Chapter 1856 — The Supreme Sword Dao
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 2 of 5
All in Miluo Palace, including its Master, had left their Dao arts and divine powers in the Canon, and Young Master Hundun had left his own book.
Many had turned its pages. After reading Young Master Hundun's book, the Master of Miluo Palace was silent for a long while, then told them that its depths had reached a degree even he could not wholly comprehend.
Young Master Lingxiao had also turned those pages, yet could make nothing of them at all. The Master told them the script was written in the Dao of Chaos, and that the runes of the Dao of Chaos were called Yuan, runes surpassing the runes of Hongmeng.
Should Young Master Hundun bring Yuan to full perfection, he would attain an achievement beyond even his own reach.
Yet that road was exceeding hard, and he did not believe any could reach its end. At the time, Young Master Lingxiao and the others had not grasped the terror of Yuan.
Each of them possessed singular attainment, attainment the Master of Miluo Palace himself could not reach. They took Young Master Hundun's Yuan to be akin to the Second Young Master's Dao of Guixu, or the Fourth's Sword Dao.
Seen now, their thought of those years was somewhat naive. The Master's praise of Yuan was surely praise for the Dao of Chaos wholly surpassing the Dao of Hongmeng! "The Seventh of today cannot be so strong, yet under the Fourth's grinding he is growing stronger by degrees!
" He blocked another wave of sword strokes and looked about, yet still could not find where Miluo Palace truly lay.
Within Miluo Palace, sword light flashed, and Young Master Zixiao's thrust found Shen Mu.
Abruptly at his ear came music, the music of his dead wife.
It was not that any played the Zixiao Attainment Melody.
It rang from within his own Dao heart, and though he would not listen, he could not shut out the sound. Shen Mu must possess some art or power aimed at the weakness of his Dao heart, piercing into it and waking his longing for his wife. In this decisive battle of life and death he strained to keep his Dao heart untouched, yet still he was touched.
He had attained the Dao by means of his wife's Zixiao Attainment Melody, and that melody was branded deep in his Dao heart and Dao arts. He could have cut away the flaw in his Dao heart, yet never could bring himself to strike.
Suddenly a bell rang.
Even as the melody sounded in his Dao heart, the Cosmic Bell struck his body. Young Master Zixiao grunted and fell back, flying out of Miluo Palace to land upon a Chaos River.
He would have killed his way back, when his heart shuddered. He lowered his head to look into the river, and there he saw his wife. This river was the Annihilation Calamity of the Tenth Era.
He saw within it himself drunk upon the sword and sunk in madness, heedless of his wife, while she stayed ever at his side and cared for him.
Body and soul he had poured into the study of the Twenty-three Sword Styles, and had even come to find his wife hateful as never before, a hindrance upon his road to attainment.
More than once he raised a rough hand to her, cursed her foully, sought to drive her off, even wished to kill her. Yet his wife never left him, still understanding him, loving him, striving to aid him to attainment.
He was too dull. Drunk upon the sword, he ignored her care for him, and ignored the drawing near of the Annihilation Calamity. But his wife had perceived it.
She judged he could not cross the Calamity and must die within it, and so in the years before it came she poured her own body and soul into helping him attain.
How she herself might cross the Calamity, she never once considered.
At last she created the Zixiao Attainment Melody. One melody of Dao sound became a final绝响 and helped Zixiao attain. Once Zixiao had attained, the Calamity descended, and only then did he know his wife's sacrifice.
His extremity of sword became extremity of feeling, and desperately he sought to shield his wife through that Calamity.
Yet it was too late.