Chapter 506 — Blow After Blow Against the Ancestral Masters

On the bridge, the Human Emperors of past ages wore strange expressions. What Li Zheng had told them was that the Overlord Body was a fabrication of his own, a kindly lie invented to spur Shen Mu—a mere mortal body—to strive and struggle; and they had believed it.

Yet now Human Emperor Qi Kang, at the very same realm, had come off the worse in the first clash of blows, and after that had done nothing but take a beating. This did not seem like something a mortal body could achieve through hard work alone!

A mortal body—not even a spirit body—beating a Human Emperor black and blue through personal effort alone: was such a thing possible?

And so even they could not help but wonder whether an Overlord Body truly existed in this world.

On the bridge, the vital essence of Human Emperor Yishan gathered into a great hand, which raised a long finger, snow-white as jade, and poked at Human Emperor Qi Kang, who was drifting downstream.

Qi Kang lay sprawled on his back, eyes wide, gazing at the sky, motionless. Poked twice, he sank into the water and floated up again.

"Good disciple, have you been beaten into submission by your own grand-disciple?" Human Emperor Yishan asked, holding back laughter.

"Stop poking me, you old bastard. Let me have a moment's peace."

Qi Kang said sourly, "I've been beaten silly, not beaten into submission! I just want some quiet, to think about how I lost..."

Yishan burst out laughing, gloating. "Still say you're not submitting? You're floating, aren't you? Floating!"

Qi Kang rolled over and lay face-down on the water, spread-eagled, his rear end to the sky, letting the river carry him away.

Shen Mu could not help but worry. He called out loudly, "Grand Ancestral Master, don't choke on the water!"

Yishan laughed. "This boy—every time he loses a fight he's like this. Pay him no mind. He's wiping his tears. He just doesn't want you to see."

Shen Mu was uneasy. To beat his grand-master so badly that the man lay face-down in the river wiping his tears—this was, more or less, an outrageous transgression. As a youth raised by Yincan Village, he had always revered his masters and honored the Dao. Of course, the Lame Elder and the Silent Craftsman had taken their share of beatings from him when they crossed blows at the same realm.

"I may have struck a little too hard. Grand Ancestral Master, in truth my boxing is no match for yours—I only leaned on my deeper cultivation to press you down. There's no need to grieve!"

Shen Mu leaped onto the bridgehead and leaned over the railing, craning out toward Qi Kang drifting below. "I didn't mean to hit so hard! Just now, when I saw how extraordinarily strong my grand-master's skills were, I couldn't help but feel a competitive urge, and so I struck with everything I had. These days, when I meet experts of the same realm, I rarely go all out."

A note of bleakness entered his voice, and a shadow of sorrow. "After all, I am an Overlord Body. I had thought I might meet an expert who could contend with me at the same realm—who would have guessed that the skills of my ancestral masters and grand-masters would be a little... low? But that's not your fault!"

On the bridge, the Human Emperors of past ages struggled to contain their fury, watching as the young Human Emperor gazed down at the drifting Qi Kang with a look of longing. "If only my ancestral masters and grand-masters could have lived in the same age as I," he said. "If you had been born in the same era and advanced alongside me, we might have vied for supremacy. It is a pity your age was so ancient that you never caught up with the era of the reforms of Imperial Preceptor Jingping and myself, so that your divine abilities and dao arts have fallen out of date..."

Several of the old ancestors' knuckles cracked. They held themselves back from exploding in rage.

Human Emperor Lan Po smiled, grinding her teeth in secret—a creak, creak, creak that was truly chilling.

Arrogant as the brat's words were modest, every sentence of his could anger the living to death and anger the dead back to life, making a person long to pin him to the ground and gang up on him with fists and feet!

"Shen the Overlord Body, you have only beaten that boy Qi Kang, and already you say our dao arts are out of date? That is a bit of a boast, is it not?"

Human Emperor Yishan's tone was stiff, his face kindly. "Come, come. Let me teach you what a divine ability is!"

Shen Mu looked troubled. He turned his head to regard this grand ancestral master who stood barely five chi tall. "Ancestral Master, you walk the path of divine abilities. Your divine abilities are very strong—but this close to me, you have already died one, two, three, four... sixteen or seventeen times."

Yishan was beside himself with rage, a ball of thunder-light clutched in his hand, fighting the urge to slap the boy dead.

"At this distance, even an expert of the Heaven-Man realm would not last a single move against me."

Shen Mu seemed not to notice, and went on. "Ancestral Master, what you cultivate is divine ability. You entered the Dao through divine ability—but to cultivate divine ability is to neglect the slaughter of flesh against flesh. We are this close. In the time it takes you to say one sentence, I could kill you twenty or thirty times over."

Yishan nearly spat blood, his face livid. He turned and leaped off the bridge; a wisp of cloud qi rose beneath his feet to bear up his short, stout frame. "Cocky little brat!" he roared. "I will open the distance first, and then we fight!"

The cloud qi beneath his feet carried him skimming over the river surface, racing upstream. After five or six li, Yishan judged the distance about right.

But then he suddenly recalled how swift Shen Mu's swordsmanship was, and that this distance was not safe either. So he went another three li or so. Then he thought of how fast Shen Mu was—how easily he had caught up with Qi Kang on the river just now—and so he went another two li.

"I cannot retreat any further. Any further and they will see that I am afraid—afraid of losing to my own grand-disciple..."

Yishan looked back. The distance was so great that the bridge had become a thin line, and Shen Mu and the others were dots upon that line.

Yishan's face reddened slightly. To run this far all at once had indeed betrayed his fear.

"Come down here!" Yishan shouted, face red but heart calm, voice full of vigor—exactly like Qi Kang.

On the bridge, the Second Ancestor called out loudly, "Yishan, you have forgotten to seal your own divine treasuries!"

Yishan's face reddened again. He had been so flustered that he forgot he needed to seal the Heaven-Man Life-and-Death, the Divine Bridge, and the Divine Treasury. He hurriedly sealed these three great divine treasuries, then shouted again, spirited as ever, "Come down here!"

Thud.

Shen Mu leaped onto the river surface.

"Linked Cliffs Dot the Cang Mountains!"

Yishan struck first. With his wide sleeves and great robes, his plump five fingers dancing within the cloth, more than ten li of river surface began to explode, one stretch after another, from beneath his feet. The great water became blue mountains, peaks piled upon peaks, rising with boom after boom!

The great river became blue mountains—a sight that seemed to have turned into a charming vista, but this was a divine ability, and killing intent lurked within!

He had entered the Dao through divine ability, and his divine ability differed from others': unless triggered, it unleashed no power. To stand within his divine ability was to invite utter catastrophe at the slightest movement!

The blue mountains bursting up without cease reached Shen Mu beneath the bridge in an instant, and Shen Mu could not help but grow elated—so elated that every mote of vital essence in him trembled and trembled, far more active than in ordinary times!