Chapter 1739 — The Paradise Offers Its Sword
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 1 of 4
It was just as Xu Shenghua had said: through the first half of that night Great Black Mountain lay utterly still, and only beyond Black Mountain did the terrible spectacle of a cosmos in total ruin still hold sway.
Shen Mu no longer took the Dao Dew himself; he let Xu Shenghua drink it, while he bent his own strength to healing Xu Shenghua's wounds.
He did this because Xu Shenghua had one more great battle ahead of him — in the second half of the night, the prehistoric powerhouses would come probing, and if Xu Shenghua lacked sufficient strength, he would never hold against that wave of invasion. At last a riven mountain range began to quake, as though some dreadful demon-monster beneath the earth were struggling to walk out from within the mountain.
Xu Shenghua rose, walked down from the World Tree, and set off toward that place.
Shen Mu gathered up the Dao Dew and drank it himself.
By the time dawn came, Shen Mu had recovered six or seven parts of his cultivation, and so he too came down from the World Tree.
Xu Shenghua was in the midst of burying those few prehistoric powerhouses who had died at his hands; Shen Mu came to his side, and saw that he meant to raise a grave for Lingguan as well. "If you cannot hold them, then withdraw," Shen Mu said.
Xu Shenghua lifted his head.
"You as well.
" Shen Mu turned and walked away, his voice carrying back from far off: "I have no road left to retreat.
" Xu Shenghua was struck dumb, and only after a long moment did he go on building the grave and setting up its stele.
Shen Mu pushed his speed to its utmost, burst out of the Ancestral Court, and made for the Yuan Realm. Anxiety still gnawed at his heart: he had lost a night in the Ancestral Court, and even at full stretch, the road from the Ancestral Court to the Yuan Realm would take him five days.
By then, would Cloud Heavenly Venerable still be alive?
Could he hold on until that moment?
The Yuan Realm.
At the very moment Shen Mu had left the Yuan Realm for the Ancestral Court, the Ancestral God King had just led the Xuandu host across the Sorrowless Land and was being entangled by Moon Heavenly Venerable and Lang Wan.
The Ancestral God King wielded the mortal frame of the Heaven Lord; countless Xuandu Sun Guardians and Moon Guardians dragged wheel after wheel of suns and moons along, the suns scorching the earth, and from those suns countless fire-crow god-people flew out and slew toward Jingping, while from the moons three-legged, toad-headed, six-eyed god-people leapt forth and stirred their divine abilities; the whole sky was filled with six-eyed monstrous eyes, and from those eyes shot beam after beam of light that hammered down upon Jingping below! This was a spectacle of sheer apocalypse. Moon Heavenly Venerable and Lang Wan blocked them in person, yet they could hold back only the Ancestral God King; they could not hold back so vast a Xuandu host. Against this Xuandu host the Sorrowless Land had no troops left to bar the way, and Jingping's forces were far fewer than the Sorrowless Land's — hard pressed indeed to stop a Xuandu host that poured down like an ocean filling the sky.
In one divine city of Jingping after another, the Sun-Shooting Divine Cannons were brought to life; among hundreds of divine cities stood more than a thousand sun-shooting cannons, whose blasts left dark trails across the heavens — one shot, and a Sun Guardian came falling, or a sun in the sky was pierced clean through by the cannon light!
Even so, the host of gods and devils of Xuandu was unstoppable.
Countless fire-crow soldiers rushed down; three-legged fire-crow god-people beat their wings and flew at the divine cities of Jingping; from the battlements of those floating cities true-essence cannons were thrust out one after another, and countless beams of cannon light flew to meet the fire-crow god-people. At once the sky began to rain fire, and yet the flood of fire crows pressed ever nearer, nearer to the walls!