Chapter 1539 — The Hard Clash with a Heavenly Venerable
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 2 of 4
Shen Mu's stroke came with extreme swiftness — the little boat born of his walking staff was already far faster than the Dao Tree, and the sword doctrine he employed in this stroke was the Great Beginning's Form-and-Substance Questioning the Azure Empyrean, a doctrine famed for speed! The Lady of Heaven Qiang was still trying to call back the two god-blades when his sword-light was already before her!
A point of azure in that sword-light swelled larger and larger before her eyes, as if about to swallow her whole!
Unlike the sword path of Kaihuang — which, rooted in Kaihuang's Heavenly Court, made one heaven of each stage of sword dao, expounding his ideals and ambitions, every stage vast and majestic, turning sword dao into tier upon tier of heavens; for when his sword path was unleashed, thirty-five heavens appeared, thirty-five different worlds, each bearing its own Dao resonance — Shen Mu's sword path was born instead from his own divine-arts Dao realm, a realm that spoke not only of ideals and ambition but of every insight and every sensation he had known along the road of enlightenment. Kaihuang's sword path was resplendent and grand, yet its traces could be followed; Shen Mu's divine arts were nimble and wayward, utterly beyond grasping.
The Lady of Heaven Qiang did not dodge or evade Shen Mu's stroke.
With a ringing cry, a God-Slaying Platform suddenly rose beneath her feet; crimson light blazed from it and instantly suppressed the yin-yang transformations of the two blades! From behind, the two god-blades came at Shen Mu to kill.
Her resolution was ruthless in the extreme: rather than avoid his sword-work, she only drove the two god-blades to cut him down!
If Shen Mu neither fled nor dodged, both of them would be struck!
Her reliance lay in the vastness of her divine perception — even if her body were harmed, so long as the perception remained, she could visualize her body back into being!
And though Shen Mu was a master of the Way of Creation, the two god-blades were condensed from the most evil baleful qi under heaven; they devoured cultivation, devoured qi and blood.
If Shen Mu were only cut by the twin blades, in an instant all the vital qi and blood in his body would be absorbed, and he would become a withered corpse hacked into three lengths! Without cultivation, without a trace of qi or blood, no matter how heaven-reaching his arts, he could never recover. Her two god-blades felled Dao Trees and severed Dao Fruits, invincible to all things — if Shen Mu dared to stake his life, she was more than willing to oblige!
At her brow the azure of the sword-light churned; before it even touched her skin, a change of substance and form had begun upon her forehead — the skin, bone, flesh, and blood starting to dissolve into an energy state!
Shen Mu's sword intent stabbed straight into the very center of her brow; the blazing sword-light had already begun thrusting into the heavenly court within her brow, about to pass through the Southern Heavenly Gate and sweep through the celestial courts!
The Lady of Heaven Qiang's eyelids twitched wildly. The power of this one stroke exceeded all her calculations and imagination.
She had earlier mistaken the swordsman for Kaihuang Shen Ye; now she could see that although Shen Mu fell short of Kaihuang Shen Ye in cultivation, in mastery of the sword path he was more than his equal — he surpassed him! At that moment, Shen Mu suddenly drew back his sword.
The azure at the sword-tip shivered, split in two, and tapped the dragon-heads of the two God-Slaying Mystic Blades, one on the left and one on the right. His swordwork was exquisite — Kaihuang had praised it as the finest of a million years — and those two taps fell with perfect accuracy, severing the force of both god-blades. But the Lady of Heaven Qiang smiled.