Chapter 426 — Blazing Flame Forest Sea

The Sword Realm was the sword art that the Imperial Preceptor of Jingping had created after the Headman pointed him toward the way and he entered the realm of the Sword Dao. It was not the same as the sword arts he had known before; formerly he had only touched the gateway of the Sword Dao, and had never attained it.

In those days his swordsmanship, though strong — he had created three basic sword forms and was hailed as the Sword God — could never stand beside the Headman's so long as he had not entered the Sword Dao; but once he entered it, his fighting strength rose enormously. He was dazzlingly gifted, with no shortcoming anywhere in his strength, and the Sword Dao he comprehended differed from the Headman's.

The Headman, cherishing the memory of the fallen, had created the Sword Diagram, which was for the most part a remembrance of things past; he, by contrast, was all advance and enterprise, reform and change, possessed of a vastness of mind and spirit.

Breadth of mind decides achievement. The Headman's age had already passed; his own age had only just arrived.

His Sword Realm had only just been founded, with but its first part complete: Realm-Settling.

Realm-Settling — to settle the rivers and mountains, to settle the altars of the state, to pacify the chaos within the four seas and all under heaven, to sweep away the calamities of the six directions and the eight wastes, and to open an age of Great Peace.

The will and the ambition of the Imperial Preceptor of Jingping lay hidden within that single sword; it was the highest sword art he was capable of creating thus far. When the One-Eyed God's lone eye was pierced through by his sword, Realm-Settling had in truth already been buried in the One-Eyed God's skull.

The One-Eyed God was a sinister creature, and he was not one-eyed at all: originally he had two eyes, but his cultivation arts were strange and his attainments in the Way of Creation extraordinary.

By the wonders of Creation he had moved one eye to the center of his brow, and the other to the back of his skull, where it was covered by his hair, so that men took him for a god with but one eye. Little did they know that he could see both before and behind him. He knew the Imperial Preceptor of Jingping was his fiercest rival and the foremost figure in Jingping's reforms; and so this time he had been willing to sacrifice an eye to send the Imperial Preceptor on his way. Yet cunning as he was, and though he had staked the loss of one eye, the Imperial Preceptor of Jingping was a move ahead of him in the arts of the heart.

The power of Realm-Settling hidden in his skull erupted. Cracks appeared across the One-Eyed God's head, and from those cracks surfaced streams of snow-bright sword-light.

His eyes, ears, mouth and nose suddenly turned a dazzling white, and then sword-light came gushing from his eyes, ears, mouth and nose; as more and more cracks opened across his head, more sword-light burst from them, and in an instant that snow-bright radiance lit the surrounding snow mountains as though it were broad daylight!

Thud! The One-Eyed God's fist came smashing down upon the Imperial Preceptor of Jingping; the earth cracked with a splintering roar, and fissures spread in every direction from the Imperial Preceptor, no one knew how far.

The Imperial Preceptor coughed blood, and heard the sound of his own bones breaking. Everything above the One-Eyed God's neck had vanished; his corpse swayed and toppled. At the bottom of the pit the Imperial Preceptor lay motionless, blood welling ceaselessly from his mouth, his breath a thread of gossamer: "Jade-Faced Poison King.

.

. save me.

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.

" At that moment the Lame Old Man, with the Alchemist on his back, was racing headlong, fleeing frantically through one combat circle after another.

The Alchemist refined pills and compounded medicines without pause, faster even than Shen Mu, ceaselessly poisoning the gods of the High Heavens or dosing the Headman and the others to heal their wounds. He urged, "Lame Old Man, hurry! Faster! Didn't you boast that your speed was number one under heaven?

" "If I weren't carrying you, I would be number one under heaven!

" The Lame Old Man was frantic with rage. "If you don't believe me, try having your legs cut off and put back on! Twice — my legs were severed twice, and only recently reattached.

I'm afraid that if I run any faster they'll leave my upper body behind, that the two of them will abandon me and run off on their own! " The Alchemist consoled him: "It's fine.

Shen'er's handiwork is excellent; they won't come off so easily. Run a little faster; there's another god close behind us.

" Behind them a three-headed god was in wild pursuit. The Alchemist had long since released the "little darlings" he raised; countless venomous creatures surged like a tide toward that god. These creatures had been nourished for many years on the Alchemist's miracle elixirs and every sort of poison, and each was mighty.

As they ran they transformed: in a few blinks their bodies swelled, muscle and exoskeleton bursting out with thuds, becoming one behemoth after another, hideous and savage, swallowing clouds and breathing mist, spitting fire and water and poison.

Yet even so they could only slow that three-headed god a little. The god's strength was terrifying; with the lift of a hand he smashed each venomous creature to powder, into clumps of gaudy pulp, severed limbs flying.

The creatures could not even draw near; a single roar from him burst them apart.

And even when he was poisoned, one of the three-headed god's heads blazed with roaring flame, turning into a head of fire that burned madly from within outward, tempered in divine fire that coursed again and again through his whole body, burning the venom away. Another of his heads turned sapphire, and a sapphire treasure-light scoured his flesh over and over, expelling the deadly poison in an instant.

The Alchemist's poisons had met their bane in this god. What was more, if he did not rely on his venomous creatures, the Alchemist's own strength was perhaps the weakest in the Hidden Maimed Village — merely the Heaven-Human realm.

All his strength lay in poison and poisonous things.

Counting poison and poisonous creatures, his fighting power could not be reckoned: he might poison a god to death, or he might be smashed apart by a single slap. Carrying him on his back, the Lame Old Man could not match his peak speed, and still had to dodge the sneak attacks the other gods might make at any moment; the plight of the two was dire indeed.

Even though the Lame Old Man's speed was unmatched under heaven, threading among world-shaking divine abilities was a heart-stopping thing; one careless step and both might lose their lives.

"The Imperial Preceptor of Jingping has lost his fighting strength — go rescue him first! " The Lame Old Man, carrying the Alchemist, rushed toward the place where the Imperial Preceptor had fallen, but just then the three-headed god gave a sudden shake, and two of his heads came flying through the air, water and fire together, rolling toward the two of them!

The Lame Old Man dodged in panic; suddenly the ground ahead turned unbearably hot, in an instant becoming a rolling sea of lava, and the whole snow mountain sank slowly into it. A god stood upon the lava, holding a bright mirror in his hand; the mirror floated up and hung in the air, and its vast surface shone down into the lava.

Everything beneath the earth became like clear lake water, plainly visible.

This god had a goat's head and a pair of curving horns; his gaze was sharp as he searched for traces below the ground. Suddenly the mirror-light lit upon the figure of Tu Xingfeng, who was shuttling through the earth at enormous speed; caught in the light, he slowed at once.