Chapter 1478 — Shattering the Boundless Void Realm

Shi Qiluo let his true strength burst forth; three artifact Heavenly Venerables came surging up out of the Hundred Treasure Chest, swelling at furious speed above the Heavenly River until in a breath their might stood at full bloom!

Of these artifact Heavenly Venerables, one was wreathed in the Primordial Innate Qi, as though Heavenly Venerable Hao himself had come; one was wreathed in the Dao of Divine Consciousness, as if Heavenly Venerable Qiang guided the artifact with her own hand; and one was wreathed in Dao Fire, as though Heavenly Venerable Fire drove it. Heavenly Consort Qiang stood upon the God-Slaying Terrace; catching sight of this, her heart quaked within her.

"When that wench Yuanmu forged the artifact Heavenly Venerables, she left a countless back doors in them. Anyone who drives an artifact Heavenly Venerable to work his own arts will be spied upon by her! I used one once, and she learned my arts and divine abilities!

" Boom— When the two Heavenly Venerables and the four artifacts crashed together, the Heavenly River was vaporized stretch by stretch, and the heaven-wrecking shockwaves set the distant river heaving violently up and down like ripples.

Shi Qiluo stood upon a stretch of the Heavenly River driving his artifacts, teeth clenched, when all at once he sensed deadly peril descend; he sprang hastily into the air, only to see a blade-light shriek past and flash through his neck. His great shaggy head went tumbling through the air.

He glimpsed a Divine Treasury Domain spring suddenly into being, with five masked men—Shen Mu, Tian Shu, and the rest—standing within it, one stroke of whose blade had taken off his head! "This little wretch!

" Shi Qiluo laughed in his fury. Though Shen Mu and the others wore black masks, he could still recognize Shen Mu; straightway he took command of his headless body and bolted off with the Hundred Treasure Chest.

The Chest opened once more; an artifact Heavenly Venerable was just about to fly out when a blade came cleaving down and struck the Chest out of his grasp.

The blade-light veered and slapped the Chest shut. Shen Mu was just reaching to seize it when Shi Qiluo's headless body suddenly rang with clanging chimes, and his body of divine stones, stone upon stone, broke apart of a sudden.

The five men's hearts lurched, for Shi Qiluo's headless body was shifting like an exquisitely cunning artifact, countless divine stones rearranging back and forth in bewildering complexity, and in a mere instant they had assembled into a colossal artifact!

"Damnation! Shi Qiluo is the master of the Zaofu Heavenly Palace—he borrowed the Palace's power and remade himself!

" Even as Shen Mu reached for the Chest, Shi Qiluo's head had already settled at the center of that infinitely intricate artifact. The artifact roared to life, Dao Fire blazing; it formed the Dao Wheel behind Heavenly Venerable Fire's head, and the artifact itself was as the ancestral ground of Dao Fire!

Boom— Boundless Dao Fire came battering at them, its flames vaporizing all.

"Lady Yuanmu's arts and divine abilities are truly monstrous! " Shen Mu had no choice but to abandon Shi Qiluo's Hundred Treasure Chest with a pang; before the Dao Fire touched his body he cleft the void with one blade and plunged into the thirtieth layer of the void.

The Dao Fire came howling after them and was ground away by the void.

Zhe Huali cried out again and again, blurting, "This Shi Qiluo's methods remind me of that wretch Xing An!

If Xing An's craft were cultivated to its utmost, I fear he would be another Shi Qiluo!

" Tian Shu and Luo Wushuang had no notion who Xing An was and gave it little thought, but Zaifu knew Xing An through and through, and mused: "Zhe Huali speaks true.

Xing An's craft and Shi Qiluo's do share a likeness—different roads, the same end.

" "Lady Yuanmu holds the Zaofu Heavenly Palace, and the profit she has taken from it is far too great. In every artifact Heavenly Venerable she has left a back door, to spy on the other Heavenly Venerables' arts and divine abilities, even their cultivation methods.

Any Heavenly Venerable who borrows an artifact Heavenly Venerable to unleash his full strength is spied upon by her. " Shen Mu looked back, and saw Shi Qiluo's body reassembling once more, swiftly restored to what it had been, a wonder to behold.

And at that moment an unspeakably dreadful wave erupted—the second shock of the violent collision among Heavenly Consort Qiang's God-Slaying Mystic Sabers, Divine Emperor Langxuan's Grand Primordial arts, and Shi Qiluo's four artifact Heavenly Venerables! That tremor reached even the thirtieth layer of the void, so that they too could not steady their footing. Heavenly Consort Qiang bled; struck by Langxuan and two artifact Heavenly Venerables, her fleshly body was battered to ruin and flung from the God-Slaying Terrace.

Yet her two God-Slaying Mystic Sabers had cut one of the artifact Heavenly Venerables in two at the waist and seized the Heavenly Dao power within it; their might soared!

The heavenly palaces behind Divine Emperor Langxuan's head were clipped apart one by one, his Dao Fruit was damaged, and the essence within his Dao Fruit drained away madly. Divine Emperor Langxuan's eyes were red with slaughter, but two artifact Heavenly Venerables ambushed him from behind; his back was beaten to a bloody blur, his bones snapped and his tendons torn, and he pitched forward spitting blood.

And because Shen Mu's ambush had taken Shi Qiluo's head with a single stroke, his command of the artifact Heavenly Venerables had gone clumsy; in the next instant Divine Emperor Langxuan wheeled about and pointed a finger, blowing off the head of one artifact Heavenly Venerable, leaving it a headless Heavenly Venerable.

Shi Qiluo too, his head struck off by that stroke of Shen Mu's, had not recovered from the Dao wound, and could never bring head and body back together into their former shape.

Three Heavenly Venerables—and all three wounded!

Four great artifacts—and two lost!

"This may be a great windfall, a golden chance to cripple all three Heavenly Venerables!

" Shen Mu was excited beyond measure; a shift of his feet and he would have carried the four back onto the battlefield. "Shen'er, you must not!

" "Heavenly Venerable Mu, you must not!

" "Sect Master Shen, you must not!

" Zaifu, Luo Wushuang, Tian Shu, and Zhe Huali all pressed their palms onto Shen Mu's shoulders, faces grave.

One ambush on Shi Qiluo was enough; a second would be a courting of death.

Though these three Heavenly Venerables had their differences among themselves, before a foe they would close ranks in common hatred.

Shen Mu, his head addled by the prospect of gain, would surely be struck down by the three Heavenly Venerables in a single blow if he took them back down.

The crux of it struck Shen Mu straightway, and he halted—but just then the void blazed brilliant, and boundless light rose up behind them.

The five were struck dumb, for it was the palm of the Lord of Heaven, starlight made substance, a great hand assembled!

As the palm moved it gave forth the Dao sounds of forty-nine kinds of Heavenly Dao, rumbling and quaking, and yet incomparably sweet to the ear! The hand of the Lord of Heaven rose, and fell—boom, boom, boom—piercing through thirty-five layers of the void in succession, bearing heaven-flooding might, and launched a surprise strike at the three Heavenly Venerables!

As the palm swept down over Shen Mu and the others' heads, they could even make out its palm lines clearly—lines unlike the palm lines of beings of Later Heaven, or of demigods. Those were the lines of the Heavenly Dao—subtle, arcane, unfathomably profound.

The lines grew ever larger, ever finer, ever more minute, with detail without end!