Chapter 622 — Beneath the Evening Mist, Silver Blossoms and Fiery Trees

The cries of slaughter rose.

Devil-gods by the dozen roared in fury and came for Chi Xi. After a blood-soaked battle the corpses piled into mountains, and even Chi Xi could not help but feel weary. He cultivated the Leakless War God Art of the Crimson Bright era, a method that plundered blood and qi from the bodies of others and kept him at his peak at every hour, and with three heads and six arms his close-quarters onslaught was all but perfect. So long as an enemy was wounded, their blood and qi drained away without cease, and the drained blood and qi poured into his own body; one waned as the other waxed, and the longer the fight lasted, the better it served him.

This art was reckoned among the finest of the Crimson Bright era. Many cultivated it in those days, and no few devil-gods among them, which is why the devil-gods of the Crimson Bright era so often wore the form of three heads and six arms.

The Leakless War God Art had two flaws. The first was the burden it laid upon the flesh, so that the body felt weariness, though the blood and qi only grew more abundant. The second flaw lay in divine powers.

Because it was an art of close combat, his attainment in divine powers was not especially high. This executioner of the Crimson Bright era sat atop the high heap of corpses.

Night had fallen; firelight glimmered on every side, flames left behind by divine powers, sending up threads of black smoke in the dusk.

Gu City lay in ruins.

Paper boats came sailing in out of the dark, one after another, and the underworld runners aboard them gathered up the souls of the slain. Chi Xi watched these runners appear so abruptly, wooden-faced, and asked them nothing.

He was, after all, the executioner of the Crimson Bright Heavenly Court, a figure of immense standing, long since inured to such sights.

He sat on his mountain of corpses and looked into the distance, where a devil-god with three faces was walking toward him. As it walked it adjusted its own state step by step, a fearsome opponent indeed.

Honored King Vajra!

Chi Xi rested one leg on the head of a corpse beneath him, the other dangling loose and easy, steadying his breath, calming his heart, striving to press his rage down and wait for the moment it would burst. His foe was a Honored King of the devil race. He had once slain another Honored King of that race, relying on the Divine-Slaying Mystic Blade.

He knew well how mighty and terrible such an opponent was; his heart had to be made perfect, and he could give his enemy no opening whatsoever.

Rage, and the thirst for vengeance, gave him strength, but they robbed him of reason. Only by pressing the rage down, and then, at the instant of the death-struggle, suddenly releasing the long-suppressed fury to strike the enemy a fatal blow, would he taste that perfect exhilaration, that full pouring-out of wrath; the success of his vengeance would bring his Dao heart joy beyond measure. In the distance, Honored King Vajra was still striding near.

Looked at carelessly, he seemed less a devil-god of the devil race than a handsome, gentle man of middle years who had read all the books of poetry. As he walked, his arms turned and flew, working divine powers, one after another unfolding in succession; yet these powers gathered without dispersing, their might held back and unspent. His stride was not quick, yet his speed was extreme, giving the illusion that he was racing down from a high mountain.

That was a momentum, an invincible momentum!

Momentum was not a matter of how fast the steps fell. His steps were slow, yet he gave the impression of an overwhelming, unrivaled force. The speed at which his divine powers accumulated was frightful, and it pressed upon Chi Xi, heavier and heavier, until he could sit still no longer.

Behind him, space suddenly bloomed open, layer upon layer, so that Gu City drew farther and farther from him; more than that, the devil corpses near the mountain of bodies too drifted away. Vajra's divine power had already begun preparing for the coming death-battle: it was moving away these devil corpses so that Chi Xi would have no blood and qi to borrow.

If he did not strike now, he would let Vajra nurture an invincible momentum to completion. Chi Xi soared into the air, six hands gripping six golden sabers.

The sabers whirled and danced; battle techniques and divine powers burst forth beneath his blades. Battle techniques and divine powers came on as a flood of waves, each great wave piled upon the last, ever accumulating, the blade-light and the surge of waves rising higher and higher.

His steps opened wide, faster and faster.

Each foot came down in empty air, a hundred zhang above the ground, yet on the earth below a hollow suddenly appeared, a dried-up lake in the shape of a footprint. The ground shook.

One after another, dried-up lakes shaped like footprints appeared in sequence; even the mountains were trodden abruptly down, and with unspeakable speed he closed on Vajra, who came on unhurried. The footprint-lakes appeared before Vajra in a flash, less than two hundred zhang from him now.

The two dreadful beings collided at last. At this moment, far away in Li City, Shen Mu climbed the city tower in the dusk, meaning to rest, when he saw a light rising in the west.

The west, that was devil-race territory. The youth stood on the tower and gazed far off.

The light burst out of the dusk, and though heaven knew how distant it was, it was still blinding.

It was like a great, thick, sturdy tree, whose vast trunk suddenly reared up from the ground, a river of churning radiance surging into the sky; even here in Li City one could see the pillar of light growing upward. Then a branch, dazzling beyond compare, burst from that bare and lightless trunk, a branch shaped like a blinding flash of lightning.

Shen Mu strained his eyes, trying to make out what passed there with the Nine Heavens Far-Seeing Art, but his sight could not reach the details. At such a distance, never mind the shapes of gods and devils, even a mountain ten thousand zhang tall could not be seen.

One might well imagine how fierce, how violent that battle was. "Can it be Vajra and Chi Xi locked together? " he wondered inwardly.

Almost everyone in Li City was roused; they flew into the air or climbed to high places to watch this rare spectacle. The tree of light had its first branch; then radiance burst from the trunk, and a second branch of light spread outward, then a third, a fourth.

.

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More and more branches, ever denser, extended from that tree of light. Within a few breaths, Shen Mu and nearly every power-wielder and devil-god in Li City saw a vast tree of light rise into the dark night sky in the west, its crown thick and luxuriant, swaying on high.

Just then the tree of light suddenly dimmed and vanished, and the west fell into darkness once more.

"Is the battle over? " Shen Mu's heart pounded.

He murmured, "Vajra and Chi Xi, who won? " "I do not know," said a voice behind him.

Shen Mu turned hastily and saw that True God Pang Yu, Honored God Sang Ye, and other deities of Taihuang Heaven had come up behind him without his knowing. These deities came and went like ghosts; no doubt since the tower was the highest place, they had come here to watch the marvel in the western night.

True God Pang Yu shook his head. "I have crossed blows with Vajra several times, and I have almost always ended in defeat.

There are few in this world who can stand against him.

From my experience of losing to him, in that battle just now Vajra had already brought forth every means at his command, yet the outcome is still hard to say.

Even if he wins, it will be a bitter, wounded victory.

" Shen Mu's hands itched. "How I would love to go and take a look.

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