Chapter 1651 — Still as at First Sight

The Tianyin Realm.

Yin Tianzi glanced to his left and right, only to find Di Yiyue and Lady Tianyin closing in from either side, trapping him between them.

Even he could not help a flutter of panic.

With no Nether Sea left and no Heavenly Gate of Mingdu, he might not have held his own against Di Yiyue alone, the very woman who had helped him perfect that gate and his Dao of Reincarnation, let alone against a resurrected Lady Tianyin as well. The hatred these two women bore him needed no telling.

Yin Tianzi forced a smile.

"Yiyue, how I have missed you. Even when I killed you by order of the Haotian Emperor, I did not destroy your flesh.

You must understand my heart.

My love for you was true. . .

" Boom! Di Yiyue and Lady Tianyin struck from left and right at once, each unleashing her mightiest divine art.

Di Yiyue was the more ruthless. Since her resurrection her cultivation had advanced by leaps and bounds, her Emperor Throne technique already cultivated to a Lesser Celestial Court, ten Heavenly Palaces joined into a lesser court.

She had been Kaihuang's most valued genius, deemed the greatest talent of the Jingping era, a rare Duling physique, cut down by Yin Tianzi on her wedding night and robbed of more than twenty thousand years. Yet after Shen Mu brought her back, she absorbed the fruits of the Jingping reforms and her power soared once more, tempered further by the wars in the Grand Void.

Her strength had long since surpassed Yin Tianzi's. Lady Tianyin, for her part, had been the weakest of the Dao-born ancient gods and one of the earliest to die, and for that very reason she had slipped the shackles of godhood.

To destroy her, Yin Tianzi first won her trust, then schemed against her and gravely wounded her, then let the starved ghosts of the Tianyin Realm devour her flesh and soul entire, leaving only a skin. In the end the ghosts seized Lady Tianyin's skin, while Yin Tianzi took what he wanted: the Tianyin Realm, the Tianyin runes, and the Nether Sea refined from the soul black sand of that realm.

It was by slaying Lady Tianyin that Yin Tianzi earned his name as the Black Emperor of Mingdu.

Reshaped in soul by Shen Mu and resurrected, Lady Tianyin was no longer bound as an ancient god, and could instead cultivate and comprehend all other Daos. In these years her power had long outstripped what it once was.

The two women pressed their pincer attack, holding nothing back, and at the sight a vicious resolve rose in Yin Tianzi.

"I killed them once and felt guilt, and so I have yielded to them and avoided them ever since. To achieve great things one must not be soft-hearted! I am now Yin Tianzun, and which Tianzun has not blood on his hands? " He drove his magic power with all his might, and five Heavenly Palaces rose behind his head.

Once he could move only four, needing the Heavenly Gate of Mingdu to forge eight. But in these years of the Jingping reforms he too had gained, and at last completed his fifth palace. Had the gate still stood, he could have wielded the nine-palace Lesser Celestial Court and still had strength to fight.

But with the gate destroyed, his arts clashed once with theirs and then his Dao and divine powers unraveled.

Blood喷 from Yin Tianzi's mouth as he was sent flying, when suddenly a ribbon darted out, coiled about his neck, and dragged him back.

"Since you are cruel and merciless, blame me not for being heartless!

" Fierce light blazed in Yin Tianzi's eyes as he urged the divine art of Reincarnation, thinking, "At worst we perish together!

I will drag you into reincarnation and make you sink forever! " Of this he was confident.

Even with the gate ruined, his great Dao of Reincarnation remained, a path transcending the Dao of Youdu, his greatest capital.

His present cultivation might fall short of Di Yiyue's and Lady Tianyin's, but to pull them into the wheel, wash away their memories, and strike them down to mortality would be no hard task. He drew ever nearer to them.

He knew he had only one chance, for their cultivation far exceeded his, and only as he took their blows would he have his opening to strike them. It was a blow of mutual ruin.

Di Yiyue had sword in hand, standing upon another Gate of Reincarnation, her red robes streaming.

Seeing that fluttering red, the bridal red he himself had draped upon her, Yin Tianzi recalled the days he had spent with her. Perhaps those were his happiest hours since the assassination of Yu Tianzun.

Ever since joining Haotian to kill Yu Tianzun, he had dreamed nightmares, sunk in guilt for that murder, for Yu Tianzun had been the hero in his heart, his elder brother, the man he looked up to.

Yet under Haotian's coercion, to save his own life, he had joined hands with Haotian to murder Yu Tianzun in the Winding Corridor Pavilion at Yaochi.

After Yu Tianzun's death he kept staring at his own hands, always feeling them stained with blood that would never wash clean. (For details see earlier chapters.

) After that killing he had no choice but to mount Haotian's war chariot and become Haotian's hound, forced to grow more cunning and more sinister, and only thus did he survive the cruel Longhan era and live on as the Black Emperor of Mingdu.

The Four Emperors changed crop after crop, yet he alone remained an evergreen, standing unfallen. Still he lived in constant fear, seldom tasting true joy, until he met Di Yiyue.

Those were happy days, when he laid down every burden and every guard and fell in love with her, and his heart was true. Yet when the Ten Heavenly Venerables told him to move against the Kaihuang Court and to do away with Di Yiyue on their wedding day, he hesitated and struggled.

He had even dreamed of defying Heaven outright, of eloping with her, of hiding his name with this woman and living out an ordinary life.

He had even thought of going over to Kaihuang's court, of wedding Di Yiyue and fighting the Ten Heavenly Venerables in a blaze of glory, dying heroically on the battlefield to wash away his past sins and win a fair name after death. But then cowardice took him. He dared not oppose the Ten Heavenly Venerables, he would not surrender the station he had bought with betrayal and flattery and the sale of himself, and so on their wedding night, as Di Yiyue turned shyly away from him, he tremblingly raised his sword and drove it into his bride's back.

He watched Di Yiyue in phoenix crown and wedding silks, clad in bridal red.

The two were very close now, the Gate of Mingdu beneath her feet erupting with might to suppress his cultivation, while the sword in her hand sought his chest.

If he urged his Reincarnation art now, she could never evade it.

Yin Tianzi lifted his hand, a smile on his face, the smile that had charmed countless girls. Slash!

Di Yiyue's sword light pierced his heart, raining through him and bursting from his back to sweep the celestial court behind his head, splitting palace after palace, toppling hall after hall, shattering the very foundation of his Dao. Yin Tianzi's palm also touched Di Yiyue's cheek.

He stood upon the gate facing her, just as when they first met, when he saw that beautiful, gallant god-clan girl and was moved to tease her. Then too he had reached to touch the girl's face, and the girl too had thrust a sword at his heart.

Then, his other hand had caught her blade.

This time, he did not. His smile remained as before, as if to wake her memory, but Lady Tianyin's palm had already reached his back, a blow so savage it shook his primordial spirit to pieces and blasted his soul into soul black sand. At the same instant Di Yiyue's sword light dissolved all five of his Heavenly Palaces, and his rampant power ran out of control, for the palaces borrowed strength from the Jade Capital of the Ancestral Court, and when they collapsed that borrowed strength turned wild.