Chapter 1449 — Nurturing the Spirit with the Blade

On the Yong River, blade light rose. Five figures clashed and scattered, and these five went straight to their Dao-entering divine abilities, raising their cultivation to its utmost at the very first collision!

Among the divine ability practitioners of Jingping there was a saying: those who wield the blade are all crude louts.

The saying was somewhat unfair—Zaifu, for one, looked like a crude lout but was in truth a great talent—yet those who used the blade truly did not probe and test as much as the divine ability schools or the sword schools. The blade belonged to the school of combat arts, and moreover to the close-quarters branch of that school; its close-in fighting ran even deeper than the martial Dao.

In blade arts, for instance, there was the body-to-body back-lean, back against back, relying on muscle and the sensing of qi mechanisms to find the opponent's weakness and kill in a single strike. The divine ability sword arts had many probing moves, but the blade was short weapon against short weapon; if you probed, and your opponent struck with full force, the loss was yours.

Zaifu, Zhe Huali, Tian Shu, and Luo Wushuang attacked Shen Mu almost simultaneously.

In these years Zhe Huali had been on Jingping's western line, tempered by battle after battle.

The battlefield was not the same as a jianghu brawl; these years of training had deepened his blade Dao day by day. This was skill honed on the field of slaughter, every move taking life, his blade Dao profound and ever more strange and unfathomable.

At the same time he possessed the grand sweep of the Heavenly Blade; his blade art claimed the character of the strange and also the character of the orthodox, and it blended in the arts of calculation of the Daoist sect and the discipline of Luo Wushuang—it could be called exquisite beyond compare. He had already reached the ninth heaven of entering the Dao through the blade, and in the instant he clashed with Shen Mu he at once sensed that Shen Mu's cultivation of mana was about the same as his own, and his heart settled.

He thought: "That brat Shen Mu ran off to the Heavenly Court to be Heavenly Venerate Mu, and sure enough, living in comfort, he has grown slack. My cultivation has risen to the Yaotai realm; he is probably Yaotai too, about the same as me. In those years, his cultivation was far deeper than mine! " Luo Wushuang had already cultivated to the eighteenth heaven of blade Dao, and his cultivation realm had reached the Lingxiao realm.

The Dao arts and divine abilities of Jingping flourished and prospered, and coming to Jingping had made his cultivation and strength soar. Yet when his move was delivered and clashed with Shen Mu's blade, he felt Shen Mu's mana endless and unbroken, like the surging River of Heaven, rushing on without cease, no less than his own cultivation, and his heart turned cold at once: "How formidable!

Worthy of the Overlord Body—his cultivation has risen so fast, I fear he is already a master of the Yujing realm! " He knew that at the same realm Shen Mu had almost no rival, and only a Heavenly Venerate could contend with him; so he felt that Shen Mu at the Yujing realm was enough to hold his own against himself at the Lingxiao realm. Zaifu's Heavenly Blade clashed with Shen Mu's blade, and he too sensed that Shen Mu's cultivation and strength were not far from his own.

"Shen'er has cultivated to the Zhanshentai realm in these years—not slow at all, only the depth of his cultivation is not so terrifying.

In those years, none of us in Yincan Village could take his moves at the same realm.

" On the other side, Heavenly King Tian Shu displayed a heaven-flooding imperial might; behind him a whole heavenly palace leapt forth with a roar, his primordial spirit towering, enthroned upon the imperial seat of the Lingxiao Treasure Hall! The Dique Divine Blade was in his hand, all its might fully aroused.

Zaifu had called him the Imperial Blade, and those words were indeed not wrong!

Heavenly King Tian Shu had gone to the Land of the Great Void to seek his original heart, and after the bloody battles there, the barrier that had bound his realm was utterly gone; he broke through in battle, cultivated the Imperial Throne, and became another great master of the Imperial Throne realm in the Kaihuang Heavenly Court.

The Dique Divine Blade was a divine blade forged for him by Heavenly King Indra; for a long time the blade's might had surpassed Tian Shu's own strength. One blade severed the horn of Tubo and carved out a Fengdu.

One blade cut across the Desolate Ruins mountain range and sealed the strangeness and darkness of the Desolate Ruins within the Desolate Ruins. And now Heavenly King Tian Shu's strength was enough to perfectly command the Dique!

He was the emperor among blades; his blade severed souls and seized spirits—it was the demonic blade of Youdu!

Yet when the Dique Divine Blade clashed with the blade qi transformed from Shen Mu's primal qi, Heavenly King Tian Shu could not help his breath stirring, and he was secretly startled: "How formidable—able to withstand my full ten-tenths mana!

Worthy of the Heavenly Venerate whom even Kaihuang cannot forget; in a mere dozen years or so he has cultivated to the Imperial Throne realm!

But when I have drunk wine, I fear neither Tubo nor the Yin Son of Heaven, and a Heavenly Venerate I will cut down just the same! Ten-tenths battle strength is not my limit! " He gave a long furious whistle, his movements ghostly: now his body dissolved into demonic qi, now hung high like a demonic sun, now his sinews and frame turned hideous, snake-headed and man-bodied, towering, commanding the great Dao of Youdu, now goat-headed and man-bodied, tiny beyond measure, hard for anyone to find. Yet his blade was ruthlessly powerful; the might of his blade art leaked not at all, bearing the unique style of the Kaihuang era.

Four masters of the blade Dao struck at once, clashing with Shen Mu's blade, each reaching a different conclusion, and all felt that Shen Mu's cultivation realm was about the same as their own. Five figures, rising like hares and stooping like falcons, each displaying their own Dao perfectly within their blade arts.

Zhe Huali's demonic wickedness, Luo Wushuang's discipline, Tian Shu's domineering way and demonic way, Zaifu's grand sweep—all laid bare!

And Shen Mu, in clashing with them, gathered their wickedness, discipline, domineering force, and grand sweep into himself.

He took the blade Dao heavenly palace as his primary heavenly palace and the other heavenly palaces as auxiliary; with one blade Dao heavenly palace and one divine blade transformed from primal qi, he swept and maneuvered, holding off four great masters of the blade Dao at once.

Earlier, he had followed Zaifu in training, tempering his blade Dao heart; whether establishing discipline or guarding the rivers and mountains and the multitudes, all was the tempering of the blade Dao heart, and from that tempering he had comprehended the most fundamental Dao-entering divine ability of the way of the blade.

Unbending, and so he knocked at the Southern Heavenly Gate; unyielding against injustice, and so he would establish discipline; to guard, and so he would kill.

The blade nurtures the spirit. Only by mastering these three fundamental spirits of the blade Dao could one be counted as formally entered.

In the future, however his way of the blade might change or evolve, what he could not cast aside or deviate from were these three spirits; to cast them aside or deviate from them would be to betray the Dao of the blade. Zaifu could teach him no more, could guide him no further, and so he must fuse together all he had learned and comprehended.