Chapter 1238 — The Flower Guest of the Red Dust: Weighing the Real and the Unreal

At once Shen Mu's expression turned grave; he was compelled to admit that Heavenly Lord Han was indeed powerful beyond all measure—in the very instant the five great treasures collapsed, Heavenly Lord Han had already detected that Shen Mu had poisoned the soldiers of this Fortress Wall Formation. The Dao of poison and the Dao of medicine were fused within Shen Mu, inherited from the Pillmaster; and the Pillmaster was the founder of the Heaven Palace of the Medical Dao, a man who, in poison or in medicine alike, had reached pinnacles no one before him had ever touched.

Shen Mu's medical Dao had come down to him from the Pillmaster—not, to be sure, through his own comprehension, for it was the Pillmaster's single spirit pill that enabled him to complete the Heaven Palace of the Medical Dao.

Yet once that Heaven Palace was complete, realizations concerning the medical Dao and the poison Dao had come thronging upon him.

In medicine and poison the Pillmaster stood first; Shen Mu might be his inferior, but he, too, was exceedingly powerful.

Combining the Art of Creation with his art of divine-consciousness contemplation, he could create spirit pills and deadly poisons without having to use a single medicinal herb or toxin—using the Dao runes of extreme venom to slay his opponents, and the Dao runes of healing medicines to cure the sick!

He had only just set foot upon the threshold of the medical Dao. The reason he had not poisoned Heavenly Lord Han himself was precisely that Heavenly Lord Han was powerful beyond all measure—a great master who had cultivated the formation Dao to the Lingxiao realm—and so Shen Mu had chosen first to cut off his wings, poisoning the soldiers of the Fortress Wall Formation to death.

In this way he would strip the man of the greater half of his abilities.

Yet in the next moment Heavenly Lord Han altered the formation arrays of the assembled armies, severed the Dao runes of the poison Dao, and in no time cut away the poison runes within the bodies of the soldiers, refining them to ash! "Celestial Venerable Mu, I will show you the ultimate profundity of the formation Dao!

" Heavenly Lord Han bellowed, and abruptly the swarm of cubes surged toward the five Heavenly Lord Hans.

Countless cubes and the gods and demons within them clashed and clattered, joining together to form, around the five Heavenly Lord Hans, a formation in the shape of a man.

The five Heavenly Lord Hans stood up slowly, their bodies growing taller and taller, vaster and vaster.

"Celestial Venerable Mu!

" The five Heavenly Lord Hans, lofty as hills, looked down on Shen Mu, their voices rumbling and deafening: "A junior, an insignificant True God, has actually forced me to bring out the battle arts of the formation Dao—you may well pride yourself!

" The formations upon and within these five giants' bodies clattered and shifted; in this very moment, every divine being within them was composing a different set of foundational formation runes.

Each of them was like a basic particle of the human body, and the primordial qi that flowed through them went racing through the giants' frames.

Such magic power nearly rivaled that of an Imperial Throne expert! Nor was that all: their divine consciousnesses also merged into one in that same moment, and their divine abilities became part of a single grand divine ability!

It was the first time Shen Mu had ever seen anyone cultivate the formation Dao to such an altitude, and he could not help exclaiming: "If Blind Elder were here, and met so peerless an expert in the formation Dao as Heavenly Lord Han, he would certainly cheer and leap about like a child, then defeat him honorably with formations.

But I am not Blind Elder!

" Rather than retreat, he advanced, charging at one of the Heavenly Lord Hans; even as he sprinted, he fully unfurled his Divine Treasury Domain!

Heavenly Lord Han's immense power only fanned his fighting spirit.

His Divine Treasury Domain spread open; the Mysterious Capital, the Nether Capital, the Four Pole Heavens, the Primal Capital, and other worlds, some above and some below, burst forth together with a brilliant starry firmament. The Heavenly River ran crossways through every great world, linking them all into one body. The ground beneath his feet was the Ancestral Court, and sixteen Heaven Palaces formed a boundless Heavenly Court!

Since his cultivation had matured, he had never had occasion to exert himself to the utmost; even in his clashes with Lin Xuan and Xu Shenghua, he had held his own strength in check.

And now, at last, he had the chance to let his power bloom in full!

In past days, when he unfolded his Divine Treasury Domain, he had still been wary and guarded, for if the Divine Treasury were broken, it would be exceedingly difficult to cultivate it back—and the Divine Treasury was his very root.

But he had already realized the Immutable Divine Ability of Celestial Venerable Ling; unless someone struck him dead with a single fatal blow, no one could bring about his true death!

"Heavenly Lord Han, your body is too huge—you have lost the agility that a practitioner of divine abilities ought to possess!

" Shen Mu stepped into the dim void, crossed through the emptiness, and evaded the utterly frightful combined strike of the five Heavenly Lord Hans, calling out with a ringing laugh: "You have matchless power and nothing else, yet it never occurred to you that a formation takes time to operate—and I will not give you that time!

" The five Heavenly Lord Hans' magic power was truly vast and their strength truly appalling; one of his palms, bearing irresistible force, actually smote into the void.

Shen Mu vaulted out of the void, appeared behind the head of one of the Heavenly Lord Hans, and struck backward with a move—Flower Guest of the Purple Path.

This was his fifth Dao-Entry divine art.

His finger trembled, and a lotus appeared; the lotus split from one into two, from two into four, and by the time it reached that Heavenly Lord Han it had become a sea of blossoms, countless flowers pressing against every part of his body.

The cubes composing Heavenly Lord Han's body, and the gods and demons within them, immediately felt their power draining away at flying speed, absorbed by the lotuses. Flower Guest of the Purple Path was best at breaking the divine abilities and formations of others; Shen Mu had once used this very move to break all the experts of Dragon Island in the Eastern Pole Heaven, leaving the experts of the Eastern Pole Heaven without the least ability to fight back.

"Ninefold Empyrean of Li Fire!

" Another Heavenly Lord Han came lunging; with a flick of his body, countless cubes flew out from him and turned into the great formation of the Ninefold Empyrean of Li Fire, enveloping that first Heavenly Lord Han.

Shen Mu's Divine Treasury spread itself completely open, and in the sixteen Heaven Palaces one primal spirit after another called up the power of its palace in unison, joining hands to unleash the selfsame divine ability.

The sixteen Heaven Palaces howled and spun, taking on the form of a taiji diagram, and enveloped the second Heavenly Lord Han! That Heavenly Lord Han had only just deployed the Ninefold Empyrean of Li Fire and broken Shen Mu's Flower Guest of the Purple Path when he was immediately caught beneath this grand divine ability of Shen Mu's.

The Taiji vein in the Ancestral Court suddenly shook; the twin breaths of yin and yang—the very Dao of yin and yang—burst out from the Taiji vein, and in an instant the body of that Heavenly Lord Han turned into two currents of qi, one black and one white, unable ever to fuse again.