Chapter 102 — The One Who Communes with the Gods

"So he really is the son of the Corpse Immortal Cult's patriarch.

. .

" Shen Mu's face darkened.

Was this not far too much of a coincidence?

The patriarch's son had chosen to strike at him, and chosen to be so weak that he could not withstand even a single sword stroke from him.

This time the Corpse Immortal Cult would never let him go! Before the flying zombies in the air had even drawn near, he caught a stench of rot and blood; the nails of these flying zombies were dark green, plainly venomous! "Corpse poison!

" The moment Shen Mu caught that smell, he identified the toxin. The alchemist had taught him pharmacology, and among those lessons was the art of distinguishing different poisons and medicinal properties by scent alone.

Shen Mu had been dosed with medicines almost from infancy, and his ability to discern the nature of drugs and poisons was exceptionally keen.

These dozen or so creatures had corpse poison on their nails; if they broke the skin, the blood would first congeal, then the muscles would stiffen, hard as rock, impervious to blade and spear, and at last the mind would vanish and the soul would dissolve!

Shen Mu ran with all his speed, but the flying zombies behind him were faster still; the distance between them shrank with every breath. Sheet after sheet of yellow joss paper spread forward across the ground; the flying zombies in the air bounded and leapt, about to overtake them!

Behind him, He Yin waved a hand, and again fire birds came winging through the air, their wings beating. Before they even drew close, waves of heat rolled off them, raising a hot wind; the green grass on the ground withered in an instant, all its moisture gone. This man must walk both the path of spells and the path of sword-riding, a dual cultivator of the spell school and the sword-riding school. Such a thing had once been exceedingly rare, but the Imperial Preceptor of Jingping had cut and carved with a great blade, sweeping away the old and forging the new, gathering the sects of the world into the service of the imperial house.

He had broken down many entrenched barriers and made the divisions between schools less deep, and so this convergence of paths had come about. Wicked sects like the Corpse Immortal Cult had also seized upon this great upheaval to improve their own doctrines and divine powers, developing many new spells and arts.

"No, it should be three schools!

What these flying zombies are using are moves of the combat-technique school!

" Shen Mu frowned. His steps suddenly surged with power, his body winding and running like a dragon as he dodged the fiery bird hurtling at his back.

But the fiery bird burst apart with a thunderous roar, the flames exploding into a great fireball six or seven zhang across that swelled violently, and the surging blast and blazing fire sent Shen Mu flying hard. Before he had even landed, he saw sheet after sheet of yellow joss paper come fluttering toward him, and eight or nine flying zombies came striding upon the paper, passing through the exploding flames to kill him!

These flying zombies were all of the Five Luminaries realm, the level of martial powerhouses; their bodies had been refined to a hardness like that of primal weapons. Their moves were simple, shoveling, slicing, shearing, stabbing, but if he were surrounded by them, there would be no chance of escape at all.

Below, flying zombies hunted him; in the air, more came at him; and He Yin attacked with divine powers.

The situation could hardly have been worse for him. Sheet after sheet of yellow joss paper fluttered and flew, slicing swiftly through the air with a shrill whistling shriek. He Yin seemed to be driving the yellow paper, but in truth he was wielding swordsmanship, and swordsmanship of the most exquisite kind, hardly inferior to that of the Lanjiang Sword Sect.

Most crucial of all, the talismans drawn on the yellow paper in cinnabar and fresh blood gave him a very bad feeling.

Had it been ordinary paper, it could never have matched the power of a sword; but the drawing of talismans upon it meant that the talismans held a power of their own!

Suspended in midair, Shen Mu without a word sealed his own soul with the Heaven-Demon Art of Creation; then his primal essence shook, jolting the little fox out of his bundle, and his ten fingers flew, sealing her soul within her body as well. Poked and prodded here and there, Snow Fox was both embarrassed and annoyed, and with a squeak she burrowed into the bundle and would not come out.

Sealing a soul required touching secret places on the body; she was a vixen, after all, and still somewhat shy.

But Shen Mu had no time to spare for such things.

Yellow joss paper was the paper money burned for the dead, and talismans drawn upon yellow joss paper meant that their power was aimed at the soul. If he collided with that paper, the talismans' power would erupt and likely wound his soul; so he sealed his soul in advance, lest he be caught off guard and fall to such a foul trick. Whoosh. The yellow joss paper in the air came raining down, and with the paper came eight flying zombies.

The paper flew out from either side of Shen Mu, and the eight flying zombies closed in, encircling him from every direction.

Shen Mu hung in the air, his body beginning to fall; below, five tattered flying zombies leapt up from the ground, attacking him from beneath! At the same moment, sheet after sheet of yellow joss paper threaded through the mass of corpses.

"Freeze!

" He Yin shouted.

A sheet of yellow joss paper burst into flame, yet the runes written in cinnabar and blood did not vanish; instead they floated in the air upon the firelight, growing ever larger, and shone down upon Shen Mu from on high!

Shen Mu seemed not to notice. Behind him the fish-dragon leapt up, opened its mouth and spat out a sword; the primal essence of the youth of Yincan Village burst forth, and a thread of primal essence thick as an arm coiled around the Chu Bao Sword as he extended two fingers and cut level.

Slashing Sword Form! Sword qi tore through the air, and a flying zombie's head tumbled down.

He Yin, racing toward him, was startled; sheet after sheet of yellow joss paper erupted with power, trying to freeze Shen Mu in place.

The function of his immobilization talisman was to fix a person's three hun and seven po; with the soul fixed, the body could not move either.

Yet that immobilization talisman just now had failed to take effect, which left him somewhat puzzled.

The runes on the other sheets of yellow paper erupted with power; strange runes appeared before and behind Shen Mu, yet he was not frozen in the slightest. He lifted two fingers, and the Chu Bao Sword shifted from the Slashing Form to the Lifting Form, splitting another flying zombie in two from below upward; then it became the Wiping Form, and the Chu Bao Sword traced a circle around the neck of a third flying zombie.

With the tip of the Chu Bao Sword turned outward, the Cloud Sword traced a full circle, and all around, the heads of the flying zombies fell to the ground! In the blink of an eye, the eight flying zombies were beheaded outright and dropped to the earth. Cloud Sword Form. Shen Mu's swordsmanship was exceedingly swift; the simpler the move, the faster the blade.

With the keenness of the Chu Bao Sword, he had slain all eight flying zombies before they could land a single blow on him!

He Yin's face twisted with the pain of loss.

A flying zombie encirclement was child's play against a powerhouse who cultivated combat techniques or spells, but against a sword cultivator like Shen Mu it was rather difficult.

Especially when the sword cultivator's blade was incomparably keen; it was as if such a sword existed solely to counter his flying zombies. He had refined his flying zombies in a corpse-nurturing ground; their bodies were of extraordinary hardness, and ordinary primal weapons could not wound them at all.