lonely spirits in the desert transform into Great Void devils?"

In the darkness, there were also chilling roars and lingering, melodious songs. With no stars or moon in the sky, and unable to discern their direction, they decided to rest. Just then, wisps of eerie ghost fire drifted leisurely ahead in the darkness.

They followed the ghost fire; when they stopped, it stopped too, and when they moved forward, it also moved forward. By day, the ghost fire vanished. However, Qin Mu took out the map drawn by Yue Tingge and discovered that the path they had taken perfectly matched it. He couldn't help but marvel.

On the second night, the ghost fire reappeared, guiding them on their journey. On the third night, led by the ghost fire, they surprisingly encountered an extremely magnificent city in the desert. The city was brightly lit in the night, and even in the dead of night, it was bustling. The streets were filled with vendors and towering giants, ten or even a hundred zhang tall, moving to and fro.

The ghost fire floated into the city, landed, and transformed into a giant who respectfully invited them in. The giants in the city were extremely hospitable and entertained them warmly.

Qin Mu opened his third eye on his forehead, looked around, and saw through the true forms of these Creators, remaining silent. Whenever the giants offered a toast, Qin Mu accepted it without refusal. Luo Wushuang was initially very wary, suspecting a trick, but seeing Qin Mu eating, drinking, and having fun, he also relaxed.

Ever since he arrived in the Great Void, things had not gone well for Luo Wushuang. He had been forced to rebel against the Celestial Heavens and suffered a defeat at Qin Mu's hands. Burdened by his worries, he drank himself into a stupor.

Qin Mu, having eaten and drunk his fill, bowed to the giants and said, "Thank you for your hospitality. If I achieve anything in the future, I will establish the Youdu in the Great Void, allowing all of you to be reborn."

Hearing this, the giants beamed with joy. The city lord, a thousand-zhang giant, invited everyone to sing and dance in his palm. They partied for a long time that night, and Luo Wushuang, drunk, fell asleep.

When dawn broke, Qin Mu woke him. Luo Wushuang got up, only to realize he was lying in the palm of a thousand-zhang giant, surrounded by withered bones. Luo Wushuang was filled with shock and doubt. Standing on the giant's hand, he looked down. The city was filled with bones, with no living soul. A chill ran down his spine as he thought, "What exactly did we eat and drink last night?"

Qin Mu bowed to the giant's corpse and said, "Rest assured, everyone, I will certainly fulfill my promise from yesterday in the future. Brother Luo, let's go. We must continue our journey."

Luo Wushuang followed him out of the Creator city. Looking back, he saw sand whipping up, which quickly submerged the eerie city beneath the golden sand. Luo Wushuang then remembered that when they encountered the city last night, sand had also swirled up in the desert, and then the city had appeared. He felt a true chill, not knowing what exactly he had eaten and drunk so freely the night before.

On the seventh night, they encountered an old woman blocking their path. Leading a child by the hand and carrying a basket, she knelt on the ground, pushed the basket to Qin Mu's feet, and kowtowed to them repeatedly.

Qin Mu said, "Madam, rest assured, I have accepted what's in the basket. In the future, I will establish the Youdu here, so that all of you may have a place to go."

The old woman looked up, gave a wide smile, and, leading the child, transformed into a shadowy breeze and dispersed, vanishing into the darkness.

Luo Wushuang, puzzled, couldn't help but ask, "Qin Batian, what's with these Creators appearing on our path? And why do you keep telling them you'll establish the Youdu here?"

"Those are Creators who died in the desert," Qin Mu replied. He picked up the basket, lifted the cloth covering it, and said, "They died here, their souls with nowhere to go. During the day, they suffer under the scorching sun, and only at night can they emerge. Establishing the Youdu will give them a final resting place."

Luo Wushuang was still perplexed. "The Great Void's natural laws are incomplete," he said. "After Creators die here, they all transform into Great Void devils. Why haven't the ghosts of these Creators become devils?"

