Chapter 1852 — The Origin of Chaos Runes

By the time Shen Mu saw the sword light, Young Master Zixiao's Dao-attainment sword had already struck him. Blossom after blossom of blood burst open across Shen Mu's body.

The most fundamental distinction between the Sword Dao and the divine abilities of other great Daos lay in this: the Sword Dao was no natural existence, no innate Dao. It had been created for one purpose alone—slaughter. In the shortest possible time, by the most effortless and convenient means, one defeated and slew one's opponent. Young Master Zixiao's Sword Dao carried this principle to its limit.

At the very opening of the fight, he had driven his Dao-attainment sword straight at Shen Mu, crippling him before anything else could happen. Yet the might of his Sword Dao went still further.

Everywhere that blood blossoms burst open on Shen Mu's form, they turned into blood swords that pierced through his body anew. At that same instant, from the myriad alien Great Luotian heavens, measureless sword light poured down, surging from every direction to spear straight through Shen Mu's frame!

Shen Mu ought never to have used the Sword Dao against this man. Within the Sword Dao, one additional degree of attainment was nearly enough to settle the outcome by pure crushing force.

Shen Mu's Sword Dao was more than a degree weaker; Chaos Sword in hand, he had not managed to give a single move before countless sword beams transfixed his body! He burst apart amid the radiance.

The World Tree behind him was hewn to powder, his Dao Fruit shattered, and the Chaos Hall beneath his feet was broken through, vanishing without a trace. Young Master Zixiao withdrew his sword, his gaze cold.

In pitting his Sword Dao against him, Shen Mu had exposed a gap far too vast to close—he was nothing but a living target. Had he turned to any other divine ability or Dao art, Shen Mu might still have had strength enough to resist.

Now, he died outright.

Yet Zixiao did not truly believe Shen Mu could be slain by his hand. "The Sword Dao is unrivaled under heaven when it comes to attack, but it likewise carries one enormous weakness. " Everything that constituted Shen Mu collapsed into a mass of Chaos Qi, and within that Chaos Qi a figure walked outward, while a voice came through: "Its attack is too powerful, and so it often cannot break the deeper strata of the Great Dao.

Even one as mighty as you faces the same dilemma.

" The Sword Dao weakness he spoke of was also embodied in Emperor Kaihuang Shen Ye.

After attaining the Dao, Emperor Kaihuang Shen Ye found it extraordinarily difficult to kill an opponent of the same realm—or one a whole realm beneath him. This was surely in part because arcane power was the Emperor Kaihuang's weak point, but it equally gave voice to the Sword Dao's defect. The Sword Dao runs straight to its goal. It wounds an enemy's physical body and primordial spirit with ease, and even destroys a foe's divine storehouses without trouble, for it commands the inborn advantage of unmatched sharpness.

Yet when faced with all manner of bizarre divine abilities and Dao techniques, the Sword Dao's killing power came up short.

The reason was fixed by the foundational sword forms of the Sword Dao. Every other great Dao—even such common ones as earth, water, wind, and fire—possessed hundreds or even thousands of fundamental runes. As for the Five Tai great Daos, the runes were more numerous still, more protean, more refined.

The Sword Dao alone had only twenty-three foundational sword forms. Those foundational sword forms were the runes of the Sword Dao, and with only twenty-three runes, it proved inadequate when it came to harming the Dao of an opponent.

Emperor Kaihuang Shen Ye had high battle strength but few battle deeds—this was exactly the reason.

Shen Mu had perceived it long ago, and so he had chosen the road of founding his Dao on divine abilities, using divine abilities to compensate for the Sword Dao's deficiencies.

Most of his Sword Dao moves were, in truth, divine abilities. Young Master Zixiao flicked the blade with his finger and said evenly, "Old Seventh, I learned of the Sword Dao's weakness earlier than you, and I have gone deeper in understanding it. " "Ding!

" The sword's note was piercingly clear, and Shen Mu's face changed drastically. "Therefore I have used Hongmeng runes to make good the Sword Dao's weakness.

Every one of my sword moves rests upon a Hongmeng rune at its foundation.

I fused the Sword Dao with our master's Hongmeng Dao to create the Hongmeng Sword Dao. " Young Master Zixiao fixed his gaze on the tip of his own Dao sword.

At the tip trembled a speck of purple light, and as the sword vibrated, the purple light wavered without stop. Shri!

Shri!

Shri!

Shri! Innumerable sword intents suddenly burst forth from Shen Mu's body, tearing him to shreds! Young Master Zixiao said flatly, "Once you are struck by my Hongmeng Sword Dao, every Dao within your body will be sliced apart.

Even if you revive, you will be sliced apart once more. " Shen Mu dissolved into Chaos Qi once again, and rolling Dao tones came from within: "I have cultivated the Hongmeng Dao Body and the Hongmeng Primordial Spirit, refined the Dao of Guixu, and possess the World Tree—undying, indestructible.

.

.

" Shri! Countless Hongmeng sword beams shot out in all directions from the mass of Chaos Qi, rending him apart yet again.

Young Master Zixiao shook his head. "Once my sword has struck you, you will remain forever in that state. Old Seventh, this is my Dao-attainment sword, and it can only be accounted my thirty-sixth sword.

Above it, I still hold four more.

If I cannot kill you, what can you possibly do to me?

" The Dao Tree sword, the Dao Flower sword, the Dao Fruit sword, and the ultimate fortieth sword—the sanctum of the Sword Dao that even the Master of Miluo Palace could never cultivate: his Dao Hall sword! The Dao-attainment sword alone was already beyond Shen Mu's power to stand against! The mass of Chaos Qi roiled without cease. Over and over, Shen Mu strove to restore his physical body and primordial spirit, only to be annihilated anew each time.

"You and I came from the same school, Old Seventh. Had you achieved the Dao through Chaos and cultivated a Dao Hall, I would have no means to deal with you.

But you have never truly become the Seventh Young Master.

" He put away his sword and turned around. "Without becoming a Young Master, you are no match for me.

Yet if you did become one, you could only sit with folded arms and watch us annihilate the Jingping Dao-achievers and descend into the Seventeenth Epoch. Old Seventh, you have lost.

" He raised his head, looking toward the Chaos Long Rivers outside the Miluo Palace, and his face changed slightly. Though Shen Mu still writhed in the might of his Dao-attainment sword, annihilated and reborn again and again, strangely, the spectacle of the sixteen Chaos Long Rivers sealing the Miluo Palace still had not ceased! If Shen Mu had been wholly imprisoned by this sword of his, the chaotic motion of the destruction calamity across sixteen cosmic epochs would have come to rest, and the place would no longer have been sealed.

But the chaos continued—and that could mean only one thing.

This sword of his had not wholly trapped Shen Mu; Shen Mu still had strength in reserve! Young Master Zixiao whirled around, and there he saw the mass of Chaos Qi no longer changing at all. It was perfectly still.

"The seven Young Masters of the Miluo Palace seem each to have made their own great accomplishment, but in truth, all of them stand on the foundation of Hongmeng runes. " Shen Mu's voice came from the mass of Chaos Qi. "The shallowness or depth of one's comprehension of the Hongmeng runes and the Hongmeng Dao marks the height of one's cultivation.

Eldest Young Master Taishang's Dao attainment is the deepest.