Chapter 943 — The Trump Card Revealed

"You grant it to me?"

Shen Mu was furious. His body shook, and starlight descended from all the heavens, swelling his flesh until it rose joint by joint; his brows and eyes turned snow-white, radiating endless starlight. He was like a miniature Lord of Heaven, lifting a hand to shift the stars and turn the Dipper, his voice like a great bell: "Every pot of filth dumped on my head, I earned by my own ability. Did I need you to grant me anything?"

He was as though the Lord of Heaven had descended. His fists and feet opened and closed in great sweeps, starlight surging to the heavens from the crown of his head, transforming into the Seventh Heavenly Dao, the Vault of Heaven.

The Vault of Heaven was vast, azure as washed silk, canopied over a hundred li of space, giving one the feeling that within those hundred li he was the invincible being who governed the Heavenly Dao!

His palm was the Fourth Heavenly Dao, the Seal of Heaven.

Every blow of his was like the Lord of Heaven punishing evil and exalting good, striking into Yun Chuxiu's Dao-heart, striking out the sin in her heart, striking out her weakness, striking out her divinity, beating her into a mortal, beating her until she wept and wailed!

Behind him, the Heavenly Net was like the Dipper, the Heavenly Mechanism like a parasol, the Heavenly Yang the Great Sun, the Heavenly Yin the Bright Moon.

Beneath his feet was the Heavenly Terrace; above his head his vital essence became a canopy; his eyes were the Heavenly Eye, spouting the wrath of the Heavenly Dao.

Qi Jiuyi looked at Yun Jianli in surprise and said in a low voice, "This divine power of Sect Master Shen's bears some resemblance to your Yun family's arts, likewise ever-changing, every kind of divine power plucked at will."

Yun Jianli too showed astonishment. "There is still a difference. Heavenly Venerable Mu seems to have only just groped his way to this method; his use of it is not yet skilled. It is not my Yun family's art. I understand now!"

He said in a low voice, "Heavenly Venerable Mu is a master of the art of creation and has studied the Heavenly Dao deeply as well; that is why he can wield a method akin to my Yun family's!"

Yun Chuxiu fell back step by step, and anger rose in her heart.

In her view, Shen Mu truly did not know when to advance and when to retreat. Shen Mu's very life had been granted by her; had she not appeared at the Jade Pool and helped Heavenly Venerable You hold off those two Heavenly Venerables, Shen Mu would long since have been a corpse.

What did it matter if she clapped a great pot of filth on his head?

Yet Shen Mu's attacks only grew fiercer, every kind of Heavenly Dao divine power plucked at will and scattered about freely, and each move was of enormous power. Plainly his mana was boundless and mighty, far beyond his peers.

Yun Chuxiu was furious, yet she could not well unleash a greater power.

She could sense that many gazes were fixed on this place at this moment. Shen Mu was a hothead who did not know the weight of things, but she knew that the owners of those gazes were likely other Heavenly Venerables.

If she killed Shen Mu, or displayed her true ultimate art, the other Heavenly Venerables would likely get a hold over her.

Especially her true ultimate art.

At present all Ten Heavenly Venerables were striving to complete the art of the Heavenly Court realm, but the Ten Heavenly Venerables were not as they once were; there were many rifts among them, and they could hardly trust one another, so each groped his own way.

Never had the Ten Heavenly Venerables come so close to the realm of the Heavenly Court. Whoever first perfected the Heavenly Court realm would be the sovereign of this world!

If one could obtain another Heavenly Venerable's complete art, first, it would greatly benefit oneself and help one create a complete Heavenly Court art; second, it would allow one to find the other's flaws!

The Heavenly Venerables schemed against one another, even sending men to infiltrate each other's sects to try to steal their arts, so that now, when the Ten Heavenly Venerables took disciples, they did not dare transmit even their own true arts in full.

"This brat is so hard to deal with; without using my true arts and divine powers it will be hard to defeat him! But this body is not the flesh I had aboard the Ghost Ship; it is a body I remade with a creation divine artifact, and at present it cannot hold much mana..."

Several times Yun Chuxiu came near to being wounded, and rage burned in her heart.

Her present body had reached only the Spirit Bridge realm and had not ascended to the Heavenly Palace. The sudden surge of power in the core of the Primal Wood just now had merely been mana transmitted from her true body, seizing the chance to suppress the lineage of Heavenly Venerable Lang.

With only this body's own strength, unless she used her true ultimate art, it would be hard to hold off Shen Mu.

The two moved faster and faster. Shen Mu wanted to force out her true divine power, but Yun Chuxiu was slippery as an eel; however fierce his assault, she could take it.

Just then, a great hand suddenly seized at the space, shattering countless drifting palaces of the Langxuan Divine Palace into powder and hurling them at Shen Mu!

Shen Mu's body changed, becoming Tubo, ox-headed, man-bodied, tiger-faced, horns on his head piercing straight into the Vault of Heaven and turning into rolling demon-fire and magma that streamed down like two Yellow Springs. He raised a hand and drew it across his brow, and the vertical eye at his brow split apart to either side!

Chi —

A ray of light sliced across; the great hand was split clean in two head-on. A muffled groan came from the void, then divine blood gushed forth, and an arm, split in two, fell from the air.

That was a god-devil hidden deep in space, who had tried to take advantage of the two's struggle to ambush and kill Shen Mu, only to have Shen Mu transform into Tubo and sever his arm with Tubo's Eye!

The power of Shen Mu's vertical eye was truly rare. Yet that god-devil was formidable too: having lost an arm, he immediately withdrew and fled, never showing himself.

Yun Chuxiu seized the chance to attack, coming up behind Shen Mu and pressing a palm to the center of his back.

Bang!

Her palm force landed on Shen Mu's back, and the energy burst forth; her palm was like the great abyss of Guixu, and in an instant it twisted Shen Mu's body and primal spirit and drew them into her palm!

Suddenly the back of her hand split open, and a ray of sword-light came straight from the back of her hand, stabbing at her brow!

Yun Chuxiu was startled and retreated swiftly, but Shen Mu seemed to have grown onto the back of her hand, only a foot or so tall, as though fused with her flesh and blood; however she retreated, she could not shake him off, nor shake off that sword!

Yun Chuxiu clenched her fist and struck out, smashing a ruined shrine to powder. Suddenly saber-light flared within the hall and chopped at Shen Mu — another deity hidden there, waiting for the chance to strike and kill Shen Mu.

Yun Chuxiu had seen where he hid, and so forced him out with a punch, to break her own peril.

Shen Mu's form abruptly vanished from her hand, and that deity's saber stroke became a chop at Yun Chuxiu.

Yun Chuxiu frowned slightly and pointed a finger. Horror showed in the deity's eyes as his body collapsed inward, crushed in the blink of an eye into a tiny ball of flesh, which burst with a bang!

By then Shen Mu had come up behind Yun Chuxiu. A chill ran through her; a vast, wild aura of the Great Dao surged to the heavens from Shen Mu behind her, an aura as though of the ancestor of ten thousand Daos, the progenitor of ten thousand arts!

If one closed one's eyes, by that aura alone one could feel a vast and magnificent Heavenly Court rushing at one's face, and Shen Mu seemed the sovereign of that Heavenly Court!

"The Heavenly Emperor!"