Chapter 1539 — The Hard Clash with a Heavenly Venerable

Shen Mu started, his gaze lingering a moment longer on the woman within the Dao Fruit; she was looking back at him, surprise and a touch of flustered alarm on her face. "Not bad," he praised silently, and let his eyes move from her bosom back to the Lady of Heaven Qiang.

"Milady.

.

.

" "Address me as Grand Imperial Majesty," said the Lady of Heaven Qiang, nettled.

Shen Mu laughed aloud. "A moment ago Your Majesty was calling herself 'this Palace. ' Why does she now demand to be addressed as 'Majesty'?

" The Lady of Heaven Qiang snorted, her gaze falling on the sword at his waist.

"Where did you get that sword? Your spiritual power is nowhere near the level of a Heavenly Venerable.

That you could wound me just now — that must be the doing of this sword, must it not? Is this the weapon of a Dao-attainer?

" "Exactly!

" Shen Mu drew the Tribulation Sword, his features radiant, his brows dancing. "After I entered the ancestral court's Jade Capital City, I found this Dao Sword in one of its temples. When I tried it, its power was truly without limit.

" The Lady of Heaven Qiang breathed a sigh of relief and smiled.

"To cultivate by borrowing external things — Heavenly Venerable Mu, your road has gone astray.

You may as well hand this sword over to this Palace. .

.

hand it over to Us! " Two baleful blood-blades suddenly shot up from the River of Chaos and clove toward Shen Mu! These two God-Slaying Mystic Blades were of peerless power — even the Lord of Heaven's physical body could not withstand them.

Just now, merely sweeping over Shen Mu's head, they had wounded him.

The Lady of Heaven Qiang had deliberately hidden these two god-blades in ambush within the River of Chaos, meaning to strike by stealth and kill with a single blow. She knew as well that Shen Mu was slippery beyond holding; if he fled, she feared she could never keep him, and so she had resorted to ambush.

What she did not know was that her two baleful god-blades had never once escaped Shen Mu's eyes. Had it been anyone else, unable to see through the River of Chaos, she might well have succeeded; but the vertical eye in Shen Mu's brow could pierce the River of Chaos and even glimpse scenes of past universes.

The two God-Slaying Mystic Blades she had hidden had long been as clear to him as daylight, and not the slightest stirring of those blades eluded his gaze. Shen Mu drew his sword; the blade-light flickered and became Illusory-Form Guest Taiji, meeting the two God-Slaying Mystic Blades head-on.

In one instant, the two blades became like long blood-colored dragons linked under his sword-work — an unrolling dragon-shaped diagram of the Grand Terminus! One dragon was yin, one yang; yin and yang locked fast, joined into a single whole.

The Lady of Heaven Qiang, caught unprepared, tried to reclaim her two god-blades, but Shen Mu, treading his little boat, passed straight through the dragon-shaped Taiji diagram, his sword aiming at her brow upon the Dao Tree! Illusory-Form Guest Taiji was the ninth heaven of Shen Mu's Dao realm; yet with his sword path fully matured and merged with his divine-arts Dao realm, the Tribulation Sword had brought him three heavens more, and this one stance had thus become the twelfth heaven of his sword path.

What the stance altered was the form of the God-Slaying Mystic Blades: their bodies were rendered insubstantial and transformed into a state of yin and yang, robbing the Lady of Heaven Qiang of control over the two blades for a time and opening her to his stroke.

It was at once sword path and divine art; displayed from his hands, it was mastery beyond mastery, and even the Lady of Heaven Qiang had never seen such abstruse peerless skill.

Shen Mu's stroke came with extreme swiftness — the little boat born of his walking staff was already far faster than the Dao Tree, and the sword doctrine he employed in this stroke was the Great Beginning's Form-and-Substance Questioning the Azure Empyrean, a doctrine famed for speed! The Lady of Heaven Qiang was still trying to call back the two god-blades when his sword-light was already before her!

A point of azure in that sword-light swelled larger and larger before her eyes, as if about to swallow her whole!

Unlike the sword path of Kaihuang — which, rooted in Kaihuang's Heavenly Court, made one heaven of each stage of sword dao, expounding his ideals and ambitions, every stage vast and majestic, turning sword dao into tier upon tier of heavens; for when his sword path was unleashed, thirty-five heavens appeared, thirty-five different worlds, each bearing its own Dao resonance — Shen Mu's sword path was born instead from his own divine-arts Dao realm, a realm that spoke not only of ideals and ambition but of every insight and every sensation he had known along the road of enlightenment. Kaihuang's sword path was resplendent and grand, yet its traces could be followed; Shen Mu's divine arts were nimble and wayward, utterly beyond grasping.

The Lady of Heaven Qiang did not dodge or evade Shen Mu's stroke.

With a ringing cry, a God-Slaying Platform suddenly rose beneath her feet; crimson light blazed from it and instantly suppressed the yin-yang transformations of the two blades! From behind, the two god-blades came at Shen Mu to kill.

Her resolution was ruthless in the extreme: rather than avoid his sword-work, she only drove the two god-blades to cut him down!

If Shen Mu neither fled nor dodged, both of them would be struck!

Her reliance lay in the vastness of her divine perception — even if her body were harmed, so long as the perception remained, she could visualize her body back into being!

And though Shen Mu was a master of the Way of Creation, the two god-blades were condensed from the most evil baleful qi under heaven; they devoured cultivation, devoured qi and blood.

If Shen Mu were only cut by the twin blades, in an instant all the vital qi and blood in his body would be absorbed, and he would become a withered corpse hacked into three lengths! Without cultivation, without a trace of qi or blood, no matter how heaven-reaching his arts, he could never recover. Her two god-blades felled Dao Trees and severed Dao Fruits, invincible to all things — if Shen Mu dared to stake his life, she was more than willing to oblige!

At her brow the azure of the sword-light churned; before it even touched her skin, a change of substance and form had begun upon her forehead — the skin, bone, flesh, and blood starting to dissolve into an energy state!

Shen Mu's sword intent stabbed straight into the very center of her brow; the blazing sword-light had already begun thrusting into the heavenly court within her brow, about to pass through the Southern Heavenly Gate and sweep through the celestial courts!

The Lady of Heaven Qiang's eyelids twitched wildly. The power of this one stroke exceeded all her calculations and imagination.

She had earlier mistaken the swordsman for Kaihuang Shen Ye; now she could see that although Shen Mu fell short of Kaihuang Shen Ye in cultivation, in mastery of the sword path he was more than his equal — he surpassed him! At that moment, Shen Mu suddenly drew back his sword.

The azure at the sword-tip shivered, split in two, and tapped the dragon-heads of the two God-Slaying Mystic Blades, one on the left and one on the right. His swordwork was exquisite — Kaihuang had praised it as the finest of a million years — and those two taps fell with perfect accuracy, severing the force of both god-blades. But the Lady of Heaven Qiang smiled.

In the very instant Shen Mu withdrew his sword and struck the two god-blades, they turned beyond measure soft, coiling around the body of the Tribulation Sword like a rope twisted into knots, howling up along the blade toward the hand that gripped it!

Shen Mu cried out in alarm, and shaking his hand, flung the Tribulation Sword together with the two god-blades out before him, his little boat darting off at an angle to escape them!