Chapter 616 — Following the Same Pattern

Shen Mu's Kalpa-Opening Sword clashed with the Nine Phoenixes; the two great divine powers were near equals in might. The Nine Phoenixes were pierced through by the sword-light, and at once the sword within the sword of the Kalpa-Opening Sword burst forth — eight thousand blades against the countless divine powers inside the Nine Phoenixes' body.

Just then the Cangwu tree came sweeping in with a boom, branches dancing, radiance scattering on every side, and under that collision the Kalpa-Opening Sword's power ran dry.

Shen Mu fell back and drew his sword free, rousing the Mystic Body Three Elixirs Art; eight dragon cries rose within him, the Ancestral Dragon's Eight Notes reverberating — Adhere, Kill, Seize, Capture, Draw, Pull, Spin, Hammer, Refine — and his somewhat withered, failing blood and qi turned in a single instant incomparably thick and fierce. Within Shen Mu's body, divine treasury after divine treasury abruptly reversed, shifting from divine-path treasuries into demon-path treasuries: Spirit Fetus, Five Luminaries, Six Harmonies, Seven Stars, all inverted in the blink of an eye, divine-path treasuries below, demon-path treasuries above.

The primordial spirit born of the union of his spirit fetus and soul descended into the demon-path Primordial Fetus treasury, standing upon the demon soil, and the demon soil beneath his feet was the Six Harmonies Continent transformed from his demon-path spirit terrace. What blazed in the sky were the demon sun and the demon moon; what stood within the demon palaces of the Five Luminaries' stars were the Five Luminaries Demon Gods.

In the very instant Shen Mu drew his sword back, he thrust out again — still the first stance of the Kalpa Sword: Opening the Kalpa.

The spherical radiance their divine powers had struck out a moment before swelled open once more in the valley, only this time black sword-light mingled within it; streak upon streak of sword-light, dark as ink, burst outward from the center of the orb of light and stained it black in an instant.

The two men's divine powers were all but ground away to nothing, and the power bursting from the light all around had not yet fully unfurled, yet every tree in the valley had already gone down, toppling in all directions with the orb of light as their center.

Boulders floated into the air and shot off in every direction at a speed beyond all horror. Amid the light, Shen Mu retreated and drew his sword a second time, while Qi Jiuyi stepped forward once more, hands clasped; the phoenix nest in the tree suddenly flew out, and streak after streak of golden straw and wutong branches hurtled at Shen Mu.

Shen Mu drew his sword and flicked his wrist; the eight thousand swords abruptly merged, fused into one, and became the Carefree Sword in his hand, sword-light flashing as it met the flying golden straw and wutong branches. Upon him surfaced a Dao-rhyme that verged on the Dao itself, and the sword in his hand was like leaping numerical symbols, ceaselessly evolving.

The Fourteenth Chapter of the Dao Sword.

The Dao nourishes all the heavens and the great earth; it feeds the ten thousand laws, and all under heaven returns to oneness! Not even the old master of the Dao Sect had fully comprehended the Fourteenth Chapter of the Dao Sword; he had refined but half a stance, and yet even half a stance was already a divine chapter of swordsmanship without peer in all Jingping.

It was not that the old master lacked the aptitude or the comprehension; it was that the Dao Sword touched upon the numerical principles governing all things between heaven and earth, and if the numbers went wrong, the Dao Sword could never be refined to completion.

And Jingping's sun, moon, and stars were all false; there were errors in the celestial star-calculations, minute beyond measure, and to comprehend the Fourteenth Chapter through error was of course to comprehend nothing.

Shen Mu had studied the Fourteenth Chapter as well, and his mastery of such calculations was already of the highest order.

The reason he could so easily comprehend it was not that his aptitude and comprehension surpassed the old master's, but that he had seen the star charts of three hundred and fifty thousand years ago, and had studied the star formation left by the founding patriarch to guard the God-Slaying Mystic Saber.

With that, and at the very moment he calculated the way to break the celestial star-slaying formation, he grasped the mystery of the Dao Sword's Fourteenth Chapter. When the sword stroke "All Under Heaven Returns to One" was unleashed, it consumed almost none of his cultivation, none of his vital essence; the power between heaven and earth was borrowed by the sword art, and its flashing light broke apart the flying golden straw and wutong branches.

He had used the Kalpa Sword twice in succession to break Qi Jiuyi's great divine power, and the drain upon his own vital essence was fearsome; the might of the Dao Sword's Fourteenth Chapter was not necessarily greater than the first stance of the Kalpa Sword, and was even a shade inferior to it.

But for Shen Mu, the Fourteenth Chapter was the finest choice there was.

As the sword's power burst against the golden straw and the wutong branches, Shen Mu advanced instead of retreating, meeting Qi Jiuyi head-on; his fleshly body suddenly swelled, his muscles bulging, and from the Carefree Sword in his hand countless minute sword-lights flew out and became a livestock-slaughtering saber. Five chi long and two chi wide, the saber sat in Shen Mu's grip like a small door plank. The saber then split in two, one taken into each hand, as though he were holding two door planks.

Qi Jiuyi fell back, refusing him close quarters, and abruptly a pair of phoenix wings surfaced behind him; the wings swept out from his back and slashed in succession.

His mana was nearly spent; his great divine power, Nine Phoenixes Perch on the Cangwu Tree, had long been brewing, but it took a great while to call forth and drained him enormously, and to have weathered two strikes of Shen Mu's Opening the Kalpa in a row and then burned through Shen Mu's Dao Sword Fourteenth Chapter besides was already extraordinary. Among the young generation in the world today, he was surely the first to drive Shen Mu this far.

His pair of phoenix wings was formidable beyond measure; Shen Mu came at him like a whirlwind, the door-plank-sized sabers wheeling high and low, blade-light coiling around his whole body — the Butcher's saber art in his hands, and for footwork the Lame Elder's Sky-Skimming Divine Legs, coming and going beyond all prediction. The Lame Elder and the Butcher: the supreme arts of these two great masters were perfectly fused into one in him.

And Qi Jiuyi, spreading and folding his wings, loosed countless feathers like swords, clashing with a ding and a clang, sword art that found every opening, battering at Shen Mu's blade work. His phoenix feathers wielded sword art, while his wings wielded saber art — saber and sword, both without peer.

His attainment in the schools of combat technique was no whit weaker than Shen Mu's.

The two fought speed against speed; Shen Mu's two sabers flickered front and back, left and right, the blades like whirlwinds — at one moment the blade-light seemed a wave towering to the heavens crashing into his face, and within that wave a great sun rose over the Eastern Sea; at the next it was a long saber hung with the moon's soul, long saber and swift horse, fast as a shooting star — pressing Qi Jiuyi the whole way, forcing him back and back.

With a rushing clatter — the two slaughtering sabers in his hands suddenly shrank, and from within the blades flying swords swam out like little silver fish, darting through the air, coming and going swift as lightning.