Chapter 1852 — The Origin of Chaos Runes
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 1 of 4
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.