Chapter 701 — Clash of Two Heroes

There, two mighty beings of emperor-throne caliber were locked in a contest of dharma across the boundary of worlds. Their spells and divine powers were wielded with a simplicity that was at once vast in scope; their attacks and reprisals followed the supreme principle that the Great Dao is at its simplest and most effortless. With only a handful of variations in their magical transformations, they unleashed might and majesty beyond the reach of countless practitioners of the arcane and even of gods and demons alike.

This was sorcery of the Dao-realm: simple, effective, devoid of superfluous variation. Shen Mu's Kalpa-Opening Sword was the mark of his having attained the gateway by which swordplay enters the Dao. But Shen Mu had only comprehended a single stroke; once he had unleashed it, there was no continuation to follow. Lady Tianyin and the Netherworld Emperor, by contrast, plucked their arts from the air at will; though they fought across the world-wall, the display was a riot of splendor, with rarely a move repeated.

The emperor who crossed swords with Lady Tianyin was indeed, as she had said, a man of gentle, scholarly refinement. Though he wore an emperor's majesty, there was not a trace of overbearing arrogance about him. He was very handsome, with large eyes beneath long, narrow lids like phoenix eyes, and a beard like the character "eight" drawn by some master calligrapher—full of charm and character.

This was the Netherworld Emperor, the one who, long ago, had ambushed Lady Tianyin and seized the Tianyin Realm outright.

"Though my lady has been dead all these many years," he suddenly laughed, "it seems that misfortune has turned to fortune. Your understanding of the Dao has already surpassed what it was in times past. Fighting from across the worlds, I truly cannot overcome you. And so I must rely on a trick."

A sudden shift seized the winds and clouds of the Tianyin Realm. Countless black sands surged like a swarm from every heaven, pouring into the realm, while numberless monsters formed of famished ghosts raced madly toward Lady Tianyin. In the blink of an eye, the whole vast sea was covered with famished ghosts in full sprint!

Not only that—all the soul-black sand of the realm came bearing down on Lady Tianyin at once. The gargantuan famished ghost that was the Tianyin Realm was about to awaken. The realm no longer showed the slightest glimmer of light; it had fallen utterly into darkness.

Lady Tianyin laughed softly. Suddenly she tossed the Heavenly Dipper into the air and gave it a gentle flick. The Dipper spun madly, and it seemed that the entire Tianyin Realm spun with it, heaven and earth wheeling around! With a roar, the sea flipped over into the sky; the land hung inverted; the vault of heaven turned into an empty plain of earth; countless famished ghosts, flailing wildly, were hurled into the air—and then, as heaven and earth reversed once more, they were slammed back down. The spinning Dipper pulled the entire realm along, flinging the ghosts up and dashing them down so that they had no leisure whatsoever to attack Lady Tianyin; the soul-black sand, too, was scattered, and the great famished ghost of the realm could not touch her at all.

The Netherworld Emperor sighed, his form gradually sinking into the darkness of the Nether Capital. "You have truly leapt beyond the fetters of the heaven-born divine, and have even learned my Dao arts from my Dipper. I grow all the more curious about that Daoist friend who resurrected you—who could he be, to have achieved such an astonishing feat..." His face sank into the dark and disappeared. "Yet you still cannot subdue the famished ghosts, nor subdue the Tianyin Realm."

He was a man who knew when to press on and when to withdraw. Once he saw that he could not enter the Tianyin Realm and could not use its famished ghosts to crush Lady Tianyin, he decided at once, wasting no more effort and husbanding his strength instead.

Lady Tianyin breathed a sigh of relief. She raised a finger, tapped the air, and the revolving Dipper gradually came to a stop. But at that very instant, the Tianyin Realm pressed down upon her once more!

"How am I to slay this gargantuan famished ghost that is the Tianyin Realm, and bring the realm back under my command?" Lady Tianyin could not help the worry that rose in her heart.

She could prevent the Netherworld Emperor from invading, yes, but the Tianyin Realm still refused to return to her sway; the one who held sway over it was still the Netherworld Emperor. Unless she could resolve the predicament of the realm, retaking it would be more difficult by the day.

And the predicament lay in this: the realm belonged to the zone that neither side governed—a land between two jurisdictions that neither the Earth Earl nor Lord Heaven could regulate. That made the Tianyin Realm independent and transcendent, yet heavy with hidden dangers. The famished ghosts, eternally ravenous, would devour every living creature. As long as the Tianyin Realm remained within the shadow of Lord Heaven, its predicament would persist: corpses of the starving would lie strewn across the land, and famished ghosts would consume everything.

"What, after all, is the key to resolving the famished ghosts?"

Seated by the sea, propping her chin on her hand out of sheer listlessness, with the pagoda towering and suppressing the realm's stirrings, Lady Tianyin mused, "If I cannot solve this problem, I will remain a sovereign all alone. Apart from me, no living being can survive in the Tianyin Realm. Only if living beings can survive here might the predicament be resolved... If only the Grand Magus were here—perhaps he might come up with an idea..."

She sank into heavy thought. The riddle of the famished ghosts was the root of the realm's predicament. Now that she was no longer a flawless heaven-born deity, she could learn other divine arts, and perhaps a solution could be found.

Until she cracked the riddle of the famished ghosts, she could only hold her ground here. If she left, she would allow the Netherworld Emperor to seize the opening, take the Tianyin Realm, and leave her without a home.

At the headwaters of the Surging River in the Wasteland, Shen Mu, in contrast, was free of Lady Tianyin's woes. The cross-world battle between Lady Tianyin and the Netherworld Emperor, and the countless overturnings of heaven and earth in the Tianyin Realm, did not affect the Wasteland. Though the Heavenly Dipper possessed the power to command the onslaught of darkness, it was daytime now in the Wasteland, and darkness could not invade while the sun ruled the sky.

"How can we tell whether Lady Tianyin has won or lost?" He Yiyi asked, somewhat worried. "If we go into the Tianyin Realm to check, it's fine if she's won—but if she's lost, we'd be walking right into the trap."

Shen Mu looked at the cliff. "We wait for nightfall. If she has won, perhaps the dark invasion of the Wasteland will cease; if she has lost, the darkness will continue."

Yan Jingjing sat down beside him, watching the cliff with him. Shen Mu went on, "Lady Tianyin's victory or defeat involves not only the Tianyin Realm and the Wasteland. I believe it bears equally upon the fate of every world and every heaven. The Tianyin Realm is overrun by soul-black sand. If the soul-black sand there cannot be thoroughly eliminated, then as the black sand of heaven and earth accumulates ever more, I fear every world will become a world ruled by famished ghosts. At that point, the Netherworld Emperor would be the ruler of all the worlds."

Yan Jingjing and He Yiyi could not help shivering.

They had already heard Shen Mu's account of his time in the Tianyin Realm, and knew the origins of the soul-black sand and the famished ghosts. Black sand was what remained when souls were shattered. Famished ghosts were a kind of undying, indestructible evil spirit formed from black sand, locked in an endless state of hunger, knowing nothing but devouring and slaughter.