Chapter 803 — This Seat Could Not Care Less

Shen Mu came staggering, and every step seemed to cost him untold agony, wringing his body and twisting his face, blood running down both his legs and filling each footprint he left behind with red. Yet as he pressed on, his stride began to steady, step by step.

Crack.

Crack. The sound of bones shifting came; Shen Mu's broken neck began to knit itself back together, and his skull, twisted at so grotesque an angle, began to right itself.

His broken bones re-set and regrew; at his wounds flesh and blood writhed and swelled outward, growing arm after arm.

The flying swords lying across the ground rose up one after another as well, more and more of them.

Yan Qiling's hair stood on end. Never in her life had she seen a divine-ability wielder with such horrifying powers of recovery.

A god who cultivated the Art of Creation, perhaps, or certain innately mighty races among the demigods, might manage such a feat.

But a wielder of divine abilities could not possibly possess so formidable a comprehension of the Art of Creation.

This was all but an undying body! The great divine ability she had just unleashed was powerful enough to annihilate Shen Mu outright, yet Shen Mu had endured it on sheer monstrous recovery, healing himself as he walked.

Yan Qiling could even see that at his wounds countless tiny runes tumbled and fluttered, like needles and threads of inconceivable fineness stitching and interlacing, making the injured flesh grow, sloughing off dead skin, replacing dead flesh, forcing out shattered bone. The harm her divine ability had done him was not to his body alone but to his primordial spirit as well; taking that one strike of hers, Shen Mu's primordial spirit had been battered to tatters, and yet his Art of Creation was repairing even his primordial spirit! The Crimson Bright Era had won terrifying achievements in the Art of Creation; the Crimson Emperor and the Bright Emperor, one master of the primordial spirit and one of the physical body, had combined their arts into the highest attainment of that art.

Body undying, spirit immortal! Shen Mu was still some distance from that highest attainment, but not far. Yan Qiling forced her vital essence to stir, and suddenly gave a muffled groan.

There were thousands upon thousands of wounds, great and small, over her whole body; though she had suppressed them and forced them shut, the wounds had not healed, and forcing her vital essence to move nearly burst them open again. And there was little vital essence left for her to spend besides.

That great divine ability just now had been the Great Divine Ability of Dao One, unmatched in power and dreadful in its cost; more than half her vital essence had been spent, and the remaining fraction had to hold her wounds in check, leaving her stretched painfully thin.

What relieved her slightly was that the number of flying swords rising from the ground was not great; clearly Shen Mu's expenditure had been enormous as well.

Under the might of that one great divine ability of hers, Shen Mu had preserved his life, but his own vital essence had been cut down by more than half, more even than hers. And to achieve a body undying and a spirit immortal likewise consumed vast quantities of vital essence; Shen Mu's vital essence was likely no deeper than her own now. "Mu Tianzun, you said just now that you already know my origins.

Then you should understand that there is no need for you and me to fight to the death.

" Yan Qiling kept backing away, swiftly drawing out a jade bottle and swallowing the elixir within, straining to move her vital essence to repair the injuries of her body. "I hold Mu Tianzun in the deepest admiration as well, and I know that in ages long past Mu Tianzun fought a battle at the Jade Pool that shook the four quarters.

But do not forget who conferred upon you the title of Mu Tianzun—" "The title of Mu Tianzun?

Do you think I give a damn? " Shen Mu's voice burst out like thunder.

At the first word he was still a hundred zhang from Yan Qiling; by the fourth he had already come before her. His speed was indeed far inferior to what it had been; despite possessing the Art of Creation of the Crimson and Bright Emperors, his injuries were still grave beyond measure.

The damage her Great Divine Ability of Dao One had inflicted was too heavy; it had wounded his divine treasury!

Not only that, he could feel the very functions of his body constrained. It was the sheer depletion. Though he possessed the mightiest Art of Creation of the Crimson Bright Era, his cultivation could not keep pace, and there was nothing to be done. Yet Yan Qiling's injuries were grave as well.

Shen Mu had executed Sword Form One through Sword Form Nineteen; the harm the Tijie Sword had done her was the worst of her life.

Shen Mu's fist came smashing toward her, battered and torn, not a scrap of sound flesh upon it, the white bones of his fingers showing through. "Do you think I give a damn?

" His voice rolled like thunder, crashing and booming.

Yan Qiling raised a hand; yuan-magnetic runes burst forth, and geomagnetic yuan force at once took hold of Shen Mu.

She could wield little cultivation now; trading blows head-on with Shen Mu was folly, and the yuan-magnetic divine ability was her best choice. The yuan-magnetic divine ability would make Shen Mu feel his body heavy as a mountain; every punch and kick would be hampered, his attacks would lack accuracy, and they might even be dragged down toward the ground.

But beyond all her expectations, Shen Mu's fist still came crashing in, seemingly untouched by the geomagnetic yuan force. "Dao Seven of Yuandu has no effect on him?

Of course—his physical strength is too great.

Even my Great Divine Ability of Dao One could not slap him to death just now!

" Startled, Yan Qiling raised a hand to block the blow, and in that instant Shen Mu's other five fists came hammering down like a raging storm.

She fought desperately to hold them off, but with Shen Mu's three heads and six arms she could not keep pace; struck by a hundred-odd blows, she was thrown tumbling backward, and in midair the wounds all over her body burst open, like a ball brimming with water turned into a net, leaking blood on every side.

Yan Qiling hurried to seal her wounds.

Suddenly Shen Mu crouched on both feet, sprang up, raised his six arms high with his hands clasped together, and appeared above her. "Dao Three of Youdu!

" Yan Qiling hastily forced out her divine ability.

A sheet of blackness spread open before her with a shh, and Shen Mu's figure sank into that blackness, so thin it had no thickness at all, and vanished; she had delivered him into Youdu. Before she could even breathe out her relief, Shen Mu's two feet emerged from beneath that darkness, and then his clasped fists hammered down upon her chest.

One blow, two blows, three blows!

She heard her ribs snapping one after another, and with a great boom a crater was smashed into the ground. "No—at this rate he will beat me to death! " Lying at the bottom of the crater, she gathered a breath of vital essence.

"I cannot keep suppressing my cultivation now; I must break through the Life-and-Death Divine Treasury to hold him off! " The wall of the Life-and-Death Divine Treasury shattered, and at once she felt a power that commanded life and death come surging in, flooding every part of her in an instant; wild mana surged and churned, sweeping away all her earlier weakness.

She had not yet returned to her peak, but with the mana of the Life-and-Death Divine Treasury, she no longer feared Shen Mu in the slightest.

Overjoyed, Yan Qiling looked up—and saw Shen Mu falling from midair, his body leveled with the ground, spinning madly, like a top on a string dropped from the sky! "What kind of move is this? " Yan Qiling steadied the wounds over her whole body, then suddenly understood.

"It is a sword form! The eighteenth form of the Basic Sword Technique!

Oh no!