Chapter 533 — The Day the Firmament Made the Sun

Others summoned up blade-pellets and sword-pellets and hurled them far out into the fray.

"How did you build this altar?" Shen Mu suddenly thought of the crucial question and asked at once.

The long-braided girl was a skilled archer too. She bent her bow and shot an enemy dead, then said, "The altar has been here a long time. My father says it was left in Taihuang Heaven twenty thousand years ago. If Taihuang Heaven could hold out no longer, the altar could be used to awaken a divine sage and bring him here to help. Now Taihuang Heaven can hold out no longer, so the gods and demons of Mingyi City buried the altar in the middle of the battlefield and used the war dead as sacrifices, offering up blood and flesh enough..."

Her face darkened. Many of the sacrificed were practitioners of Taihuang Heaven.

"An altar left twenty thousand years ago."

Shen Mu gazed far off to where the Woodcutter Sage had fought his way to the distant reaches. The fighting there was fiercer still; the Woodcutter Sage was tearing the enemy camp apart.

"The altar must have been left by the Woodcutter Sage himself, so that Taihuang Heaven could summon him when it could hold out no longer. Which means his purpose is to buy time for Jingping..."

Shen Mu set up the Lunar Jade Eye and adjusted its direction. Beams of light shot from the jade eye, killing demon masters.

The Lunar Jade Eye outranged the bows of the other practitioners and struck harder. It killed demon after demon. Shen Mu aimed at the demon commanders: once a commander fell, the demons had no leader, and without direction they could not bring their numbers to bear.

Even so, more and more heaven-demons poured toward the altar. The defenders had no leisure to shoot at the demons far away; they could only shoot down at the foot of the altar.

Below the altar, the corpses piled into mountains, and still the black mass of demons surged forward, about to fight their way up onto the altar.

Shen Mu put away the Lunar Jade Eye, seized a sword-pellet, and held the altar, killing. The two sides fought a bloody battle on the summit. The heaven-demons were fierce beyond measure, fearless of death; for all the extraordinary skill of the Taihuang Heaven practitioners, they could hardly hold back the assault.

Around Shen Mu and the long-braided girl, one practitioner after another fell. Even Shen Mu and the girl were in mortal peril again and again, several times nearly losing their lives to enemy blows.

Fewer and fewer of their own remained on the altar. Soon only twenty or thirty were left. Then, suddenly, a world-shaking roar of shouting came from the distance, and the demons surging toward the altar seemed to receive some message: they fell back at speed, fleeing madly the way they had come.

Everyone on the altar felt the weight lift. They gasped for breath, collapsed to the ground, their bodies soaked in blood.

Behind them, bright horns and drums sounded. Tens of thousands of troops poured out of Mingyi City and charged the fleeing demon army.

The long-braided girl struggled to rise, wanting to stand and join the army in hunting down the demon fugitives, but her legs were weak and trembling, and she sat back down.

Shen Mu watched the Mingyi City army surge into the distance, and suddenly remembered something. "We've gone through death twice together, fought shoulder to shoulder, and we still haven't exchanged names. I'm Shen Mu. Shen, the shen of two hands holding a pestle to thresh grain; Mu, the mu of a herdsman pasturing cattle. What's your name?"

The long-braided girl lay in the pool of blood, looking up at the one and a half suns in the sky. She steadied her breathing and said, "I'm Sang Hua. Sang, the sang of many trees; Hua, the hua of woman and picture. That day, I said a great many things to you, but you never heard any of it. It was only because you were at my side that I lasted through that day's fighting. Otherwise I could never have held on so long. Guess!"

She turned her head and showed two small dimples. "What did I say to you?"

Shen Mu shook his head. "There are two worlds between us. I couldn't hear clearly at all."

Sang Hua looked up at the sky again. "Look, the suns in the sky are so big. Taihuang Heaven has no sun of its own. Those two suns were built by the god of Taihuang Heaven, with us following him. We call that god the Sun-Maker. A pity the second sun was never finished; the Sun-Maker was killed by a demon god before he could... The suns are magnificent, aren't they?"

"Yes. Magnificent..."

Shen Mu answered against his conscience, then asked curiously, "What did you say to me that night?"