Chapter 1463 — A Flying Sword Alone Storms the Ninefold Palace

Outside the Lingxiao Hall all was still.

After a moment, footsteps came, fading, receding into the distance. Kaihuang sat unmoving, his eyes still closed, unopened.

Lord Hao's wounds had not healed; even with Taisu's aid, he would not dare face him. "In the Heavenly Court there remain but three Heavenly Venerables now — Yan the Heavenly Consort, Lord Hao, and Lord Gong.

Lord Hao has withdrawn, but when he comes again, it will be the three of them together. " Kaihuang said within himself, silent: "Lord Mu told me that Yan the Heavenly Consort has the ancient gods of Taiji at her side, and that Lord Hao has the ancient god Taisu at his.

He bade me wound Lord Gong grievously by all means. Truly, he thinks highly of me.

" His right hand rested on the hilt of the Sorrowless Sword.

It seemed to bear no weight at all, yet the veins had already risen one by one upon it. He heard the footsteps — a woman's footsteps.

His little finger had closed, gripping the hilt; then the ring finger, the middle finger, the index finger.

Outside the Lingxiao Hall, Lord Gong stepped through into the hall.

Her pupils shrank sharply; her gaze fell upon the headless body of the ancient-god Heavenly Emperor and upon the head lying fallen to one side. On the imperial throne, Kaihuang opened his eyes.

His thumb pressed down on the hilt, and with a rasping clang he drew the sword; the cry of the blade in an instant shook the Lingxiao Hall.

In the mere moment it took the Sorrowless Sword to clear its sheath, his figure had already come before Lord Gong — and his first stroke was straight into the Thirty-Fifth Heaven of the Sword Dao. The thirty-five supreme heavens of the Sword Dao, the supreme sword domain, burst forth in a single turn of an instant.

Within the Lingxiao Hall, the sword light seemed in that instant to fill the whole great hall where all the gods bowed in worship to the Heavenly Emperor.

The next moment, the surging, majestic sword light pierced the Lingxiao Hall through. Countless gods and demons still dwelt then in the Heavenly Court, and in that same moment, without any word between them, they lifted their heads as one and looked, all in unison, toward the Lingxiao Treasure Hall.

Before their dull, staring eyes, thousands upon thousands of streaks of sword light erupted from that Lingxiao Treasure Hall which stood as the emblem of the Heavenly Emperor's supreme authority.

The sword light was unbreakable, shattering all it struck; it pierced the Lingxiao Treasure Hall and shot out in every direction, and that dazzling sword light cut the sky open, leaving behind it line after line of fathomless rifts in space.

BOOM — From within the Lingxiao Treasure Hall came the tremendous roar of erupting, clashing divine powers; Lord Gong, bearing dozens of wounds, fled swiftly out from the hall. And at that very moment, those streaks of sword light that had shot from the hall and pierced the sky tore open the thirty-five layers of void. Within each of those rifts reaching down into the thirty-fivefold void stood a phantom of Kaihuang, sword in hand, charging out from the thirty-fivefold void to kill.

Those were Kaihuang's Sword Dao imprints.

He had branded his Sword Dao into the thirty-fivefold void; those streaks of sword light which had just burst from the Lingxiao Treasure Hall were not merely piercing empty air — they were also rousing the Sword Dao imprints within the thirty-fivefold void. A thousand or more streaks of sword light had flown from the hall just now, scattering in every direction; and now, these lights roused the Sword Dao imprints of the thirty-fivefold void, each streak growing stronger and more terrifying than the last, closing in from every side upon Lord Gong as she fled headlong backward.

Lord Gong summoned up every ounce of her strength to hold them off, yet she had only time to block some hundred or so streaks before she heard a ripping hiss — a divine sword had run her through, entering at her back and bursting out through her chest. Lord Gong spat blood, gritted her teeth, and fought on with the last of her life; but more sword light pierced her through. Before her, Kaihuang walked out from the Lingxiao Treasure Hall with the Sorrowless Sword in hand, no change whatever upon his face, as though the blow that had wounded Lord Gong were no more than a casual gesture.

The Lingxiao Treasure Hall was now riddled with holes, battered and in ruins. His attainments in the Dao realm were profound beyond compare, long since surpassing the Great Emperor of old.

In his later years the Great Emperor had relied on the power of sacrifice to pile his spirit consciousness ever higher, stacking it up to the Ultimate Void of the Great Luo Heaven; but in the Dao realm, the Great Emperor's comprehension had in truth long since been left behind by Kaihuang, by no one knew how far.

He stood there as though standing within the thirty-fivefold void, his figure hard to grasp. When he moved, it was as though the Sword Dao of all under heaven moved with him; as though the Sword Dao of the thirty-fivefold void moved with him.

This was the unclimbable, unsurpassable peak of the Sword Dao of which the village headman had spoken.

The higher a master of the Sword Dao rose in comprehension, the deeper his insight into the Dao realm, the more surely would he see a figure standing ahead of him — towering, immense, planted there like the sky itself. Masters of the Sword Dao were many in the world, but those who had cultivated to the level of the village headman Su Mozhe were few indeed; and fewer still — a mere handful, countable on the fingers — could feel the supreme majesty of Kaihuang's Sword Dao. Even Shen Mu could not sense the might and majesty of Kaihuang's Sword Dao; how much less could any other.

Yet any who did sense it would feel as though gazing up at a mountain too high to climb — and would need to shatter the god within their own heart.

For years the village headman Su Mozhe had kept silent and withdrawn, seeking to shatter the god within his own heart, to break the despair and oppression that Kaihuang's Sword Dao had laid upon him; but to this day he had never shattered that god within, never climbed up out of the valley.

Even the Sword God, so dazzling and resolute in his day, could not for a time walk free of Kaihuang's shadow.

And at this moment, Kaihuang did not merely inspire in masters of the Sword Dao that sense of a mountain too high to climb; to all — Heavenly Venerables included — he gave that same sense of a peak beyond reach. In the twenty thousand years since the Kaihuang era ended, he had not fallen into decadence; it was the Sorrowless Land that had fallen.

The gods and demons of the Sorrowless Land, and even their descendants after them, had all suffered their Dao hearts to be broken; only his Dao heart remained as it had always been, never once defeated. No fellow Daoist supported him or encouraged him; no fellow Daoist stood with him, each upholding the other.

Even those old comrades-in-arms of the Sorrowless Land had misunderstood him, failing to grasp his painstaking purpose.

Yet even so, his Dao heart had never withered, never wavered.

From ancient times to the present, of all who possessed such strength and such steadfastness, he alone stood. This was the very reason he had been able to comprehend the Thirty-Fifth Heaven of the Dao realm.

Lord Gong's Dao of spirit consciousness erupted.

Spirit consciousness was skilled at branding the void, and hers excelled above all in illusions; now layer upon layer of phantasm burst forth, fold upon fold, surging endlessly toward Kaihuang.

Her illusions could have beguiled even Shen Mu with ease, yet against Kaihuang they seemed wholly useless. For a being who had founded a great Dao and come near to mastering it utterly, illusions could not beguile his Dao heart — for illusions could not deceive the Sword Dao, nor deceive the sword heart.