Chapter 1012 — The Mischievous Youth Shames One and All

"Sword Twenty really is formidable.

" Shujun set Shen Mu down from his back. Shen Mu stretched his limbs and was soon bouncing about again, which made Shujun click his tongue in wonder.

Earlier, Shen Mu's injuries had been grave; Kaihuang's Sword Twenty had struck him down hard, so hard that Shujun had wondered whether his soul was about to return to the Ancestral Spirit Realm. The sword wounds on his body had been severe enough, but the worst of the damage was not to his flesh: his Primeval Fetus divine treasury and his Heavenly Palace had been injured, struck by the sword domain Kaihuang had fused into Sword Twenty.

What was strange was that, wounded so grievously, Shen Mu had healed so quickly that Shujun half suspected the boy had only been feigning the severity of his hurts. "Kaihuang is worthy of his name as the foremost man of the sword Dao. His understanding of the sword truly runs deeper than other men's; the Sword Twenty he created is even more formidable than Sword Nineteen, Tijie.

" Shen Mu took out his sword core and traced it back and forth through the air, trying to reproduce Sword Twenty. Sword Twenty differed from all nineteen of the foundational sword techniques that came before it.

When he had first comprehended Sword Eighteen, Shen Mu had felt something: that the further the foundational sword techniques went, the more mana they consumed, until at last they would become a kind of sword art almost impossible to accept, one that might drain every drop of his mana in a single use. His Sword Eighteen already showed signs of this.

His cultivation was deep, stronger than that of his peers; even Kaihuang, famed for his majestic, mighty power, was far inferior to him at the same realm.

So wielding Sword Eighteen had never felt taxing to him.

But for anyone else it would be more than merely taxing. To combine Sword Eighteen into a complete sword art and execute it would, in all likelihood, exhaust a Divine Ability practitioner's cultivation entirely. Sword Nineteen, the Tijie Sword, demanded an even more terrifying expenditure of mana, and not mana alone. It required profound mastery of divination and array formations, even of space itself, and set the highest demands upon the state of one's mind.

Sword Nineteen was equally exacting in its demands upon one's mastery of the sword; to learn this single move was to enter the Dao through the sword outright.

And in all the world, those who had learned it were very few. Even for those who had, the mana it consumed was likely more than an ordinary Divine Ability practitioner could bear. In this all-out clash with Kaihuang, Shen Mu had sensed that Sword Twenty's requirements were higher still, almost perverse, one might say.

"To use this sword, it seems you pour your soul into the blade and burn your blood and qi; it can only be executed in concert with a sword domain. " Shen Mu frowned deeply. There was no hope of his wielding Sword Twenty any time soon; as yet he could not comprehend a sword domain of his own.

His Tribulation-Answering Sword was no foundational technique but a move for severing divine treasuries and Heavenly Palaces, a sword Dao created to shatter the old order, originally meant to be turned upon himself. Back then, when Shen Mu had lost his soul and had nothing left but consciousness, he had used the Tribulation-Answering Sword to cut himself down. First he destroyed his own Heavenly Palace; the blade light, carrying the surging momentum of that collapsing palace, severed the divine bridge and shattered the divine treasury of Heaven-Man, the Five Luminaries, the Six Harmonies, and Life and Death, leaving only the spirit fetus.

Later, he found that using this move to sever the Heavenly Palaces and divine treasuries of other gods, demons, and Divine Ability practitioners worked rather well too. But this move was not a foundational sword technique.

Kaihuang had fought him at the same realm, both of them wielding the mana of the Venerable God realm.

Shen Mu's divine treasury domain had forcibly suppressed Kaihuang with immense mana, and still he had been wounded by Sword Twenty.

One could see how dreadful Sword Twenty became when joined with a sword domain; striking the strong from a position of weakness was nothing to it. It was only that he could not yet learn so formidable a Sword Twenty, and that left him somewhat disheartened.

"I have an Overlord Body.

If I try a little harder. .

. " His spirits revived, and he set off with Shujun toward the Creators' territory.

Among the Xiu race, many adult Creators, led by Xiuzhong and the elders of the Star-Making Lords, were helping the Divine Child of Youdu, Shen Fengqing, open up the Other Shore Youdu; those left in the clan were the old and the young. The same was true of every other race. The Other Shore Youdu mattered even more to the Creators, which was why Divine King Langwan had ordered every Creator race, high and low, to throw its full strength into helping Shen Fengqing build it.

Shen Mu tried opening the Heaven-Bearing Gate, and discovered to his surprise that it truly did open.

He poked his head in and looked.

Countless Creators strode through the vast void like giants whose heads held up the sky and whose feet planted the earth; light blazed from their brows as their divine consciousness created through the Primeval Divine Stone. Shen Fengqing was no smaller than any of them, larger even, and stood at the center of the Other Shore Youdu. One by one, the great Daos of Youdu radiated from within him and merged with the Creators' divine consciousness, and together the Creators branded his Dao into the void. "Don't open the gate!

Don't open the gate!

" Divine King Langwan had noticed the doorway Shen Mu opened.

Her divine consciousness rippled into a voice that sounded hastily in his mind: "You cannot open the gate yet.

It would let the Daos and divine consciousness of the Other Shore Youdu leak out and disturb the Other Shore. " Shen Mu moved, slipped into the Other Shore Youdu, and shut the Heaven-Bearing Gate.

He looked around. From here he could clearly see the continents and stars of the Other Shore World, one after another; he could even make out the Thirty-Three Heavens of the Carefree Land in perfect clarity. The Other Shore Youdu overlapped with the Other Shore World.

This Youdu, forged by the Creators together with Shen Fengqing, could reach into every corner of the Other Shore World; if it kept growing, it would one day extend into the Great Void as well.

Shen Fengqing had always wanted to become a Little Earth Lord, to have a territory of his own where he could look after his mother. And now he had not merely a territory but a vast one, where he could look after not only his mother but every soul in the Carefree Land. He could even look after all the Creators of the Great Void and the Other Shore World, making the Great Void no longer so perilous for them.

"Bad little brother!

" Shen Fengqing spotted Shen Mu and cried out in excitement: "You came to see me! It's no fun at all here.

I can only watch these big fellows, and I can't even eat them!

" The Creators around him all wore dark expressions, longing to thrash him but not daring to raise a hand. Shen Mu flew toward him. Shen Fengqing, thinking his flight too slow, stretched out a hand; Shen Mu landed in his palm, and Shen Fengqing drew the hand back, bringing Shen Mu before his face, where he floated beside him like a tiny mote of dust.

"In the future you'll have plenty to eat, but you can't just eat the people of the Carefree Land or the Creators whenever you like.

" Shen Mu counseled him patiently: "The Heavenly Court will attack this place, hunting for traces of the Carefree Land. Beyond the Great Void they'll fall in countless numbers, more than you can eat in time.