Chapter 903 — The Sacrifice of Reform

The Lame Elder hesitated, did not advance, but peered from a distance.

The place was far too perilous. He watched gods and demons of the Heavenly Court rush into the darkness and collapse, their primordial spirits utterly gone. Some of those divine and demonic beings were far mightier than he, yet even they could not withstand the encroaching dark.

"This dark force is even stronger than the darkness shrouding the Wasteland!

" The Lame Elder's heart clenched.

"Wei Suifeng shouldn't die anytime soon, should he? " In the sky, a river of stars drifted—not true stars, but the Heavenly Court's Starry Host, forming a Heavenly Net that hung down like an overturned canopy, just covering the pitch-black darkness beneath it. Sky and earth were utterly illuminated.

The starlight was so intense, with the stars numbering in the millions, that light came from every direction and left no shadow for anyone. The Heavenly Net contracted, compressing the murky demonic qi of Youdu inward, tighter and tighter, until the lesser Youdu within that primordial world shrank by more than half. "Shen'er is being suppressed!

" The Lame Elder's heart lurched. Then countless mountain gods came rushing over.

In alarm, the Lame Elder shook his body, mixed in among them, and ran toward the darkness.

He was a master of the arts of creation and transformation, and at this moment he looked exactly like one of the mountain gods. The mountain gods stood towering, their bodies huge as mountains, and made a full circuit around the Heavenly Net.

Each of them drew out a pillar and suddenly drove it into the ground.

Standing by their pillars, they cast their arts and muttered incantations.

Once planted, the pillars swelled madly, growing higher and higher. They spun, and countless runes flared on their surfaces, streaming from the tops to the bases before sinking into the earth.

The ground was solidifying at terrifying speed. A mountain god beside the Lame Elder noticed him and barked, "Where is your precious treasure? Why haven't you brought it out?

" Before the Lame Elder could answer, ghastly light blazed out from the darkness.

The moment he saw it, he threw himself flat on the ground and violently shrank his physical body. Not far away, the mountain god had yet to react when an immensely thick beam of light swept over him with a hum, cutting him in two at the waist.

His enormous pillar was severed as well and toppled over. The light slashed across, shaking space itself with a low, droning buzz. Yet it was not a single beam—there were six of them.

Six dazzling beams swept in every direction: sideways slices, vertical hews, diagonal cuts. They passed over the Heavenly Net and the Earth Net. But the Heavenly Net of the Starry Host was already complete; behind each heavenly god, constellations blazed at the backs of their heads, brilliant beyond measure, and the six beams were blocked. The Earth Net, however, had not yet fully formed.

Pillar after huge pillar was cut through at the waist, some sliced into six or seven lengths.

The mountain gods dodged the beams shooting out of the darkness.

They were powerful beings, and the beams were so dazzling that they could naturally avoid them. The Lame Elder pressed himself flat to the ground and looked around. The mountain gods were indeed powerful; they reacted in an instant. Except for the one who had been caught off guard while speaking to him and was slain by a beam, all the others managed to evade the six dreadful lights.

Yet strange to say, when they leaped to dodge, they all rose to exactly the same height. "Fools! " The Lame Elder did not dare move, cold sweat pouring from his forehead. "Shen'er has three eyes.

The light from his two eyes is bright, while the eye in the middle shoots dark light. He has now become three-headed and six-armed—six bright beams, three dark beams. He wants to force you all to jump to the same height, then kill you with the three dark beams. . .

" He had seen Shen Mu break through his seal in Taihuang Heaven and transform into the Prince of Youdu, a terrible sight; only Tu Bo's hurried arrival had averted catastrophe. The Lame Elder was terrified to his very core of Shen Mu's sinister third eye.

He saw a mountain god hanging in midair suddenly sliced as if by three invisible blades, cut into four neat pieces.

He looked around. In the air, nearly every mountain god had been cut into four lengths, clean and exact, almost without the slightest difference. "Shen'er is not controlled by his demonic nature—he is controlling it. Otherwise the Prince of Youdu would not fight this way. " The Lame Elder thought, "The Prince of Youdu fights by instinct; Shen'er fights by reason.

" In the sky, the Heavenly Net suddenly warped, as if seized by some monstrous thing and dragged downward. The Starry Host within it, caught up in the net, fell helplessly, shrieking in misery. The Starry Host served under the orthodox star deities of the Heavenly Court.

Those orthodox star deities were ancient gods, but the Starry Host itself was made up of demigods and beings of every race who had cultivated to a sufficient level and entered its ranks.

The Starry Host, together with the Heavenly Net, plunged madly down into the darkness. What welcomed them was a great tripod.

The entire net and this army of gods and demons fell into the tripod, and instantly there was no sound at all. Having devoured so many gods and demons, the great tripod suddenly burst outward.

Countless faces floated in the darkness, crying with one voice: "A-Chou—" The Lame Elder had just begun to relax when the dark sky lit up again. Countless divine beings in the sky drove their treasures, forming the face of the Heavenly Duke with white brows and white eyes!

It was a shape of the Heavenly Duke composed of countless exotic treasures—the runic Great Dao of the Heavenly Duke, constructed through numerology by the Daoist order of the Heavenly Court, the Head of the Heavenly Duke reassembled. The Head of the Heavenly Duke cast its eyes downward.

Its incomparably brilliant light vaporized the demonic qi of Youdu, and soon revealed Shen Mu's true body! The Lame Elder saw that among Shen Mu's three heads, one was a big-headed doll. Under the Heavenly Duke's gaze, its face twisted in pain, and the head kept shrinking back into Shen Mu's body. The Lame Elder's heart sank.

"The Great Daos of Xuandu and Youdu suppress each other. Shen'er cannot hold out much longer. .

. " Shen Mu leaped up and sped away. The countless divine beings in the sky moved after him, the formation of the Heavenly Duke's Head remaining perfectly ordered, but Shen Mu was too fast for them to catch.

The Lame Elder hurriedly gave chase, but even he could not overtake Shen Mu. Just then, he saw white light shoot into the sky to the west, where Shen Mu was fleeing.

A vast imperial might surged forth, blocking his path. A heavenly palace appeared, halls stacked layer upon layer; the primordial spirit of a Great Emperor sat in the Lingxiao Hall in Yujing City and suddenly rose to his feet. Almost at the same time, to the north, darkness spread, and another imperial might soared skyward.

A heavenly palace unfurled like a scroll; the primordial spirit of the Netherworld Son of Heaven sat on his throne, the nether sea churning behind him. To the south, fire blazed.

Within the flames an immense heavenly palace appeared, the Lingxiao Hall standing in sacred fire, where a nine-headed phoenix spread its wings and cried aloud amid the blaze. Stunned by the impact of so much imperial might, the Lame Elder turned to look back: green light pierced the heavens, a heavenly palace took shape within the light, and countless palace halls had grown dragon scales, looking utterly ancient.