Chapter 718 — Ambush on the Netherworld Supreme

The Imperial Gate Divine Blade came down upon Yin Tianzi's face, and the timing could not have been more exquisite — it struck at the very instant Shen Mu's Soul-Pulling Lure had seized and stirred his primal spirit. Yin Tianzi took the blow head-on.

The Imperial Gate Divine Blade all but clove him in two. What made this divine blade so terrible was not only its power to sever the Horn of the Earth Lord; it also devoured primal spirits.

Even Tian Shu, the one who wielded it, could have his primal spirit swallowed if he let his guard slip for a single moment, and be trapped in the blade's inner space for seven or eight million years. At the instant the blow landed, Yin Tianzi felt heaven and earth spin, and his primal spirit began to sink into the Imperial Gate Divine Blade against his will.

"I have been tricked!

" Yet he was decisive and ruthless.

In the same instant of realization he marshaled the power of the Dark Capital and hurled it against the Imperial Gate Divine Blade. The Dark Capital's demonic qi came swarming in, pouring madly into the blade.

"Boundless Reincarnation!

" The primal spirit that had fallen into the blade's world immediately unleashed its divine ability. A vast sea of the underworld rose into being, and from that sea a Dark Capital Heavenly Gate welled up. Yin Tianzi flew swiftly toward the portal; before he passed through it he was a refined scholar, but when he flew out the other side his appearance had changed utterly — he had become a delicate, lovely woman. Another Heavenly Gate appeared ahead, and Yin Tianzi, now in a woman's form, passed through it once more.

His primal spirit cast its arts with astonishing speed, his form a fleeting shimmer of light and shadow as he passed through one Dark Capital Heavenly Gate after another, so fast that the naked eye could not follow.

Each time he passed through a Dark Capital Heavenly Gate it was as though he had undergone a reincarnation; his primal spirit was transformed utterly, in face, in sex, even in kind, so completely different from before that he seemed an entirely other person.

This Boundless Reincarnation ability carried him through several thousand reincarnations in a single instant, so fast that even the formations within the Imperial Gate Divine Blade could not change quickly enough to keep pace. The Imperial Gate Divine Blade had a flaw of no small size — a flaw that had come about because of the cultivation art of the Emperor Shakra Heavenly King Buddha, leaving the blade's forging a hair's breadth from perfection.

Shen Mu had found the way out of the Imperial Gate Divine Blade in the Emperor Shakra Heavenly King Sutra; the method Yin Tianzi used was to change his identity ceaselessly at extreme speed. Every time he changed identity, the Imperial Gate Divine Blade had to readjust the formation structure of its inner world.

When Kaihuang designed the blade's formation runes, he had made that structure mutable by nature; a formation, after all, must change without cease in order to adapt to whoever entered it and hold them fast. Yin Tianzi used Boundless Reincarnation to shift his identity and kind, forcing the Imperial Gate Divine Blade to keep altering its formations, until at last he outstripped the blade's capacity to calculate them — so that the very flaw Shen Mu had needed nearly a year of reckoning to find was discovered by him in the space of a few moments.

Yin Tianzi's eyes lit up. When his primal spirit flew out of the last portal, it had already broken free of the blade and regained its liberty.

His primal spirit emerged from that gate and reverted to its true appearance — and there he saw that his fleshly body had been cut in two by Tian Shu's single stroke! "A powerhouse of the Imperial Throne — is this all? " Tian Shu laughed aloud, raised the divine blade, and slashed at the necks of Yin Tianzi's two halves: "Your strength doesn't seem to be any greater than mine, a mere Lingxiao!

" The two halves of Yin Tianzi's body parted, left and right, each walking into a portal of its own; and when they stepped out again, they had become two Yin Tianzis! "The gulf between Lingxiao and the Imperial Throne is wider than you can imagine. " The two Yin Tianzis spoke in one voice: "Tian Shu, you are a Heavenly King, at the very least — how can you be so childish?

Did you think that carrying Kaihuang's blade would let you kill me? " He had divided into two, and both Yin Tianzis seemed to be the original, both at the full height of their power.

The moment they clashed, Tian Shu was no match.

With two Yin Tianzis attacking him at once, Tian Shu, for all his vast divine powers, could not hold them off, and could only rely on the might of the Imperial Gate Divine Blade to defend himself.

Out of the darkness came the roar of surging waves, and a boundless sea of the underworld appeared. Beneath Tian Shu's feet lay an endless black ocean — an ocean formed of black soul-sand!

The black soul-sand heaved and rolled; the sight was magnificent beyond measure. The Dark Capital's store of black soul-sand was hardly less than that of the Tianyin Realm, forming this vast underworld sea.

Who knew what the origin of all this black soul-sand might be.

Tian Shu was shaken to the core. He had once contended with Yin Tianzi before, but not in the Dark Capital — they had met in the outer world and fought a single bout, and because Yin Tianzi, confident in his own station, had not struck to kill from the first, Tian Shu had been able to escape.

But now they stood within the Dark Capital, above the underworld sea, and Yin Tianzi, wounded by him, had been stirred to true fury. Tian Shu had no confidence that he could withdraw unscathed from Yin Tianzi's hands.

Just then, a tremendous crash shook heaven and earth; the whole Dark Capital quaked, and a world in the darkness collided with a thunderous roar against the Dark Capital, which likewise lay in darkness!

A cloak snapped and streamed in the wind. King Yama's cloak shrouded all of Fengdu, and his gaze was grim and cold; countless demon-gods of Fengdu stood upon the city walls beneath that cloak, their killing intent seething.

The world that had collided with the Dark Capital was Fengdu!

Both worlds were fragments of the Horn of the Earth Lord, and now at last they had crashed together! The hand King Yama had laid upon his sword suddenly let go.

Sword-light flooded the underworld sea; he had marshaled the power of Fengdu and come bearing his sword. The light of his blade ran horizontal and vertical, straight as though measured by the strictest rule, and the arcs his sword-light traced followed curves of perfect roundness. Few who refine the sword demand such rigor of themselves; swordsmanship tends to prize variety above all.

But King Yama was such a man. He had labored bitterly at the fundamentals of the sword, and any sword art in his hands came out square and true, revealing the bearing of a grandmaster, with not the slightest flaw to be found.

He led Fengdu in a charge into the Dark Capital, sudden and unlooked-for, throwing it into utter chaos. The underworld sea of black soul-sand was pressed flat, its waves stilled, so that Yin Tianzi could no longer draw upon its power.

Tian Shu with his blade and King Yama with his sword — Yin Tianzi was caught off guard, and soon wounded under their joint assault. He was both shocked and enraged.

This whole scene did not look like chance at all; it looked like long-laid design.

From the tribulation-descending of his three disciples, to the Woodcutter and the First Ancestor being trapped, from Shen Mu's sudden appearance as the Divine Son of Youdu, to Lou Yunqu being forced to open the Dark Capital Heavenly Gate — all of it seemed to have fallen long ago into someone's reckoning.