Chapter 707 — The Subterranean Demon Altar Traps Two Heroes

"Brother Qi, I said I would spare your life, and I will not truly deal you a killing blow.

" The two Shen Mus lowered their heads at the same time, gazing at Qi Jiuyi, who was struggling to rise and renew the fight, and said gravely, "The information you let slip is of great use to me. It is worth your life. " Qi Jiuyi still could not get to his feet.

He struggled into a sitting position and panted, "I had meant to use that news to strike at your Dao-heart, but as it turns out, that very news has saved my own life. . .

" He felt a pang of the absurd. Steadying himself, he went on, "After this battle, I will return to the Heavenly Court, cultivate with bitter diligence, and seek counsel from the Emperor-throne beings. Brother Shen, don't let me surpass you.

" Shen Mu raised his head and let his gaze drift far away. He surveyed his surroundings with suspicion and said with a strange look, "Brother Qi, you may not be able to leave Jingping for quite some time. It may be that even I will be trapped here.

. . " Qi Jiuyi was slightly taken aback.

When the ground beneath them had been melted through and the two of them had fallen into the depths of the earth, he had already sensed something uncanny about the underground space of the Shenduan Mountains—only, locked in fierce combat with Shen Mu as he was, he had had no leisure to examine it closely, nor any mind to spare. Only now, with Shen Mu declaring that he would keep his word and not kill him, did he finally set his heart at ease and look around.

The temple below them was in fact an altar, presumably built by the demon race, and thick with demonic sacrificial runes that remained unbroken. A blood sacrifice had once been performed here, but someone had interrupted it; the altar was dappled with old bloodstains. They were standing on the face of a blade.

This blade seemed to have no thickness at all. Its edge and back were so enormously long that neither hilt nor tip could be seen.

And the strange thing was that both their primordial spirits—and the primordial spirit of the Dragon Qilin, who had just arrived—had all entered the interior of this seemingly thicknessless blade. Yet within the blade there was a vast open space, like another world!

Qi Jiuyi tried to withdraw his primordial spirit, only to find that a whole world separated him from it.

He could sense it, but he could not call it back. Beads of cold sweat broke out on his forehead.

In a hoarse voice he asked, "Brother Shen, what is happening? " Shen Mu made no answer; his expression, too, had turned heavy.

In truth, he had encountered the strangeness of this blade before.

In that battle to hold back the High Heaven, the Shenduan Mountains had been leveled to the ground, and the fighting had been bloodily ferocious. Li Zheng "fell in battle"; of the Five Yao Immortals, the Willow Immortal, the White Immortal, and the Yellow Immortal died; the Old Dao Master, the Old Tathagata, the Daoist Lingjing, the Young Founder, Tu Xingfeng, and Xuan Shengwu all died. The rest were severely wounded, and the Master Alchemist and his companions likewise "died" on that battlefield—only afterward did Shen Mu snatch their souls back and bring them to life again. In that battle, the High Heaven was beaten so thoroughly that it could never again contend with Jingping. At that time, Zaifu and the others had discovered this blade beneath the Shenduan Mountains, along with the stone statue of a demon-god beneath it. That statue, which had burrowed its way under the blade, was a demon-god of utterly terrifying might—a founding ancestor of a demon world. While descending upon Jingping, he had slipped carelessly beneath the blade and landed himself in a predicament that imperiled his very life.

The Imperial Tutor of Jingping had harnessed the Tremor Cauldron to collapse the barrier between Jingping and another world—the demon world to which this Demon Ancestor belonged.

A great host of demon-gods had transformed into stone statues and descended upon the Shenduan Mountains, searching for this blade, intending to rescue their ancestor. In the end, Shen Mu had broken that world's blood sacrifice with his mirror images; the demon-god statues failed to reawaken and burrowed down into the earth, one after another, vanishing. Shen Mu had once suspected that world to be Luofu Heaven, but when he later saw Luofu Heaven for himself, he realized his guess had been wrong. That world of the demon-god statues was far higher than Luofu Heaven. It should have been a demon world under the dominion of the Heavenly Court; Luofu Heaven's strength was nowhere near that demon world's.

As for this long blade, none of them had possessed enough power to so much as shake it. And the blade seemed, more than anything, a treasure left over from the Kaihuang Era, meant to cut off the encroachment of the Barren Wastes' darkness upon Jingping. Thus no one had ever touched it. Back then, Granny Zhu and the others, and the gods of the High Heaven as well, had had their primordial spirits drawn into the space of the blade—but because Fengdu happened to pass by this very place, their spirits had drifted out of the blade-space in a daze and returned to their own bodies, and so they had not lost their lives.

Gazing outward with his primordial spirit, Shen Mu could see his own flesh-and-blood body. If he wanted to rescue his spirit, he feared, nothing would serve but Fengdu passing this way once more.

He had been to the world of Fengdu several times, it was true, but only ever to its first divine city. There were other divine cities he had yet to visit, and King Yan had never opened those cities to him.

Fengdu still held many unsolved secrets. The crucial thing now was how the three of them could leave the inner space of this blade. The world within the blade stretched away in a boundless pale haze, like two immaculately white mirrors laid across the void, clamping the two of them between two sheets that had no thickness at all—no end in sight.

Their bodies and their primordial spirits gazed at one another across the mirror-like barriers. Though the spirits seemed to tread upon the very soles of their bodies, close enough to touch, they could never return to the flesh. "When will Fengdu circle around to this place? I remember Sister Jing saying that the last time, it was Youdu's invasion—King Yan led Fengdu's divine demons to resist Youdu, and that was why they came to the Shenduan Mountains.

But now King Yan probably has no idea that I'm trapped here. . . " Shen Mu frowned.

With his primordial spirit held prisoner here, even the Triple Origin Spirit-Convergence Art was beyond him; he could not reach Si Yunxiang, Ling Yuxiu, and the others. Since they knew nothing of this, they could hardly ask Fengdu's King Yan to act.

"If we die in the space of this blade, no one will ever know. . .

" He steadied himself, took a step, and walked deeper into the blade's interior.

Qi Jiuyi had recovered somewhat.

His primordial spirit fought its way upright and followed Shen Mu, and the Dragon Qilin scrambled after them. Shen Mu studied the mirror-surfaces above and below in minute detail but could discern not the slightest trace of forging. What material this blade had been refined from, what technique had been employed—with his standard as a forging grandmaster, he could not see through any of it.

For in the way of forging, the Silent Artisan was revered as supreme, and Shen Mu, having studied under the Silent Artisan, ranked second in the forging craft under heaven. If even he could find no trace, no one else could hope to make anything of it. Qi Jiuyi's eyes flew wide.