Chapter 614 — The Withered Bones of Chiming

Inside the All-Heaven Stars Slaughter Array, when Qi Jiuyi and Zhe Huali heard Shen Mu's voice come through, both spat blood at the same moment — not because Shen Mu had angered them into it, but because the array had abruptly changed, transforming into a dazzling river of stars. The starlight drew upon one another, ray linked to ray; the chains of starlight were woven from countless intricate runes of divine art, and when the slaughter array roused, in the blink of an eye it had grievously wounded them both. And seen from where they stood, the little jade box at the heart of the star river had become an enormous square coffer, four-square and upright, hanging in the center of the river of stars, rising and sinking through that sea of stars, while the rays of aureate light grew immense, coiling around the host of stars.

This slaughter array was not a thing they could withstand or fend off. "Three hundred and fifty thousand years — is that number true or false?

" The two men vomited blood in great gouts, each employing his arts to hold out for dear life, and ground out through their teeth: "Never mind it — a dead horse doctored as a live one! " Their minds raced at full power, calculating the trajectories of stars and starlight, dodging the chains of light; their bodies moved at furious speed, and sure enough the array gradually fell still. All around, the stars resumed their ordinary size, becoming grains of star-sand that turned slowly.

Cold sweat rolled down the brows of Qi Jiuyi and Zhe Huali; they exchanged a glance and were about to rush into the center of the array and take the little box, when they saw that Shen Mu had already arrived there and stood before it.

Qi Jiuyi was seized with alarm.

He was just about to step forward when his qi and blood surged violently, and his heart clenched. He had been wounded a moment before — a chain of starlight had grazed his shoulder and split it in a long gash — yet the wound would not close of itself; instead the blood kept flowing, and beads of blood were rising into the air, drifting toward the dried corpse upon the iron throne.

He looked hastily at Zhe Huali. Zhe Huali was wounded as well. Like him, he could not master his qi and blood; his blood was flying toward the corpse.

The first drop fell into the corpse's mouth. All around fell suddenly, utterly silent — silent to the point of eeriness. "Ugh—" From the corpse's mouth came a long, drawn-out hiss, then a crackling, creaking sound, and the two men felt their flesh creep; they hurried to seal their own wounds, but still they felt their essence qi draining away.

"Something is amiss!

" Zhe Huali decided on the instant, leaping backward and charging out of the hall. Qi Jiuyi hesitated, looked at Shen Mu in the array, then suddenly gritted his teeth and withdrew from the shrine as well. In the instant he burst out, Qi Jiuyi swept his sleeve, and at once a Cangwu tree wreathed in golden flame sealed the hall's door.

Zhe Huali whirled back, raised his demon blade high, and brought it down; his blade-light split apart and screened the Cangwu tree. The two flew down the mountain one after the other like a pair of raging dragons in wild flight, leaving a trail of afterimages behind them.

Shen Mu's hair stood on end as well; he snatched up the little box and bolted out of the array.

The qi and blood that had flown from Zhe Huali and Qi Jiuyi had gone straight to the corpse and fallen into the mouths of its other two heads; from those mouths too came the crackling sound, and the three heads were slowly turning to look his way.

In their sockets the shriveled eyes were slowly filling with blood, slowly bulging.

Shen Mu had already burst out of the All-Heaven Stars Slaughter Array and reached the doorway of the great hall, only to be met head-on by the Cangwu tree sweeping down. "You, Qi! " With the little box tucked under one arm, Shen Mu seized the sword pellet in his other hand; his palm quivered, and countless tiny flying swords poured out, becoming Sword Treads Rivers and Mountains, and clashed with the Cangwu tree in a thunderous collision.

Qi Jiuyi had loosed that great divine art in haste, and the Cangwu tree's power was nothing much — it was meant only to delay him; had the great art been whole, even Shen Mu would have had to bring out the Tribulation Sword to meet it.

Shen Mu's Sword Treads Rivers and Mountains cut the Cangwu tree down and broke Qi Jiuyi's divine art, but the blade-light came rushing at his face and shattered his Sword Treads Rivers and Mountains. "Zhe Huali!

" In a fury, Shen Mu evaded the edge of Zhe Huali's stroke, spun, and swung his sword; the second form of the Dao Sword, Five Qi and Three Primes in Blossoming Union, erupted, its sword-light becoming five qi and three primes with cloud-chariots interwoven, and at last he broke Zhe Huali's move. At the hall's doorway no divine art barred the way any longer.

Shen Mu crouched, knees bent, then suddenly loosed his strength and shot forward; with a great booming crash the air before him was compressed into a wall, and the wall burst.

His body soared into the air and rushed out through the shrine's doorway, a faint smile slowly blooming on his face.

And then his body froze in midair.

The smile on Shen Mu's face had not yet fully bloomed when it slowly faded, turning by degrees to alarm. He was drifting backward, feet off the ground, and no matter how he drove his divine arts, it was no use. In midair Shen Mu straightened his clothes, held the little box in both hands, and made himself reverent.

At last his feet touched the ground.

Shen Mu turned at once, raised the jade box high overhead in both hands, and said in a low voice: "Spare me, Senior!

" His hands grew light — the box flew up.

Shen Mu quietly lifted his eyes and saw the jade box come to rest before the three-headed, six-armed dried corpse. "Ugh—" That corpse was no dried corpse, but a being whose qi and blood had withered and whose vital essences had run dry, sunk into a state neither living nor dead. With the coming of Shen Mu and the other two, and the wounds of Qi Jiuyi and Zhe Huali, blood had flown into his mouth and barely kindled a spark of the fire of life.

From his throat came a sound that made the flesh crawl, as though he were rousing the workings of his own flesh; from within him too came that crackle and creak, like bones knocking together. "Ugh—water. .

. or blood!

" Shen Mu hastily drew a water skin from his Taotie Pouch and offered it up with reverence.

Ever since the affair of the Flame Desert in the Western Lands, he had always kept a few skins of pure water in the Taotie Pouch. The corpse raised a hand with immense difficulty, very slowly. "Senior, let me.

" Shen Mu stepped forward and, all eagerness, opened the skin and held it to the corpse's lips.

When the skin was drained, the head on the right rasped: "Water—" Shen Mu brought out another skin and held it to the right head's lips; when that was finished, he brought out a third and put it to the left head's mouth. The left head drank with difficulty, and Shen Mu, stealing a glance, was startled: the shriveled flesh of the two heads that had just drunk was slowly plumping out, and qi and blood seemed to stir within them again.

More than that, his blood vessels were like cracked earth after long drought meeting sweet rain; soon there came the sound of blood running within them.

"This dried corpse.

.

.

no, not a dried corpse.

He must be a mighty one of three hundred and fifty thousand years ago! He cultivated a wondrous art that sank him into feigned death, so that this divine mountain would not devour him.

A most mysterious method indeed," Shen Mu thought. The corpse's face slowly plumped; by degrees the lineaments of a face could be made out, no longer mere skin stretched over bone.

Yet his fleshly body must have been drained cruelly; water alone could not restore him to his own face.