Chapter 314 — Between Father and Son
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 1 of 4
The light cast by the eye pattern on the membrane behind the head of the Lord Who Guards the Stars was suppressing the transformation of the one in the tree into wood, driving the wood nature upon him ever deeper so that his eyes could see. The face of the one in the tree drew out of the trunk inch by inch, and the wood nature on his tongue was gradually receding.
Swish.
The eye-shaped pattern on the membrane behind her head closed, and she said: "Qin Hanzhen, you should be able to see your son now, shouldn't you?
" She was cautious; she knew that the one in the tree was exceedingly strong, in his prime no lesser than herself, and so she had not wholly undone the forbidden arts laid upon him but merely allowed him to see what was before him. Yet the one in the tree closed his eyes, opened his mouth a little, and still no sound came out.
Shen Mu listened with head tilted, nodded repeatedly, and after a moment said: "He means that the Star Lord has guessed one thing wrong. " The Lord Who Guards the Stars turned her head and sneered: "What did I guess wrong?
" The one in the tree opened his eyes, but they still could not see; the skin on his face was rapidly turning to wood, yet the roots of the Divine Tree were trembling!
Shen Mu said with a calm face: "What the Star Lord guessed wrong is this: he does not want to see me fulfill the pact with Tu Bo. He would rather never set eyes on me for the rest of his life.
His intention was always to have the Star Lord help him suppress his wood nature and recover part of his flesh's mobility.
" The Lord Who Guards the Stars sneered, the membrane behind her head shaking with a rattling sound: "Are those Qin Hanzhen's words, or yours? Little whelp Fengqing, aren't you a little too arrogant, too overreaching, too self-righteous?
Even if Qin Hanzhen recovers the least power to act, so what? His divine sword is already shattered; with barely half a body he is no match for me! " Shen Mu shook his head: "They are my words, and his as well.
Even gods and Buddhas, deities and demons, cannot control everything; there are always lives that refuse to submit and try to leap free. He is not without the power to resist. Because. . .
" "Because I have brought his sword! " Behind Shen Mu, a snow-bright sword light shot up into the heavens! The Sorrowless Sword shattered its wooden scabbard and fell into a huge wooden hand that had grown out of the Divine Tree at breakneck speed.
In that instant sword light flooded the entire hall; before Shen Mu's eyes everything was blazing white, and he could see nothing else!
That was a sword technique bordering on the Way, beyond his understanding, beyond his horizons.
A single sword burst out with heaven-shaking, earth-rending power and brilliance. Divine light surged vast and mighty; the sword light spilled across the floor like quicksilver and scattered through the long sky. In that flash, Shen Mu saw not a sword but a man's joys and sorrows, his partings and reunions, a whole lifetime's pursuit and a will without regret!
Sword and Way were fused into one!
Even the Li Zheng's sword diagram and the Daoist school's Dao swords lost their color before this mythic sword art. From within the sword light came the startled cry of the Lord Who Guards the Stars. Shen Mu felt an overwhelming divine might, and then a blaze of savage fire rolled over him, followed by a boundless pressure, as if the vast, deep, weighty earth itself were pressing down!
He saw, within the sword light, an enormous star of orange-yellow, pregnant with tremendous power, seeming about to grind all things to dust, and the Lord Who Guards the Stars stood before that great star, her might surging to the heavens.
Then his eyes stabbed with pain; he shut them in haste and felt that overwhelming divine might suddenly wane, then rush away at speed, and then came the sound of a door slamming.