Chapter 677 — The Underworld's Register of Life and Death

In the sky, darkness shrouded a radius of tens of li, and within it faint silhouettes stirred. Suddenly three sword gleams pierced through the darkness, shooting out in different directions!

The three sword lights illuminated the darkness in an instant, revealing the scene within.

Daozi Lin Xuan, Wang Muran and the others had arrived at this very place at that exact moment, while Qi Jiuyi had reached the vicinity of the darkness a step ahead of them; as for Zhe Huali, he was still on his way. Everyone looked up and saw that beneath the sword light the darkness was like gauze, hazy and indistinct, as though countless tiny black motes floated in the air.

Within the darkness lit by the sword light, Lou Qianzhong charged head-on into the blade gleam toward Shen Mu, only for a sword light to pierce straight through his chest! When Xu Shenghua had fought Lou Qianzhong, his great divine abilities had shaken heaven and earth as well; his Void World was breathtakingly magnificent, yet Lou Qianzhong had passed straight through the great divine ability of the Void World, and not one of Xu Shenghua's divine abilities had wounded him; instead, he had been wounded by Lou Qianzhong.

Lou Qianzhong seemed capable of rendering himself impervious to all arts, immune to all harm.

Yet this single sword light ran him clean through; blood burst forth, spraying from his back. Lou Qianzhong could not help but freeze for a moment, and another sword light slashed toward his head. At that same moment, everyone saw that behind Shen Mu his third sword light was holding back a steel trident, but the trident had three prongs; what the Kaijie Sword shattered was the central prong, and the other two prongs pierced through Shen Mu's body with two pu pu sounds, then abruptly withdrew backward, pulling Shen Mu into the dark gate of Youdu!

"Damn!

" Everyone's expressions changed drastically.

Within the dark portal, at the instant Shen Mu was drawn through the gate, that demon-god who appeared incomparably powerful revealed a hideous grin, looking utterly terrifying.

Suddenly a sword light came out of nowhere, flying in from beyond the heavens; at the very moment Shen Mu's second sword light severed Lou Qianzhong's head, this sword light also cut down the head of that demon-god, the two events unexpectedly synchronized, occurring in the same instant. Lin Xuan, Qi Jiuyi and the others had never anticipated such a turn; that demon-god behind the gate had seemed unparalleled in might, yet its head was severed by Shen Mu's sword light! But what puzzled them even more was this: Shen Mu had clearly unleashed only three moves of Kaijie at once, three sword lights in total, so where had the fourth sword light that severed the demon-god's head come from?

At the same time, the demon-god's chest exploded open, revealing a bloody hole, and another sword light burst out from behind the demon-god, trailing a spray of blood.

The portal slowly closed, so that none could see what lay within, but their hearts held only more doubt and confusion. Before the question of where the fourth sword light came from had an answer, a fifth sword light suddenly appeared; what did this mean?

Suddenly a dark, heavy portal surfaced in the air, towering high within the darkness; it was Shen Mu's Gate of Heaven's Inheritance. The portal opened, and Shen Mu stepped out from his own Gate of Heaven's Inheritance, leaving Youdu behind, a severed head in his hand. Behind him the darkness gradually dispersed, revealing Lou Qianzhong's body, and the head of that body had vanished without a trace!

No one had seen when Lou Qianzhong's head had fallen. Shen Mu's three swords, three moves of the Kaijie Sword Art: the first move had gravely wounded Lou Qianzhong, the second had severed his head, and the third had guarded against his attack from within Youdu.

Yet the three sword moves had been unleashed simultaneously in the flash of a spark, and no one had seen Lou Qianzhong's head fall from the air. But Lou Qianzhong's head had vanished nonetheless.

"The demon-god within the Gate of Heaven's Inheritance was in fact your true body, not a true demon-god at all; it merely looked formidable. " Shen Mu took out a bottle of dragon saliva and poured it over the wound on his chest.

Addressing the head in his hand calmly, he said: "You hid within Youdu and attacked me from there, so to the people of Taihuang Heaven you were a black shadow whose true body could not be struck. That is why Xu Shenghua was defeated by you; he did not understand Huangxu deeply, nor did he know much of Youdu's spells and divine abilities.

Your strength is inferior even to Qi Jiuyi's; you merely relied on the peculiar marvels of Youdu's divine abilities.

But against me, someone born in Youdu and raised in Huangxu, I can make you die in far more creative ways.

" This head was that demon-god's skull, yet at this moment it began to change; the hideous bone spurs retracted into the flesh, and the disheveled hair gradually smoothed.

His features reverted to Lou Qianzhong's appearance, his eyes still wide and round, still fixed on Shen Mu, as if he could still hear his words.

Shen Mu tossed Lou Qianzhong's head away, casting it down, and Lou Qianzhong's headless corpse likewise plummeted from the air. "But I was in a hurry, so I chose the simplest method. " Shen Mu said calmly: "What seemed like an attack on you in the darkness was in fact an attack on your true body that had already entered Youdu. With the first sword I severed your heart meridian and shattered your qi and blood; with the second sword I had already cut off your head; the third sword merely blocked your attack.

Still, your abilities are truly extraordinary; you had the power to wound me.

" Qi Jiuyi was not far away. Seeing Shen Mu wounded, he had been about to strike, but hearing these words he paused slightly and revealed a faint smile: "He still values me highly; he knows I am stronger than Senior Brother Lou Qianzhong!

" He did not take the opportunity to attack Shen Mu. With his strength, he was capable of keeping the wounded Shen Mu from escaping, yet he did not make a move. Lou Qianzhong and he were fellow disciples; he had originally cultivated under the Southern Heaven Crimson Emperor Qi Xiayu, and later went to Youdu to take the Black Emperor as his master. But he had spent relatively little time in Youdu, and his bonds with his fellow disciples there were not deep. Shen Mu suppressed his injuries, dispelled the three heads and six arms, pressed a willow leaf to his brow, and headed straight for the Bridge of Spiritual Energy Transmigration. The others around him did not follow, but stood in place, each lost in thought. "So that's it.

There really were only three swords. " Daoist Master Lin Xuan said, as if his soul had left him: "It was just that these three swords were so astonishingly divine that they appeared to be five.

When did Sect Master Shen's swordsmanship reach such a height. .

.

" The other young people shared the same thought.

Shen Mu's three swords appeared utterly simple, yet they had gone from complexity to simplicity; these simple three swords left an endless reverberation of shock. Very few could actually perceive the subtlety of how three swords became five. Yet the more one could perceive that subtlety, the more deeply shaken one felt. At this moment Zhe Huali finally arrived, his steps still incomparably steady, each stride exactly the same length.

"It's over? " Zhe Huali looked around and saw that everyone was standing here, while Shen Mu and Lou Qianzhong were nowhere to be seen.

He hurriedly asked Qi Jiuyi: "Brother Qi, who won?

" Qi Jiuyi said helplessly: "Senior Brother Lou Qianzhong fell in battle. " Zhe Huali felt a chill in his heart: "What move did Sect Master Shen use to kill him? How did he die?

" Qi Jiuyi said, even more helplessly: "This.

.

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