Chapter 1570 — Forging the Original Intent into a Sword
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 2 of 4
To Kaihuang, it had thirty-five.
Such was the platform's strangeness: the deeper a man's cultivation of the Dao realm, the more steps the platform possessed, and the more terrible the divine sabers upon it!
At last Kaihuang set down his thirty-fifth step, and stood upon the God-Slaying Platform. In those years Shen Mu, Zaifu, and the other masters of the saber way had ascended together, and they had loosed their own sabers and their ultimate arts early on.
But Kaihuang, mounting all thirty-five tiers of the God-Slaying Platform, had still not drawn his sword.
Whoosh. The dragon heads of the two God-Slaying Mystic Sabers paused an instant, then stooped and dove.
Shen Mu's gaze fell upon Kaihuang, searching out his flaw, letting the two sabers attack of their own accord.
On the platform Kaihuang strolled as though in a garden, drawing his sword and letting it fall at will, driving the two God-Slaying Mystic Sabers back again and again. His sword way was too strong; to use the platform as a whetstone for it was proving difficult, for the God-Slaying Mystic Sabers could scarcely wound him.
And his Dao heart was too strong as well. Against a Dao heart so mighty, a platform that slew Dao hearts and ground them sharp was useless.
One who had grown to his level found it truly hard to take another step. This, too, was why he had wished to mount the God-Slaying Platform in the Battle of Xuandu.
He was too strong; to attain the Dao he needed some vast ordeal. Heavenly Consort Qiang was a Heavenly Venerable; she had held the God-Slaying Platform and the God-Slaying Mystic Sabers, and could rouse his latent power and potential and help him achieve the Dao.
But now the God-Slaying Mystic Sabers had lost much of their might, and could no longer make him feel any pressure at all. Suddenly the sky-covering waves of blood-red saber-light vanished into nothing; the two divine sabers soared upward, and Kaihuang could not help looking up.
Above him was blue sky, without a single cloud, clear through and through, so that one could almost see the stars beyond the heavens.
Kaihuang narrowed his eyes. He saw Shen Mu spinning skyward with the two sabers, farther and farther from the platform, until Shen Mu was as small as an ant.
Kaihuang lifted his head and looked at Shen Mu across the void; Shen Mu was still receding, and only when he had come beyond the heavens of Wuyou Township did he halt.
Kaihuang raised his brow. With a shing he thrust the Wuyou Sword into its scabbard, shook his right hand, flexed his fingers, then took the hilt and held his power in readiness.
And beyond the heavens, Shen Mu gripped the blood-fiend God-Slaying Saber and shook it with all his strength; the two sabers merged into one.
The blade was blood-red through and through, a dragon's head for its hilt, a dragon's fins for its edge, a dragon's bones for its spine, and it bore the matchless killing aura bred of slaying the Heavenly Lord!
Shen Mu gripped the saber, crouched, gathered his power, and suddenly grinned. The next instant he took a step.
In that moment a meteor seemed to burst into the sky above Wuyou Township.
The meteor broke through the firmament and entered the township's air, dim at first, then brighter and brighter as it fell. That radiance was blood-red, dyeing all Wuyou Township crimson, until at the last it was like a vast ocean of blood.
At the same time the whole God-Slaying Platform blazed with light; every natural Dao-pattern lit up, and abruptly the blood-light surged upward like a tide, madly, endlessly! Saber-light and blood-light fused into one.
Kaihuang looked up and could no longer tell which was saber-light and which was blood-light.