"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.

Shen Mu said hesitantly, "If I comprehend the Dao beneath the tree alongside them, my attainment will surely fall short of theirs, and then they will know that this Tyrant Body of mine is a counterfeit, full of water. If instead I take a devious path and directly refine the World Tree, they will still praise me, saying, indeed a Tyrant Body. Therefore, even if I cannot refine the World Tree, I must still grow one..."

"Then, are you prepared to face the prehistoric experts who have climbed here from a ruined universe?" the girl Tai Yi asked.

Shen Mu faltered.

The girl Tai Yi sneered, "You are still no match for them. The weakest among them is no less capable than the Ten Heavenly Lords, and that is only after the great calamity of destruction has worn them down and whittled them away. If they come into this universe and brand the void with the imprints of their own great Dao, reaching straight into the ultimate void of our universe, then they can restore themselves to their peak. By then, never mind you; even if the Ten Heavenly Lords were bound together, they would not be a match for any single one of them!"

Shen Mu hung his head in dejection and turned to leave. Just then the voice of the girl Tai Yi came from behind him: "But it is not that there is no solution."

Shen Mu halted, turned back, and a look of hope came over his face.

The girl Tai Yi broke into a smile, showing the few scattered teeth in her mouth, plainly in the midst of shedding her milk teeth. She said, "The reason I stand guard here is precisely to deal with such a situation. Should prehistoric experts set foot in here, I will slay them one by one!"

Shen Mu's eyes were bright as snow.

"But why should I do so? This Black Mountain is, after all, your Black Mountain. I have already yielded the seat of landlord to you."

The girl Tai Yi said with the air of an elder, "Mending Black Mountain every day is labor enough for me. So it is not that I cannot make a move, but mending the mountain day after day is truly dull."

Shen Mu said hastily, "I will mend the mountain! However many days you want me to mend it, I will!"

The girl Tai Yi winked slyly. "I will not ask you to mend it long, only half a year. In this half year I must leave Black Mountain to see to a certain matter. You need only climb to the very top of the World Tree every night; my Dao Tree will drip its Dao dew, and you collect that dew, and by day repair the cracked Black Mountain. After half a year I will hurry back, and then you will be free."

Shen Mu was overjoyed and nodded again and again.

The girl Tai Yi then produced another iron bucket, filled to the brim with Dao dew.

Shen Mu was suspicious. He looked at the little girl, then lowered his eyes to the Dao dew in the iron bucket, and ventured, "Daoist brother, how is it that you have two iron buckets here, both full of Dao dew? Did you not just say that the leaves of your Dao Tree are fixed in number, and that each time you can gather only one bucket of Dao dew?"

"Only one bucket can indeed be gathered."

The girl Tai Yi answered his doubts readily, "But before you all returned to the ancestral court, Black Mountain's activity was not so violent, so each time I mended it a little would be left over. A little added up to a lot, and so there came to be several extra buckets. Being frugal by nature, I kept them in case of need."

The corner of Shen Mu's eye twitched. "In other words, Daoist brother, you need not deal with those prehistoric experts who crawl out after all."

The girl Tai Yi said, crisp and clean, "Correct!"

Shen Mu gave a muffled snort, took the iron bucket, bowed, and said, "Many thanks, Daoist brother."

The girl Tai Yi's eyes curved into crescent moons. She laughed, "You are not angry?"

"Angry at what?"

Shen Mu laughed, "You lent me a bucket of Dao dew, and spared the world the calamity of prehistoric Dao-attainers crawling over. I cannot thank you enough; how could I be angry? I was merely played for a fool by you, and must own that my wisdom is no match for yours, yet my heart is still overjoyed."