Chapter 425 — The Yin Capital of the Netherworld

Clusters of ghost fire drifted in from another world of darkness; boat after boat of paper swarmed toward the world of Fengdu. The old Yin envoys on those paper boats seemed all cast in the same mold, cold and silent, yet on closer look their faces could not be seen, as though each were veiled in mist; no true countenance was visible, only the vague sense of a face utterly ordinary. Countless paper boats, swift as arrows, darted forth and plunged into Fengdu, and behind the ghost-fire boats Yan Jingjing saw a truly horrifying sight: a pair of horns burning like flame, slowly rising out of the darkness! Those horns were vast beyond measure, formed from fragments of worlds and continents in the midst of perishing; countless souls screamed and struggled, tumbling without end from the nine-crooked horns!

"Tubo! " Yan Jingjing was frantic with alarm. She knew full well how perilous it was for these two worlds to go to war, but the battle above the God-Sundering Mountains was raging furiously and had reached its decisive hour; she had no choice but to steel herself and steer the Ark on toward the mountains.

"Batu.

. . Sbatu—" A rumbling came out of the darkness. That sound seemed never to pass into the world outside: the powerful warriors battling on the mountain heard nothing at all and sensed nothing amiss, they could see only the Ark drawing near.

And the Ark grazed past the world of Fengdu, and aboard it Yan Jingjing heard that obscure, unintelligible tongue of Youdu, though she did not know what it meant. In Fengdu, beneath the dark cloak, Yama's robes flapped and cracked; the dark cloak swirled howling about the city of Fengdu, and the deities great and small who stood beneath it seemed utterly tiny.

In the sea of mist, paper men and paper horses fought the gods and demons of the fog like madmen. The old men on the paper boats rose to their feet, holding up their storm lanterns; the lantern light shone out, and the skeletons charging in fell in whole swathes, scattering into wisps of black smoke.

Yama raised his hand, and all at once the whole world of Fengdu seemed to come to a standstill.

Everything was fixed in place; even time seemed fixed. Yama raised his hand, and a divine sword appeared and hacked at the horns in the other world. Wherever that black sword-light passed, space itself was compressed into solidity, and layer upon layer of space split apart beneath the blade.

Yan Jingjing's scalp went numb.

Caring for nothing else, she drove the Ark at full power toward the God-Sundering Mountains. Half the vessel entered Fengdu and Youdu, advancing with unspeakable difficulty, and then of a sudden it burst the bonds of those two alien worlds and broke free.

Yan Jingjing breathed a sigh of relief and looked back again.

The two uncanny worlds of Fengdu and Youdu had vanished entirely; no trace remained of the war between them. "How very strange!

" On the God-Sundering Mountains, the Headman and his companions were locked in frenzied slaughter with the gods of the High Heavens. Deity after towering deity had four heads and eight arms, or three heads and six arms, their bodies as though cast in gold; their divine treasures burst with boundless power, and the fighting split the heavens and cracked the earth.

Everyone on the mountain was swallowed in a bloody battle.

Even the Headman, that old sword god, was hard pressed beyond measure, his whole body covered in wounds. Those on the mountain burned with vitality beyond all measure, and the bloody glow of their surging life-force rose straight to the clouds, dyeing half the sky red.

Boom— A colossal figure came crashing down from the sky and landed before the Ark: the primal spirit of the Imperial Preceptor Jingping, struck down by main force. Even a sage hailed as appearing once in five hundred years, a reformer of laws and institutions, had come off badly before absolute power!

The Imperial Preceptor Jingping soared into the air, sword-light filling the heavens, his swordplay shifting and unfathomable, and cut at the skull of a one-eyed deity. That one-eyed deity lowered his head and opened his eye; boundless divine light erupted and drowned the Imperial Preceptor Jingping!

The clang of blow upon blow rang without cease.

The Imperial Preceptor's sword-light spun and broke through the one-eyed divine radiance, piercing in through the god's pupil and out the back of his skull; but the next moment the one-eyed deity's fist slammed into him, and the huge fist bore his body down and smashed him onto a mountain peak, driving him and the peak together into the earth. The back of the one-eyed deity's skull split open and a great eye thrust out, rolling with a gurgle; his other fist rose and smashed savagely down at the Imperial Preceptor Jingping! "So vicious.

.

.

" The Imperial Preceptor spat blood and looked up at the descending fist.

The one-eyed deity's head had twisted stiffly round, the lone eye at the back of his skull gazing at him with mockery. "But I am not so poor myself. .

.

" A faint smile came to the Imperial Preceptor's lips.

"First Chapter of the Sword World, Realm Fixed. " The one-eyed deity was briefly startled, and then the sword-light hidden within his head exploded with a roar! Reading address: