Chapter 1675 — The Ferocious Sword Cleaves Taichu

Taichu's fleshly body was immense beyond measure. He was the mightiest of the ancient gods, mightier even than Tiangong and Tubo, and before that body Shen Mu was a thing of no account.

In Taichu's contracted pupils was mirrored the tiny figure of Shen Mu, and yet behind Shen Mu rose the Thirty-Three Heavenly Palaces and the Seventy-Two Treasure Halls, more magnificent even than his own flesh; Shen Mu's primordial spirit, standing before the Chaos Hall, brimmed with unimaginable divine power. That power made him feel threatened! Especially Shen Mu's last words, which shook his mind and roused in him a dark foreboding.

In the very instant his Dao heart wavered, Shen Mu thrust out his sword!

Earlier, both Taichu and Shen Mu had spoken at length, seeming like old friends reminiscing, while in truth every word concealed a drawn blade.

The peril in it was more terrible than a battle.

They both knew the other's strength and had no certainty of victory; therefore, before the fighting began, they sought to quell the other's will to fight, weaken the other's Dao heart, and crush the other's spirit under vast pressure, so as to tilt the odds in their own favor.

Taichu had struck first, seizing on Shen Mu's three great defeats, naming each ruin aloud so that Shen Mu would see his own folly and Taichu's invincibility.

Had Shen Mu doubted himself, it would have given him the opening to seize the initiative! But Shen Mu's counterstroke was beyond his expecting: few words, and action instead, aimed at his Dao heart.

Severing the spiritual power of all heavens and myriad worlds from the Qianqiao Bridge, leaving the Heaven Court an island cut off from the world, so that the Heaven Court's armies could not hope to break into the Yuan Realm for ten or twenty years, with one stroke he had ended the Heaven Court's threat for the time being.

Then came Little Youdu and Little Xuandu in the Yuan Realm, ending the threat of Youdu's Heavenly Venerable Xu and Xuandu's Ancestral God King.

One stratagem after another, dazzling to the eye, had at last bruised Taichu's Dao heart.

Taichu had used words to shake Shen Mu's Dao heart; Shen Mu used deeds to shake his, and deeds struck harder than words. At the end Shen Mu made clear that he had become the Seventh Young Master in this universe, and revealed his Chaos Hall, at last shaking Taichu's Dao heart.

If Shen Mu had truly become the Seventh Young Master in this universe, then no rival remained to him here; whether Taichu or Emperor Haotian, the only end awaiting them was defeat.

He would fail, the Heaven Court would fail; once that seed was planted, it would take root and sprout, and there would be no stopping it.

The Calamity Sword's light reached Taichu's face in an instant.

Taichu swung his sword to meet it, retreating as he did so.

The sword in his hand was an Imperial Sword forged in imitation of his own companion treasure, and his sword doctrine was the swordsmanship he had learned in Jingping. After its reforms, Jingping was famed for the Houtian Great Dao.

The divine adepts and gods of Jingping took the perfecting of the Houtian Dao as their charge; the Heaven Court called it reform, but to the people of Jingping it was simply the application of what they had learned, with too little improvement to show for it.

They applied their learning and insights to daily life, to smithing, to medicine, to painting, and among them all the sword dao advanced fastest! Whether Shen Mu, Kaihuang, Jingping's Imperial Preceptor Jiang Baigui, or the Old Human Sovereign Su Mozhe, all were grand masters of the sword dao, and they spread their sword dao throughout Jingping; anyone with sufficient talent and insight could cultivate it, and upon their foundations open up new sword daos and new sword arts!

Taichu had two incarnations lurking in Jingping; he had learned the sword arts of Shen Mu, Kaihuang, Jiang Baigui, Su Mozhe and others, and drawing inferences from them had formed insights of his own.

His sword dao was formidable indeed; wielded with his vast and mighty dharma power, its might rivaled Kaihuang's of old! The sword moves he used were Kaihuang's own, one thrust piercing the Thirty-Three Heavens, stunning in the extreme!

But his Dao heart had already collapsed, and the power of his sword dao fell away at once; worse still, his variations grew stiff and halting. The instant the two sword lights clashed, the Calamity Sword changed its move and became Calamity-Breaking; in a single turn the Thirty-Three Heavens conjured by Taichu's Imperial Sword were ground to nothing.

The body of Taichu's Imperial Sword suffered countless blows and shattered inch by inch in his hand. Taichu flicked the hilt away with a finger; the Innate One-Qi erupted, ten thousand daos became one, and became a divine finger-point that ignored every variation of Shen Mu's Calamity-Breaking Sword and thrust straight on! Ding.

A crisp ring, as his fingertip met the tip of the Calamity Sword. Shen Mu's sword light pierced into his finger, and the unmatched sword dao ran along that finger, its sword intent reaching his arm!

His other four fingers stirred, brushing one after another across the point of the Calamity Sword, finger after finger, breaking apart the sword's power!

At the same time Taichu's other hand pressed down in a palm strike; beneath the palm, among the lines of the palm, ten thousand daos surged like all the heavens and myriad worlds, with countless divinities beneath his hand!

That blow poured forth divine light, and in a single palm revealed all the majesty of the supreme ancient-god emperor!

After all, he was the emperor who had ruled an age and ended an age; all the ancient gods of the primordial universe through ages beyond counting had lain under his sway.

That blow was not only the Innate One-Qi but also the Dao of Taichu, the divine art he had comprehended through his insight into the Dao of Taichu!

Shen Mu drew his sword with his right hand, the point wavering, becoming the Five Primordials as One, while his left hand rose to meet Taichu's palm! At the same time his primordial spirit, before the Chaos Hall of the Heaven Court, raised its left hand and made the same motion.

That blow, too, was the Five Primordials as One!

Only Shen Mu's palm was too small, and the divine art's transformations could hardly be discerned in it. But his primordial spirit's hand was larger by countless times!

His primordial spirit's palm and five fingers were like the Ancestral Court, and his five fingers were like the Ancestral Court's five great ore veins, Chaos, Taichu, Taishi, Taisu and Taiji, all fused into one!

The two palms met without a sound, yet between them burst a measureless radiance, forming a round thin blade in the starry sky! The blade had almost no thickness at all; it swelled with furious speed and in an instant cut the starry sky, a hundred million li wide, into two halves!

Shen Mu leaned back slightly; behind him the great Heaven Court, a thousand palaces and ten thousand halls, shifted in endless permutation and dissolved the whole force of that blow.

Taichu's heart sank. He stepped back into the One-Qi Daluo Heaven to evade Shen Mu's Calamity Sword, and saw the five great ore veins the sword had become crash into the One-Qi Daluo Heaven, pressing that Daluo Heaven down a shade.

The five great ore veins that the sword light had become were like five raging dragons; even the ultimate void could not erase a hair's breadth of that sword art!

"His cultivation is no weaker than mine now.

By now he can likely brand the void with his own power and become a Dao Attainer!

And all of this, did the Seventy-Two Halls bring it to him, or did his Chaos Hall?

" Taichu's gaze fell upon the Seventy-Two Treasure Halls.