Chapter 188 — Who Can Tell Male from Female

Everyone fled in panic, carrying the dragon qilin with them. The dragon qilin was wounded and could not move easily, so Xue Hu'er sprang onto Shen Mu's bundle, at once worked a spell, and summoned a whirlwind that swept the dragon qilin up into its coils and bore him along as they all fought their way out. Behind them, Tianbo City, built upon the mountains along the river, was collapsing.

The enormous Demon King in the city was doing battle with the many experts within it, and even so he had leisure to spare: he pulverized the flesh and blood of those he killed, and with their bones and skulls he built an altar. Bloody bones and heads kept flying through the air to fall at his feet, and soon a layer of them had been laid. He had come only in magic power and consciousness; his true body remained in that so-called Dutian. Yet his strength already surpassed that of sect-master-level experts.

In the city there was not only the Dragon King of the Yulong School, a sect-master-level master, but also other experts of the Life-and-Death realm and even the Divine Bridge realm.

Yet even attacking in concert they could do nothing to the Dutian Demon King; instead they were wounded again and again. As for the army stationed in the city, the thousands upon thousands of divine-power wielders, they were wounded by the Dutian Demon King's roar, and how many his twelve gazes slew, no one could say.

The city was in utter chaos. Countless soldiers and officers, their formations broken, jostled and clamored as they fled for their lives; some leapt straight into the river, only to be smashed by the towering waves of the Yong River against the cliffs and dashed to pieces. The soldiers and officers in the city were for the most part disciples of the various schools and sects, with little military discipline to begin with; faced with such horror they collapsed at a touch, without a shred of morale, utterly unable to gather their forces and join in formations to trap the Dutian Demon King.

When Shen Mu and Bashan Jijiu had gone beyond the frontier to temper themselves, eight hundred grassland divine-power wielders working together had battered Bashan Jijiu's Sheer Cliff Tiangang art to tatters and forced him back again and again. Bashan Jijiu was a sect-master-level expert, and even he had been driven back.

In Tianbo City the divine-power wielders and martial artists numbered tens of thousands; had they joined hands, they might well have held off the Dutian Demon King for a time. Unfortunately the various schools and sects were a heap of loose sand, unable to gather together, each intent only on saving his own skin. Shen Mu looked back and saw that Long Jiaonan was still in hot pursuit — though it seemed she was not pursuing them to kill them.

"Of course. Long Jiaonan is fleeing too," Shen Mu realized. Boom— As the experts clashed, terrible shockwaves burst forth; house after house split apart and disintegrated in midair.

Shen Mu and the others were flung up by that dreadful surge, sent flying through the air, countless people flailing as they tumbled in every direction. Boom, boom.

They were still in midair, not yet landed, when several more dreadful surges came. Shen Mu was crushed until he vomited blood without cease; he hurriedly took the little fox from his back and held her in his arms, lest Xue Hu'er be shaken to death. A fourth surge struck. Shen Mu gave a stifled groan and worked the Mystic Body Three Cores Art; his body at once became incomparably hard, but still he was sent flying.

Thud.

Shen Mu crashed to the ground and rolled a dozen or more times before he stopped.

He had been thrown into a mountain forest, above which the wind howled, shearing the tops off countless trees.

That was the aftermath of the divine arts of the experts in Tianbo City. Blood trickled from the corner of Shen Mu's mouth; his eyes were wide, his chest so constricted he could not draw breath. After a moment he suddenly gasped in great gulps, and a tearing sound came from his lungs — they must have been injured by the shock.

He panted a few rough breaths, then took Xue Hu'er from his bosom. She too was badly hurt and had fallen unconscious. Shen Mu hastily took a jade vial from the Taotie Pouch, pried open her mouth, and poured a few drops of dragon saliva down her throat.

After a moment the fox came slowly to. She lay dazed for a while, then said in a tearful voice, "I lost Long Da!

" The dragon qilin could not walk easily, so Xue Hu'er had summoned a whirlwind by magic and set the beast atop it, floating in midair.

Those surges had come and destroyed her spell, and the dragon qilin had been flung away, high and far. "It's all right," Shen Mu comforted her.

"Long Da can heal himself.

It's only that his wound is on his backside, and I fear he can't reach it to lick it. Besides, I lost Shen Wanyun and the others too.

" "Long Da is worth a lot of money. " Xue Hu'er wept. "Shen Wanyun and the rest aren't worth anything.

.

. " Shen Mu rose, circulated his vital essence, and expelled the clotted blood from his chest. Then he picked her up and said, "Let's go find them.

" He had barely spoken when his body suddenly went taut. From deep in the forest came the sound of falling trees, and a great serpent came gliding slowly out of the woods, shouldering the trees down to either side.

That great serpent was the very one that had destroyed the tower ship carrying Shen Mu and Wei Yong and the others on their way to the capital!

The monstrous creature Long Jiaonan kept!

"Cough, cough, cough. .

. " A violent coughing came from the serpent's head.

Shen Mu looked up and saw, seated on the snake's flat skull, a man in garish, tattered clothes, coughing and spitting blood.

His flowered robe was riddled with holes, the powder and rouge on his face smeared, his whole appearance wretched beyond words.

"You destroyed Tianbo City — you destroyed my Yulong School!

" Long Jiaonan rose unsteadily to his feet atop the serpent's head, half weeping, half not, his gaze fixed on Shen Mu. Shen Mu's heart went cold, and he began to retreat step by step, unhurried.

Long Jiaonan was an expert; he had once stood off the mounted archers and sword guards outside the capital, and even they had not been able to hold him — he had withdrawn unscathed.

"Who are you, really?

" The crested serpent raised its head and looked down at Shen Mu. Long Jiaonan shrieked, "Did the Imperial Preceptor of Jingping send you?

" Shen Mu said not a word. He retreated to the side of a great tree, then in a flash hid himself behind it.

Long Jiaonan screamed and reached forward; his vital essence became a huge hand that crunched the great tree to splinters!

But behind the tree there was no trace of Shen Mu. Long Jiaonan went mad.

He raised both hands forward, and the earth shook without cease as sharp spikes of rock thrust up from the ground — taller than the trees, filling a circle dozens of zhang across, like a forest of stone.

"Fled? You can't escape.

" The giant serpent undulated forward, crushing spike after spike of rock. On its head Long Jiaonan seemed to be injured; his body writhed upon the serpent's skull like a human snake. After writhing a while, his head suddenly split open, then his face split too, and from beneath the head and face another head emerged. He went on twisting his body like a snake, and before long he had shed a human skin.

Long Jiaonan stood up stark naked, fetched a new set of clothes, and dressed himself piece by piece, looking all around.

Then he giggled and said, "I know you haven't gone far. You're still lurking nearby — I can feel your gaze. You're admiring my body. .