Chapter 308 — The Height of Baseness

"Shen your grandpa!

" Shen Mu thrust his sword, and at once all eight thousand swords stirred; the flying blades pressed down upon Ban Gongcuo like an avalanche of toppled seas and mountains, while he snarled, "Shen Gongcuo, you and I cannot both live under heaven!

" "Shen Gongcuo?

Why does he call me Shen Gongcuo? " Ban Gongcuo was stunned, but had no time to think it over. He slapped his waist — at his waist, too, hung a taotie pouch.

The pouch opened, and a great banner sprang out into his hand; he spun and shook the banner, and from its long cloth countless locusts poured forth, buzzing in a circuit around his body before flying headlong into Shen Mu's rain of swords.

Those locusts actually veered of their own accord in midair, hurling themselves onto Shen Mu's flying swords and gnawing with crunch, crunch — yet they could not bite through. Shen Mu's forging of those eight thousand blades had come close to exhausting the Nether Demon Sect's finest materials; though most of the eight thousand swords were cast from dark gold, every blade had issued from the hand of Shen Mu, a grandmaster of artifact forging, and at the tempering he had added the choicest metals, so that the materials used were even better than those of a first-rank grand minister's belt-sword, such as the Chubao Sword. His cultivation was not high enough for him to raise the might of the eight thousand swords to the level of the Chubao Sword, but in hardness alone, every one of the eight thousand was no whit its inferior.

Shen Mu channeled his sword-force and slashed at the locusts; clang after clang rang out, sparks flew on every side — and still his swords could not wound these flying locusts. He was secretly startled: "This bastard has no end of treasures!

" His taotie pouch had been stolen from the Golden Palace of Loulan, and he had plundered that palace's treasures beyond counting; but Ban Gongcuo, as a Grand Venerable of the Golden Palace of Loulan, stood in rank far above even the Sorcerer Venerable, and possessed a private treasury of his own, one Shen Mu had not ransacked. His prime weapons were of many kinds.

These locusts, in truth, came from the Gu Hall within the Great Nurturing Nether Demon Sutra, the cultivation art of the Nether Demon Sect — rare treasures forged through the arts of gu-rearing. In one of his past lives he had been received into the Nether Demon Sect and learned the Great Nurturing Nether Demon Sutra; the Great Unifying Art he had failed to obtain, but every technique in the sutra he had studied.

The gu insects in his taotie pouch were likewise sect-suppressing treasures, and moreover had been fused with the soul-cultivation methods of the Golden Palace of Loulan: every kind of gu insect he had refined could attack not only an enemy's body but his very soul.

Within the Sorcerer-Venerable Louluo Scripture, the Golden Palace's cultivation art, there was a method of soul-worm attack, one that had itself drawn upon the gu-insect way of the Great Nurturing Nether Demon Sutra. His flying locusts were harder than iron all over, and in a former life he had refined them to be large or small at will; any ordinary prime weapon that met them would be eaten clean away, without a scrap remaining.

What was more, the locusts carried a sorcery of soul attack, well practiced at polluting another man's prime weapons; once a prime weapon was polluted by that sorcery, its master would lose control of it and be left at his mercy. Most important of all, other sect-suppressing treasures devoured one's cultivation to drive, whereas driving the flying locusts consumed very little — and so, the moment he came to blows with Shen Mu, he had brought out this treasure at once. He knew that Shen Mu's cultivation was unusually deep — deeper than his own, in fact; and although he himself had reincarnated to cultivate anew at a pace far beyond Shen Mu's, he still would not presume that he could press Shen Mu down by sheer depth of cultivation.

Shen Mu's flying swords were many, yet his locusts were no fewer. And as it happened, both men were using a sword art — pitting sword art against sword art.

Shen Mu executed the Dao Sword's Third Chapter, a sword art of the Daoist school, and Ban Gongcuo executed, of all things, the Dao Sword's Third Chapter as well. Five-hued auspicious clouds overspread the sky; across the three heavens the immortals' resonance rang clear and bright!

The same stances, the same sword art — in the hands of Daoist disciples it might be said to be filled with drifting immortal aura, detached from the world, untainted by the faintest breath of mortal smoke and fire. But in their hands, neither the sword aura nor the locusts held a trace of immortality.

Shen Mu's sword-light was overbearing; the eight thousand swords formed five-hued auspicious clouds, their three primes and five auras tyrannical beyond measure. When the flying swords clashed, there was no celestial grace whatsoever — the immortals' cadence became the rolling of war drums, the clash and carnage of weapons, and a murderous aura that shot straight up to the stars of the Ox and the Dipper!

Ban Gongcuo, for his part, drove the Dao Sword's Third Chapter with sorcery; the locusts massed into clouds, gaudy with five colors yet seething with a rolling demonic nature, looking for all the world as though every sort of venom and poison hung thick in the air — and, with the eerie strangeness of sorcery and sorcerous poison, and the locusts' shrill chittering, whatever immortal resonance had rung bright was despoiled to the very last note. Boom!

The power of the Dao Sword's Third Chapter detonated; sword met locust, and the force of the techniques burst forth.

The two men's bodies shook violently and both were hurled backward, crashing hard against the walls of the bridge, blood trickling from the corners of their mouths.

"Shen Gongcuo, your death has come! " Shen Mu wrenched himself from the wall, raised both hands high, and abruptly joined them above his head — little fingers and ring fingers locked, index and middle fingers extended straight, thumbs folded inward — forming a sword seal. The No-Sorrow Sword flew over at once, its point standing upward; swish, swish, swish — the eight thousand swords howled in and gathered into one colossal blade, with the No-Sorrow Sword at its core, ceaselessly spinning and coiling, while the Drilling Sword form and the Cleaving Sword form were unleashed at the same time.

Shen Mu chopped down with both hands — whoosh! — and the colossal blade came roaring down upon Ban Gongcuo!

"Sect Master Shen, commanding so many swords at once — I fear your cultivation is somewhat lacking, is it not?

" Ban Gongcuo held the Myriad-Locust Banner and shook it left and right; countless locusts flew back, those behind mounting on the backs of those before, forming a great shield. Swords clashed with locusts, and the swordplay changed; countless blades whirled and circled, turning into the Coiling Sword form.

Those locusts had been refined hard as steel and iron; the Drilling form could not bore through them, but the Coiling form wormed into the gaps, thrusting at Ban Gongcuo behind the shield.

"Shen Gongcuo, your magic power is running short as well, isn't it? " Shen Mu said savagely.

Ban Gongcuo was privately perplexed: "Why does this whelp keep calling me Shen Gongcuo? I don't bear the surname Shen.

How odd.

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