"It's likely because their power is too immense," Qin Mu explained. "The Creator city lord from the ghost city earlier, and the old woman who blocked our path, their heroic spirits and divine consciousness remained intact after death, allowing them to protect themselves and even their kin from being corrupted by the Great Void. The reason I said I'd establish the Youdu here is also because they are so powerful."

Qin Mu took out the item from the basket. It was a small bottle with divine consciousness, almost solidified, flowing at its mouth, sealing what was inside. He chuckled, "If we hadn't agreed to their request, I'm afraid we wouldn't have been able to leave this desert alive."

Luo Wushuang's heart was chilled. He hadn't considered that much.

"So, will Qin Batian really help them establish a Youdu?" he asked. "Your promise to establish the Youdu was just a temporary measure, wasn't it? Establishing the Youdu in the Great Void is as difficult as ascending to heaven."

Qin Mu examined the bottle and said, "The reason they stopped us is precisely because I am capable of establishing the Youdu."

Luo Wushuang was puzzled. Qin Mu did not explain. His third eye on his forehead contained the Qin character continent, refined from a fragment of the Earth Count's horn. For others, establishing the Youdu was an impossible task, but for him, it was not. After all, the Netherworld and Fengdu were both created from the Earth Count's horn; like the Qin character continent, they were all fragments of the Earth Count's horn.

However, Qin Mu currently did not possess the power to transform a fragment of the Earth Count's horn into a world. Moreover, he was not the Divine Son of Youdu; if Qin Fengqing were here, it would be simple. He observed the divine consciousness seal at the bottle's mouth. The seal was very special, composed of divine consciousness. Through it, one could see what appeared to be a vast ocean inside the bottle; a slight shake would reveal raging waves and terrifying storms within.

Qin Mu tried to probe into the bottle with his vital qi, but was blocked by the divine consciousness seal at its mouth. "That's right," he thought, "they are Creators, I should use divine consciousness."

He mobilized his divine consciousness, which passed through the seal at the bottle's mouth, and indeed, he saw a vast ocean inside. When he had shaken the bottle earlier, it had stirred up hurricanes and enormous waves on the surface, roaring powerfully, accompanied by lightning and thunder! His divine consciousness looked upwards and saw countless stars at the bottle's mouth, with a starlit river swirling around it, forming six stellar vortices. His divine consciousness flew over the ocean to the bottle's wall, only to find that the wall was actually land, rising vertically from the sea, forming a circular ring. The land was extremely vast, with mountains and rivers, everything imaginable! Just then, he saw a sun rise from the sea!

"This tiny bottle actually contains a world!" Qin Mu thought in astonishment. Strangely, despite containing a world, the bottle didn't feel heavy at all.

"So, that old woman earlier was the clan leader of the Hidden Mountain clan," Shu Jun's voice rang in his mind, saying, "The Hidden Mountain clan was a large tribe in the Primordial Era. The Creators of this tribe were skilled at creating all-heavens. This bottle of yours is actually an all-heaven world."

Qin Mu was startled and somewhat disbelieving. How vast were the all-heaven worlds? Could such a tiny bottle contain an all-heaven? Moreover, when his divine consciousness entered the bottle just now, he saw that the world within the bottle was even larger than many all-heavens in the Primeval Realm.

"In the Primordial Era, the all-heavens conjured by the Hidden Mountain clan were countless," Shu Jun said. He continued, "The all-heaven she gave you should be a 'Pot Heaven'. A bottle containing a Pot Heaven is called a Pot Heaven Bottle; it is a rare treasure. Her giving you the Pot Heaven Bottle shows how much she values you."

Qin Mu solemnly placed the Pot Heaven Bottle into the Qin character continent, next to the crystal coffin and Yun Tianzun's physical body. The Pot Heaven Bottle was extremely important. If the reform of Eternal Peace failed in the future, he would have to find a fallback plan, and this Pot Heaven Bottle could provide refuge for its people.

