Chapter 1540 — The Truth Behind the Tribulation
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 1 of 4
Taidi's primordial spirit had been trapped by Heavenly Venerable Ling within the Unchanging Divine Art and had never yet escaped it; hence no primordial spirit dwelt within the Lady of Heaven Qiang, whereas Yuan Sheng's rod of instruction was aimed precisely at the primordial spirit, and never failed to strike true. Once struck, any whose Dao Heart could not withstand it would be controlled by the caster.
Against a freak like the Lady of Heaven Qiang, however, who had no primordial spirit and relied wholly upon her divine sense, the rod was utterly without effect.
Shen Mu looked toward the Lady of Heaven Qiang and saw her standing upon the stump of a Dao Tree, crossing the vast River of Chaos by means of the woman within that Dao Fruit, charging at him with a savage, surging momentum.
A moment before, the woman in the Dao Fruit had failed to block Yuan Sheng's rod, which showed that her cultivation was no match for his — though it was certain that she was a Dao-attainer of prehistoric times.
Shen Mu pondered a moment, then urged his boat, transformed from his staff, to steer clear of the Lady of Heaven Qiang, rather than keep up the dogged, tangled fight.
With his present strength, killing her would not be easy; and even killing her would not be killing Taidi — to be truly rid of Taidi, he would have to fight his way up into the Great Luotian and root out his Dao Tree and Dao Fruit.
Earlier, the Lady of Heaven Qiang had had the weakness of her Dao Tree, and so, when she attacked, she was hampered and hemmed in, forced to avoid it. And Shen Mu, calculating with intent against her unwittingness, had let her take it as given that the Tribulation Sword was a Dao weapon he had obtained from Jade Capital City out of sheer luck, so that she wished to snatch it — and thus she fell into his scheme and lost the initiative.
But such a stratagem could be used once; a second time it would surely fail.
If it came to force against force, Shen Mu would have to face those two God-Slaying Dark Blades. Those two divine blades were truly too ferocious; even the Heavenly Lord's fleshly body could not withstand them — the most ferocious weapons under heaven, by any reckoning.
To face them, Shen Mu would have to do as he had done against the Dao-attainer in Great Black Mountain: lay down scores of Unchanging Divine Arts beforehand, so that in the instant the God-Slaying Dark Blades wounded him they could be triggered, and only so escape death.
Yet upon the River of Chaos, that uncanny place, was plainly no place to array the Unchanging Divine Art; one slip, one fall into it, and body and Dao would surely both be annihilated. His purpose in coming was not to fight the Lady of Heaven Qiang to the death, but to seek out the whereabouts of Taiyi and to ascertain the state of Jade Capital.
"Taidi's road is still too narrow. To think he would join hands with a prehistoric being — he means to cut himself off from all under heaven.
" Shen Mu took out the God-Slaying Platform and tried to activate it, to see whether he could draw away the Lady of Heaven Qiang's two God-Slaying Dark Blades.
Though the Lady of Heaven Qiang was a Heavenly Venerable, her own cultivation was relatively the weaker among the Ten Heavenly Venerables; she had no primordial spirit, and even having fused with Taidi's head, her cultivation could only rank at the lower reaches of the Ten.
But those two divine blades were truly formidable; the reason the Lady of Heaven Qiang carried the Ancestral Court's God-Slaying Platform with her was precisely to guard against some among the Ten Heavenly Venerables seizing the two blades away by vast magic power.
A moment earlier, when Shen Mu had trapped the two blades with his Void-Form Taiji, it was she who used the God-Slaying Platform to recall them and counterattack him.