Chapter 427 — The Buddha's Bone Relic

This battlefield stretched for several hundred li, cut into more than a dozen separate fields of war, yet all of them lay along the single line of the Divine Severing Mountains.

The Five Immortals of the demon race, the Kun King, the Wing King, the Blind Elder, Lord Huo, the Butcher, the Silent Artisan, the Deaf Elder, the Imperial Preceptor of Jingping, the Headman, Granny Zhu, the Old Dao Master, Old Tathagata, the Hermit of Qingyou — each was locked in single combat with a foe. As the mightiest champions their races could produce, they had long since found scarce rivals left in this world; but measured against the gods of Heaven Above, they stood one notch lower in cultivation realm. The Imperial Preceptor of Jingping and Tu Xingfeng were already among the very highest of the strong: the Imperial Preceptor had fought to the death and slain the One-Eyed God, taking grievous wounds himself, and Tu Xingfeng had perished together with his opponent.

From this one may see how vast the gap in strength truly was. The Five Immortals of the demon race and Granny Zhu were a shade weaker in strength, but richer in devices, and could only keep moving, trading blows of divine ability at a distance; their enemies were too powerful, and wore them down to exhaustion.

Yan Jingjing had arrived at precisely the right moment. When that sun of Xizhou's came down, the Yellow Immortal had already opened the sack upon his back; streams of yellow smoke came gushing out, stinking past all endurance, choking his opponent until his very guts seemed to split, and setting him to vomiting without pause.

The Yellow Immortal moved in to hook out his soul and seize his spirit, only to be stamped flat underfoot, unable to stir. The Willow Immortal, for her part, revealed her true form: a colossal azure serpent like an Azure Dragon, coiling about a snow mountain.

Her opponent revealed his true form as well, tall as the snow mountain itself, his body wrapped in white fur, his eyes like lightning hidden in the dark; he beat the Willow Immortal until she spat blood, until blood ran without cease from her eyes, ears, mouth, and nose.

The White Immortal, the Grey Immortal, and the Fox Immortal likewise took grievous wounds. Granny Zhu, relying on her teleporting banner and the palm-force of the Great Luo Heaven Star Palm, could still hold out, dodging her opponent's killing strokes.

The Five Immortals generally chose to join forces against a single enemy, but even so there were never enough hands; they needed to pin down two gods at once, which strained them terribly, and with Granny Zhu's help the pressure eased somewhat, though it was still not enough to contend with two gods.

On another field, the Old Dao Master had already carried the fourteen chapters of the Dao Sword through to the fourteenth. Of that fourteenth chapter he had mastered only half a move, and with half a move of sword art he fought his opponent, cutting until mountains crumbled and the earth split.

But the flaw in that half-move was quickly found: a divine light shot from his opponent's eye, pierced through layer upon layer of sword-light, and nailed the Old Dao Master to the cliff. "The Dao Sword. .

.

is no more than this! " The god's enormous palm-print came down over the Dao Master on the cliff!

Old Tathagata's Thunder Roar Mahayana Sutra roused the Twenty Heavens; his body was as a great Buddha, ten thousand Buddhas encircling him, and he met hard with hard — yet he too was losing ground, his great Buddha and Twenty Heavens battered and broken. The god who contended with him had three heads and six arms, and the two fought body to body, fist to flesh; soon Old Tathagata was mottled with blood, his white brows dyed red, dripping.

He was old.

His qi and blood were no longer as abundant as before, his physical strength far inferior to what it had been. In former days, by the power of the Thunder Roar Mahayana Sutra he could have fought on without knowing weariness, abundant qi and blood lending enormous might to his every move and divine art; now he felt his strength fail him, and he was beaten down by his foe.

Lord Huo, on another field, tried again and again to come to the rescue, but his opponent held him fast and he could never free his hands. His own plight was much the same: he too had cultivated the final realm of the Thunder Roar Mahayana Sutra, the Great Brahma Heaven realm, gods and Buddhas encircling him, twenty tiers of precious aspect about him.

Yet Lord Huo's strength lay in his youth, in his vigorous body; Old Tathagata's qi and blood were withered and spent, and he could not hold out much longer.

"Shariputra: emptiness is not different from form, form is not different from emptiness!

" A chanting voice came from Old Tathagata's mouth, and his qi and blood surged up at once; the power of his every technique grew greater and greater, his fighting strength more and more terrible, until he surpassed his opponent.

Lord Huo's heart quivered, and he cried out loudly, "Master!

" Old Tathagata turned his head and looked at him, and smiled.

"The Buddha-dharma — I leave it to you.

Pass it on for me!

" "Feeling, perception, mental formation, and consciousness — the same is true of them. " Buddha-light blazed forth, drowning Old Tathagata and that god together.

The Blind Elder, meanwhile, roamed from battlefield to battlefield, using the Heart-Sage Eye to spy out the flaws in an opponent and strike by surprise — though all he could manage was to force the gods onto the defensive and save the lives of his own people. The Butcher's fight with his opponent, Star Lord Yan, could only be called madness: a heedless, desperate manner of fighting, in which nothing existed but the saber.

One man, one saber — no matter how grave his wounds, no matter how fierce the enemy's attack, he bore his saber forward and split everything apart! Behind the Silent Artisan, the great furnace belched sky-high divine fire; silver pellets flowed out of his box, transforming in a thousand ways, evolving into every kind of divine weapon and sharp instrument, while in his dantian there seemed to be another great furnace holding boundless energy; the twin furnaces burned together, granting him matchless power.

The Deaf Elder splashed ink and painted: his ink invaded heaven and earth, painting amid the snow mountains and the land, until painting and reality overlapped. The painting hid within the mountains and waters, and the mountains and waters overlapped with the painting, presenting one after another a world both gorgeous and uncanny, carrying his opponent with him as he shuttled between painting and reality — yet never crossing weapons with him. In a straight clash he would surely be no match.

So in this span of time he painted with great strokes mountain after mountain, river after river, for a hundred-odd li; within the painting, another painting; within a world, another world.

He drew his opponent into the painting and left him lost, unable to find any path out of that painted world. The Deaf Elder leaped free of the painted world and was just about to annihilate that whole landscape, painting and all, when of a sudden a streak of sword-light flew out from within the painting and ran him through the chest.

The Deaf Elder was carried backward, flying, by that sword-light; he summoned all he had into his brush and swept it in one heavy stroke, and at once mountains and rivers for a hundred-odd li around caved in and crumbled, collapsing inward into annihilation, the energy released terrible beyond words!

"A mere mortal — you have no business grasping the power of gods and demons! " From within the explosion of that collapsing world came a furious roar.

A hand drenched in blood clawed its way out, reaching for the Deaf Elder as he flew backward.