Chapter 1251 — One Dance Topples a City

Yu Wufei's hand snapped out and drew the long whip, which became a white dragon and lashed through the air at Shen Mu; at the same moment the women in the heavenly palace behind her roused their divine weapons one and all, and in an instant the sky was filled with flying snow, and within that whiteness divine weapon after divine weapon struck across the void with vast and terrible power. Boom—everything where Shen Mu stood burst apart. Yu Wufei's cultivation art was strange; the reason she kept those women with her was not for show, but because her art could fuse their mana into one and swell her own.

She had already been of the Lingxiao Realm, and since the women's cultivations had all reached the Yujing and Lingxiao Realms, her mana now pressed close upon that of an Imperial Throne powerhouse.

A moment before she had not stirred her art at all; she had taken Shen Mu for a child, low in realm and cultivation, and meant to pierce him through with a single finger and have done with it—only to have that finger blown apart by the vertical eye at his brow, leaving nothing but the bone. Now she was truly enraged, erupting with all her strength, giving Shen Mu not the slightest opening.

Yet when that dreadful tremor subsided and Yu Wufei swept her gaze around, Shen Mu was nowhere to be seen.

"Fled? " Yu Wufei snapped the white dragon; it coiled about her arm.

She stepped forward, about to see where he had gone, when suddenly a light shone down from the sky.

She jerked her head up.

The light in the heavens was like flame—the radiance of the vertical eye at Shen Mu's brow, shining down upon her, and even she felt her soul waver beneath it.

"The Book of Life and Death? " Yu Wufei was startled.

The Book of Life and Death was a treasure Yin Tianzi had refined for the Heavenly Court, to hold the life and death of all beings throughout the myriad heavens and worlds. Whoever was shone upon by the Book would have their name and image revealed; erasing a name from the death register could grant a man immortality, and a single stroke of the vermilion brush could take his life.

But the Book of Life and Death was exceedingly hard to refine.

Yin Tianzi had spent tens of thousands of years and produced only nine volumes of it—and Shen Mu was not shining the Book upon them, but his own eye. "His eye is the Book of Life and Death? Even Yin Tianzi never refined it to such a degree.

What is that eye at his brow? Why is its power so great?

" Yu Wufei hurriedly roused her art to contend against the Book of Life and Death, but she was a beat too late: two women of the Yujing Realm in her heavenly palace were shone upon, their names struck from the register of the living, and without a sound they died. Yu Wufei soared into the air, the white-dragon whip lashing out.

The whip swelled in the void, growing larger, longer, thicker, its dragon-cry rolling like thunder as it killed toward Shen Mu. Shen Mu met the blow head-on, but Yu Wufei's mana was shockingly strong, and the white-dragon whip was no small thing either: it had been refined from a white dragon of the Lingxiao Realm, long tempered by her, changing at her will.

One lash of it, and the dragon's reverse scales left Shen Mu's palms streaming blood. That blow struck him down out of the air, his body spinning like a top, unable to steady itself.

Whssh—his feet struck the ground, and suddenly the earth for a hundred li around twisted, as though some invisible force were wringing the soil and stone of those hundred li into a braided twist. The twisted ground surged upward at furious speed, like a spike thrusting at the sky. In this uncanny fashion Shen Mu dissolved the spiral force carried in Yu Wufei's white-dragon whip.

Then he pointed at his brow, and the divine sword spun swiftly before it, its tip like a drill bit.

"Kalpa-Opening Sword—" The vertical eye at Shen Mu's brow opened, and the Kalpa-Opening Sword flew at Yu Wufei through the air.

At the same moment a divine light followed close behind the sword from that vertical eye. Yu Wufei stood high above, her white-dragon whip—hundreds of li long, no telling how many—coiled around her, appearing and vanishing unpredictably.

Suddenly the whip became one spiral after another, not meeting Shen Mu's Kalpa-Opening sword-light head-on, but letting it pass into the spirals.

When the Kalpa-Opening Sword entered the white dragon's spirals, countless runes surfaced on the dragon's scales, reflecting one after another upon the swiftly passing sword-light. In the space of a breath, the Kalpa-Opening sword-light pierced through spiral after spiral of white dragon and reached Yu Wufei's brow at the end of them.

Yu Wufei raised her other hand, caught the Kalpa-Opening Sword lightly between index and middle finger, and sneered, "The Kalpa-Opening Sword that no one can break—and I break it with ease.

.

.

" No sooner had she spoken than her pretty face changed utterly. The light following behind the Kalpa-Opening Sword roused the broken sword's power; the sword-light surged again and stabbed into her brow. Yu Wufei cried out and flung her head aside.

The sword-light scored from her brow to her right temple, all but lifting off her skull. Shocked and furious, she sent the white-dragon whip coiling at Shen Mu.

Through the spirals of white dragon she could see his every movement clearly.

In the instant the whip coiled toward him, she saw Shen Mu bow to her. Yu Wufei's blood ran cold; she knew at once that something was wrong.

This was Yin Tianzi's art. Yin Tianzi hid a blade in his smile: when he bowed to a man, he often bowed his soul to death.

Let the man be the least bit careless and he was struck—one bow, and the soul shattered into four, and he died.

And Shen Mu plainly had this power too. Shen Mu bowed, and Yu Wufei's mind went blank; her primordial spirit rang and boomed, and a dreadfully rending force seized the three souls and seven spirits within her, all but tearing her soul apart.

She could withstand it, but the goddess-generals in her heavenly palace might not.

At Shen Mu's single bow, five women of the Yujing Realm had their three souls split and their seven spirits shattered.

The others, of the Lingxiao Realm, held their primordial spirits together, but the bow had gravely wounded them all the same.

Yu Wufei laughed in her fury. Across the spirals of white dragon she bowed in return, and a great sound came from within Shen Mu, a column of blue smoke rising straight from the crown of his head.

Yu Wufei was startled: she had used Yin Tianzi's art, and yet had not bowed Shen Mu to death—he had blocked the blow with a primordial spirit of monstrous strength.

But the next moment, the spirals the white-dragon whip had become locked Shen Mu in, binding him fast, so that he could not struggle free. Yu Wufei laughed coldly.

With Shen Mu bound, she bowed at him again and again, more than ten times. "I refuse to believe you can block it every time!

" Boom, boom, boom—ten great reports in succession; under her bows, the blue smoke from Shen Mu's crown shot straight up beyond the clouds.

Even so, Yu Wufei could not bow him to death.

Shen Mu tore free of the white-dragon whip. Yu Wufei flew at him, killing; the whip lashed, struck, swung, snapped, even opened its dragon maw and rent with dragon claws, so that Shen Mu could not rise into the air and could only retreat step by step with his feet on the earth, sword-light crisscrossing as he fought the whip with his sword.

One in the air, one on the ground; the white-dragon whip spanned a hundred li, coming and going like lightning, while Shen Mu's sword-light sliced the void, leaving trail after trail of snowy brightness, and at the center of each trail a black line.

That was the mark of his sword cutting the void open, so fast it was.

From Yu Wufei's heavenly palace more attacks came crashing down.