"However, that old woman is no ordinary person; her things aren't so easy to take," Shu Jun chuckled. "Since you've received her treasure, you must fulfill your promise to her. This old woman was a formidable character in the Primordial Era; even though she's dead, her divine consciousness persists. If you fail to fulfill your promise to her, you will die a horrific death!" There was a hint of schadenfreude in his voice as he said, "When you took the basket, her divine consciousness was already planted on you. She has countless ways to kill you!"

Qin Mu's face darkened, and he grumbled, "Such as?"

"For example, she could conjure various things inside you," Shu Jun chuckled. "Make countless needles grow in your belly, prevent you from seeing enemy moves during battle, or conjure a sun inside you to burn you to death, or an ocean to drown you. Killing you would be too easy."

Qin Mu's scalp tingled. He took out paper and a brush and wrote down his promise to the Hidden Mountain clan to avoid forgetting it.

Ten days later, they arrived at the edge of the great desert. Along the way, they saw more ruins submerged by the desert. What they had encountered before were cities, then simple strongholds, and finally, makeshift camps hastily set up. Wind blew golden sand, and beneath the desert were bones everywhere.

This was likely due to the Great Emperor's attack on the Great Void. His divine consciousness, incredibly powerful, enveloped the Great Void, manifesting into various attacks to hunt down the various Creator tribes. The environment of the Great Void also grew increasingly harsh. Creators could manipulate nature according to their will, but after the Great Emperor's destruction, the Great Void, filled with unowned divine consciousness and Great Void devils, had become a place where Creators found it difficult to survive. This should be the last group of Creators from the Great Void. They fled here, leaving behind countless corpses of their kin.

"The migration journey of the Great Void Creators should have happened around the time the Great Emperor was killed," Qin Mu mused, "which was during the mid to late Dragon Han era." He mused, "In that era, the Celestial Heavens didn't even know there was another world or a bloody war happening. The only one who knew about it was Yun Tianzun."

For some unknown reason, the Great Emperor had massacred the Great Void. Yun Tianzun must have come here and, with the Great Void Creators, designed a trap to confine the Great Emperor to his death within the realm of supreme divine consciousness.

"But why did Yun Tianzun's physical body appear in the Great Emperor's glabella?" Qin Mu wondered. Qin Mu was somewhat puzzled. Yun Tianzun should not have died in this battle but rather in the struggle for control of the Celestial Heavens. His physical body could not have appeared here. Moreover, the Yun family's bloodline curse should have been planted by the Creators at the time of Yun Tianzun's death, but by then, the Great Emperor had clearly already died in the Great Void. He sighed; the more secrets he learned, the more doubts arose in his heart. Although he had been to the Dragon Han era, that era still seemed shrouded in mist before his eyes. He had too many questions that he wished Yun Tianzun could answer.

"Once I leave the Great Void, I will use the power of Heaven Duke and Earth Count to resurrect Yun Tianzun!"

Qin Mu looked ahead and saw the edge of the Great Void. Beyond its end was an endless dark void, with no land. The Creators' last gathering place, as mentioned by Yue Tingge, was built there: a simple city wall and a towering altar, on which some faint light flickered. Those Great Void Creators must have created another void here, with a void bridge connecting to the world they created, and migrated to that world.

Qin Mu and Luo Wushuang arrived at the gathering place. It was already empty, with only the ancient altar remaining. The light on the altar was a sporadic bridge, leading to an unknown destination. However, the void bridge was very unstable; the bridge of light would occasionally collapse and then reform, while outside the bridge, it was a scene of doomsday!

Qin Mu frowned, looking at the void bridge, pondering how to cross it. Suddenly, he saw a woman crossing the bridge from the other end! Around the woman was a scene of cataclysmic destruction: the void twisted, collapsed, and was utterly terrifying. Behind the woman, celestial palaces floated, forming a fragmented Celestial Heavens, as she intended to traverse the void and reach the other side of the void bridge!

"Venerable Void!" Luo Wushuang whispered.