Chapter 1746 — The Selfish Squire

Heavenly Venerable Xu raised a hand, and the great army of Youdu's fiend-gods halted.

Behind the army lay countless dark, brooding hordes of Youdu fiends. Some of those fiends had form: they crawled upon the ground, the black bone-spurs on their backs quivering, black smoke seething from their bodies. Others were formless, now rushing up into the sky and bursting with a pop into a plume of black smoke, now gathering themselves together again.

"Father God.

" Heavenly Venerable Xu stepped quickly forward and knelt on one knee. Opposite her stretched paper boats beyond counting, hundreds of millions of them, and upon every boat stood an aged underworld constable in the likeness of Heavenly Venerable You. And there in the midst of that countless fleet stood A Chou Tubo, his frame towering, drawing every eye.

"Your daughter pays her respects to Father God!

" Heavenly Venerable Xu bowed her head and said in a clear, carrying voice, "When Father God heard that Heavenly Venerable Mu had run amok in Youdu and struck Father God down, his heart was wrung with anguish, and he longed to kill Heavenly Venerable Mu and avenge Father God. But Heavenly Venerable Mu's strength is too great; your daughter is no match for him. Now that Father God has returned to life, we two should join hands and together raze Heavenly Venerable Mu's Jingping, and wash away the debt in blood! " A Chou gazed at her with deep, dark eyes. Heavenly Venerable Xu stayed kneeling there, her head bowed, and for a long while she did not raise it.

A Chou walked toward the edge of the fleet, and all at once paper boats drifted forward, barring his way and refusing him passage out of the formation.

"You, there is no need for this.

" A Chou smiled.

"This has been my cherished wish for these several hundred thousand years.

If it cannot be fulfilled, I cannot attain the Dao.

" Heavenly Venerable You hesitated, and the paper boats parted to either side, one after another. A Chou walked out to the front of the two armies and came to stand before Heavenly Venerable Xu.

He reached out both hands, his tone and voice as gentle as those of the loving father he had been back in the Longhan era.

"Xu, my daughter. . .

" The single horn atop Heavenly Venerable Xu's head suddenly shot forth, and with a hiss it pierced through his chest!

A Chou seemed to feel no pain at all. His hands came to rest on her elbows, and his ugly face wore a smile.

"The thing I regret most in this life is that I failed to protect you, to protect your brothers and sisters, to protect your mother. . .

" Whum. The Nether River long whip flew from Heavenly Venerable Xu's waist, whirling with a shriek, and bound A Chou tight; then with a soft chunk it tore open his body and burrowed deep into him!

The whip bored in and out of his flesh, dragging out gobbet after gobbet of blood and meat.

Dark dragon scales even grew along its length, slicing into his flesh, gliding around his primordial spirit, cutting that spirit until it was covered in wounds.

Even the golden body he had forged over several hundred thousand years in the karma fire of countless living beings could not withstand Heavenly Venerable Xu's divine art and divine weapon!

Still that ugly smile remained on A Chou's face, and his karma-fire golden body healed itself of its own accord. So long as the karma fire endured, he could not die. "Let go of all this fame and fortune and power, my daughter.

" He bent lower, his voice growing gentler still.

"The thing I have hoped for most in this life is that you and I might be reunited as father and daughter, that we might become true human beings, far from the whirlpool of power, far from these struggles, an ordinary father and daughter, nothing more. . . " "Father God!

" Heavenly Venerable Xu wrenched her head up. Within her eyes burned a hellish karma fire beyond measure.

With a thunderous boom two streams of hellfire shot from her pupils and struck A Chou, hurling him high into the air; then those two flames pierced through his body and nailed him to the ground.

A Chou's body healed. Heavenly Venerable Xu gave a furious snort, snapped the long whip, and coiled A Chou up in it. She reached out and seized him by the throat.

"Father God is as laughable as ever. " A smile spread across Heavenly Venerable Xu's face, her eyes full of mockery.

"I am your seed.

I inherited your bloodline. From the moment I was born my soul was incomparably powerful, and I was clever beyond my years.

Do you really think I cannot remember the things of my childhood? " Seeing this, Heavenly Venerable You rushed forward at once to rescue A Chou.

Heavenly Venerable Xu raised her hand, and from behind her countless Youdu fiend-gods came howling out to meet him! A Chou's voice was hoarse. "You, hold Jingping!

Do not worry about me!

" Heavenly Venerable You had meant to recall all his incarnations and assassinate Heavenly Venerable Xu; hearing this, he could only send those myriad incarnations to meet the fiend-gods and fiends that blotted out the sky!

He knew in his heart that A Chou, mindful of the bond between father and daughter, would never lift a hand against Heavenly Venerable Xu, and that he might well die at her hands; therefore he held nothing back! His hundreds of millions of incarnations were all transmuted from his primordial spirit. Each was a match for a fiend-god, and the thoughts of each incarnation were linked to all the others.

More crucial still, his incarnations had no primary body: any single incarnation could serve as his main body! Nor was that all.

At any moment he could fuse several incarnations into one, greatly swelling their power. Should he encounter a stronger god or fiend, he could merge them together to deal with the foe!

The blind elder of Yincan Village had long since perceived the wonder of this strange cultivation method of his: so long as Heavenly Venerable You attained exceptional mastery in the art of formations, he could draw out the full might of his infinite incarnations! In single combat, Heavenly Venerable You would be held back by the modest cultivation of his physical body and be put on the defensive; but against large-scale massed warfare he was all but invincible! Over the years the blind elder had devised a great many formations for him, of every kind and configuration, and Heavenly Venerable You had studied their application at his side.

For anyone else it would have been all but impossible to master so many complex formations in a mere dozen years; and even having mastered them, it would be harder still to command hundreds of millions of incarnations while at the same time deploying the various formations and configurations to break the enemy on a battlefield that shifted from instant to instant.

But Heavenly Venerable You was different. Solitary though he was, he was no fool; far from it, he was exceptionally clever. He was merely unaccustomed to dealing with people, so that in some matters of knowledge he remained closed off, and had not kept pace with the direction taken by Jingping's reforms.

Yet he curbed his solitary nature and studied long and hard under the blind elder, and this thing that seemed impossible, he truly mastered! Now, at last, the cultivation of those dozen years blazed forth in glory!

His army of incarnations crashed into the legions of fiend-gods and fiends, and in an instant the killing was so savage that the blood ran in rivers.

However countless Youdu's fiend-gods and fiends might be, meeting his great army of paper-boat constables could end only in one-sided slaughter! Countless paper boats charged forward; waves of blood surged and churned, and in those waves, hundreds of zhang high, the corpses of fiend-gods and fiends tumbled everywhere! Boat after boat threaded through the blood waves, raising yet more surges, sweeping all before them!