Chapter 1600 — The Peerless Elegance of That Sword

The Great Abyss of Guixu was far more perilous now than when Shen Mu had last come to this place; the tide of light that gushed forth was more violent than ever before, its force far greater. Even they, Celestial Venerables though they were, could not help but feel their hearts quail before Guixu as it was at this moment.

Ever since the Heavenly Court had moved into the Ancestral Court and the Heavenly River had returned to its original course, the power of Guixu had multiplied many times over; and now that the Empress and her sister had been fused into one, the might of Guixu seemed to have been elevated as well, in some intangible way.

Shen Mu and Gong Tianzun stood face to face in silence. Neither struck immediately; in their minds, each was weighing every possibility.

They were the two beings with the most powerful divine consciousness in the present world.

Divine consciousness is thought-consciousness — save that it is far stronger, far purer than the thought-consciousness of ordinary people. Only when thought-consciousness is elevated into the divine realm may it be called divine consciousness.

Divine consciousness serves many functions.

Besides enhancing the potency of one's divine arts, it can forcibly extirpate the opponent's thought-consciousness, or even seize possession of the opponent's life. But divine consciousness has one supreme advantage: in an infinitesimally short span of time, it can deduce countless possibilities, and thus move a step ahead of the opponent!

It can even bring every future move of the opponent within its calculations! Some call this ability prophecy; but to masters of divine consciousness, it is nothing more than a probabilistic algorithm — figuring out all of your moves in advance.

For powerhouses such as Shen Mu and Gong Tianzun, whose divine consciousness stood at the very summit of this world, they could combine that consciousness with the opponent's arts and techniques to divine the opponent's subsequent movements.

Yet when two beings of roughly equal divine consciousness clashed, the variables became far too numerous. Neither Shen Mu nor Gong Tianzun, in cultivating their divine consciousness, had ever refined and devoured the divine consciousness of another, much less accepted the worship of others.

Even Shen Mu, having obtained the Great Emperor's divine consciousness, had never refined and absorbed it to raise his own cultivation. Had he resorted to such an opportunistic shortcut, his probabilistic calculations would have been tainted by the influence of sundry jumbled divine consciousnesses; it was precisely due to this that the Great Emperor's attainment had never come to perfection.

It was also for this reason that Long Xiao, the Lord of the Beast Realm, was somewhat deficient in wisdom.

Both Shen Mu and Gong Tianzun strove to keep their divine consciousness pure, guarding against the corruption that temptations might bring. Gong Tianzun, for all the contemptible dependence on men for which she was known, possessed an incomparably tenacious, forbearing will — decisive, resolute — and in that there was much to admire.

The divine consciousnesses of the two whirled at lightning speed; each of their auras surged ever stronger, ready at any moment to burst into a thunderous strike. Cold sweat beaded drop by drop on Gong Tianzun's forehead.

She was encountering tremendous difficulty in calculating the moves Shen Mu might unleash; only now did she realize that what Shen Mu had learned, comprehended, and refined was so enormously complex, filled with every manner of unknown arts and divine techniques.

Her own arts and techniques, by contrast, had been probed by Shen Mu again and again — during that attempt to refine him in the Heavenly Court, when she had struggled against the Shen Mu within the Myriad Dao Heavenly Wheel!

In other words, Shen Mu knew her to the very marrow, while she knew all too little of him. "If our cultivations are at all close, then I am doomed beyond question!

" she said inwardly.

"But my strength lies precisely here: my cultivation is more profound than his! He has not yet reached the Jade Capital realm, while I am already halfway into the Heavenly Court realm! If I sound the War Horn and swell my qi and blood, my explosive power within a short span will increase severalfold — a single killing blow!

I may be wounded, but I will not be mortally wounded. As for him — though he may keep his life, he will be knocked by me into Guixu!

" "Strike fast, settle fast!

" "I must strike fast and settle fast!

" "The longer this drags out, the more possibilities he can calculate against me! " As she thought this, her brows shot up; and at that very moment, the voice of Her Highness the Empress came suddenly, shrieking shrilly: "Wrong, wrong! Something is wrong with this reincarnation art! Done this way, the little hussy can never be refined!

Mu Tianzun!

Mu Tianzun—" At the Empress's cry, Shen Mu's aura suddenly rippled; Gong Tianzun seized this opening instantly, driving her Grand Heavenly Court with everything she had!

Her Heavenly Court was arrayed like a war horn, and the moment the art was activated, the horn rang long, sending her qi and blood rocketing upward in a straight line in less than a breath!

In that instant, throughout the entire twin-lotus sacred ground of Guixu, a monstrous tide of qi and blood raged everywhere! Gong Tianzun's strength and her mana were likewise climbing in a straight line. She moved a single step, and it was as though she burst through the limits of space and time — passing through Shen Mu's Primal Embryo Divine Treasury domain, she was before him!

The dragon whip in her hand transformed into a dragon spear. The great spear shook violently, spun, and with a hiss stabbed toward Shen Mu!

At the very moment she moved, a smile surfaced on Shen Mu's face — a smile that, in Gong Tianzun's eyes, held something sinister, the savor of a scheme achieved.

Ding— Shen Mu ignored her utterly imperious strike and, instead, raised his hand to flick his sword.

Gong Tianzun's heart leapt; the sword wound left in her chest when Shen Mu's blade had pierced her through moments ago erupted at once! Countless sword-lights burst outward from that wound, like a silver vase overflowing with quicksilver dashed upon the ground, quicksilver splashing in every direction!

The silver vase shatters — the waters gush forth!

"Kaihuang's sword Dao? " Gong Tianzun's heart trembled in terror.

Even as the spear thrust out, she frantically marshaled her qi, blood, and mana to suppress the wound in her chest!

She had once been defeated beneath Kaihuang's sword, and Kaihuang's sword Dao had left an ineradicable shadow upon her — a wound not only to her flesh, but to her Dao heart as well! Shen Mu's flick of the sword forced her to awaken, against her will, that dread of Kaihuang; and once roused, instinct instantly overrode reason.

Her mana was dispatched to the wound, and the power of this spear-thrust at once declined.

Then, in the next breath, she found that the sword-light and sword Dao bursting from the wound Shen Mu had given her were not so dreadful as Kaihuang's.

Kaihuang had only to flick his sword for the sword wound in her Dao heart to transform into sword Dao, which fed upon her own mana and power until it sliced her into fragments.

But this stroke of Shen Mu's merely stirred the residual might of the sword Dao remaining within the wound.

"Damn it! " No sooner had she thought this, and moved to raise the power and might of the spear-thrust once more, than Shen Mu was already stabbing his sword to meet her dragon spear.

In the span of a single breath, twenty basic sword forms danced amid the sword-light, striking the spear in succession.

Twenty crisp ringing notes sounded in a row; twenty tremors ran through the spear shaft.