Chapter 1674 — A Battle to Break the Deadlock

" He flicked the blade with his finger; the sword rang out, and in an instant its light pierced layer upon layer of the void, sword light filling the heavens. Shen Mu gave a light sweep, the tip of the sword pointing down, aimed at the Yuan World. In that moment a rainbow of sword light arched across the sky above the Yuan World, stretching from the far western reaches of the Yuan World across countless thousands of miles of sky to hover over the seas in the east of the Yuan World.

The vertical eye at the center of Shen Mu's brow slowly opened, and he said softly, "Sever! " In Jingping, a divine being saw that sword light and hurried to inform Emperor Yanfeng and Jingping's Imperial Preceptor.

Emperor Yanfeng was stirred beyond measure, while Jingping's Imperial Preceptor appeared far more composed; he rushed at once to the Wendao Academy and cried in a stern voice, "Sword light has appeared in the sky! Cut the transfer bridges — cut the transfer bridges at once! " In the Wendao Academy, Wen Tiange, the Woodcutter and Heavenly Master of Wuyou Township, raised his axe and swung it. Order after order went out, and throughout the Yuan World and the myriad heavens and worlds, Spirit-Nexus Transfer Bridges were destroyed one after another by the divine beings of the Heaven Court's Daoist sects and Jingping's Daoist sects.

Great chaos erupted throughout the myriad heavens and worlds. The divine beings ordered to sever the spirit bridges immediately clashed with the Heaven Court troops guarding the transfer bridges, and the slaughter was savage!

In the Langcang Heavens, a dozen or so Daoists, with the Black Tiger God among them, fought blood-soaked through the enemy, struggling to reach the altar of the Spirit-Nexus Transfer Bridge.

The army of divine demons the Heaven Court had stationed here poured up without end; the Daoists shouted in unison and joined their strength into a sword formation, transforming into the Dao Sword of the Twenty-Eight Heavens to hold the enemy back.

The Black Tiger God pressed forward with all his strength and roared, driving the Spirit-Nexus Transfer Bridge. Layer upon layer of its structure expanded outward, rotating in different directions. Suddenly a divine spear pierced one Daoist through the body; his primordial spirit flew free of his flesh and was nailed dead upon the altar.

The Black Tiger God paid it no heed, driving the altar with all his power, throwing the order of the arts of calculation into disarray.

The Langcang Heavens were the greatest of all the heavens in the Heaven Court's domain. The Heaven Court kept hundreds of thousands of troops stationed here to guard the transfer bridges, so that it could respond with the greatest speed, rushing to the Yuan World at a moment's notice and sending word back to the Heaven Court at once!

Therefore, no matter the cost, the Spirit-Nexus Transfer Bridges here had to be destroyed, or all their efforts would come to nothing! Another Daoist fell in battle, the sword formation was broken, and the Heaven Court army stationed here pounced like wolves and tigers, drowning the dozen or so remaining Daoists!

The Black Tiger God clenched his teeth and gave a furious roar, tearing the core out of the Spirit-Nexus Transfer Bridge.

The whole bridge collapsed at once!

He turned and charged into the Heaven Court army, thrown into disorder by the collapse of the transfer bridge, trying to save those dozen or so Daoists. "Go, quickly—" A Daoist, his body pierced by dozens of swords and riddled with wounds, held off six or seven Heaven Court divine demons by sheer force, turned his head and grinned, blood staining his teeth red. "We have succeeded!

Every one of us who lives is one more!

Go, quickly—" Tears welled in the Black Tiger God's tiger eyes. He turned about, and countless teleportation runes burst forth and swallowed him. He was gone in an instant, and from the shattered, collapsing Spirit-Nexus Transfer Bridge came that Daoist's voice: "We of the Daoist sects observe truth through the arts of calculation and seek the Great Dao!

Do not make light of the arts of Jingping's Daoist sects!

Lesser Heavenly Star Dao Dissolution—" BOOM— Boundless starlight erupted from that place, spinning madly and swelling outward. It was a microscopic art of calculation among Jingping's arts, one that used calculation to unravel the phenomenon of a star's explosion; its power was terrifying, and it swiftly engulfed everything there. "Every Spirit-Nexus Transfer Bridge from the myriad heavens and worlds to the Heaven Court has been severed.

" Outside the Yuan World, the vertical eye at the center of Shen Mu's brow slowly opened.

"Haotian the Heavenly Venerable's move is nothing more than to ask Heavenly Venerable Xu to strike from Youdu and wipe out every living thing in Jingping or Wuyou Township. Or to strike from Xuandu, plunging the Yuan World into utter darkness and letting the Ancestral God King send calamity down upon it. And to all of this, I have long since prepared my countermeasures. " Taichu's pupils shrank sharply, his gaze falling on the Yuan World behind Shen Mu.

There, in Jingping of the Yuan World, a youth's body was swelling madly, growing taller than Jingping's Yuan Tree, his head towering into the clouds, two long horns twisting in nine bends and eighteen curves, thrusting straight beyond the sky!

"Where my body stands, there is Youdu! " From the mouth of that youth, Tubo, came the heavy demon tongue of Youdu, and in an instant the space where Jingping lay split apart, forming the strange sight of a lesser Youdu overlapping Jingping!

At the same time, in the position of the Thirty-Three Heavens of Wuyou Township, Heavenly Venerable You sat in a paper boat and raised his hand to light the storm lantern before him.

The lamp flared, and his shadow swept down to cover the earth. His primordial spirit was as vast as his shadow, and in the west of the Yuan World he raised another Youdu!

The two Youdus overlapped, and in the corners and edges they did not cover, the Fengdu World emerged. The stone steles of the realm where the dead live rose higher and higher, like a great mountain standing in the Yuan World, shielding those places.

King Yama's cloak flapped in the wind; sword in hand, he shrouded Fengdu, standing tall in the darkness. At the same moment, the Lord of Heaven came to the center of the Yuan World and abruptly planted the Heavenly Net Supreme Treasure in the ground.

He stood tall, and the other forty-nine Supreme Treasures of the Heavenly Dao rose whistling into the air! A deep hum. The supreme treasures — Tianji, Tianquan, Tiansha, and the rest — floated up into the sky of the Yuan World, and in an instant formed forty-nine layers of barriers!

Hidden within the Yuan World was the Inner Heaven of Forty-Nine Layers.

The stars and constellations of the myriad heavens emerged within that Inner Heaven of Forty-Nine Layers, sun and moon and all things complete, transforming into a lesser Xuandu. Taichu watched this scene and said in a hoarse voice, "Fourth Brother, you have prepared most thoroughly.

" Shen Mu smiled faintly.

"You flatter me, Second Brother.

" Suddenly a great Heaven Court appeared behind him, seventy-two treasure halls ringing the Palace of the Thirty-Three Heavens. Shen Mu's primordial spirit stood before the Chaos Hall, and his voice was the tongue of the Dao, vast and far-heard: "Second Brother, you know that I am the Seventh Young Master of Miluo Palace, but you do not know that it was not in the universe of the past that I became the Seventh Young Master.

" Shen Mu stood beneath his own Heaven Court, seeming utterly insignificant, and looked up at the towering fleshly body of Taichu.

"It was here, in this universe, that I became the Seventh Young Master of Miluo Palace!

"