荒墟牧神 - 第423章 熾焰林海 - 簡牘書房

The Sword Realm was the sword art that the Imperial Preceptor of Jingping had created after the Headman pointed him toward the way and he entered the realm of the Sword Dao. It was not the same as the sword arts he had known before; formerly he had only touched the gateway of the Sword Dao, and had never attained it.

In those days his swordsmanship, though strong — he had created three basic sword forms and was hailed as the Sword God — could never stand beside the Headman's so long as he had not entered the Sword Dao; but once he entered it, his fighting strength rose enormously. He was dazzlingly gifted, with no shortcoming anywhere in his strength, and the Sword Dao he comprehended differed from the Headman's.

The Headman, cherishing the memory of the fallen, had created the Sword Diagram, which was for the most part a remembrance of things past; he, by contrast, was all advance and enterprise, reform and change, possessed of a vastness of mind and spirit.

Breadth of mind decides achievement. The Headman's age had already passed; his own age had only just arrived.

His Sword Realm had only just been founded, with but its first part complete: Realm-Settling.

Realm-Settling — to settle the rivers and mountains, to settle the altars of the state, to pacify the chaos within the four seas and all under heaven, to sweep away the calamities of the six directions and the eight wastes, and to open an age of Great Peace.

The will and the ambition of the Imperial Preceptor of Jingping lay hidden within that single sword; it was the highest sword art he was capable of creating thus far. When the One-Eyed God's lone eye was pierced through by his sword, Realm-Settling had in truth already been buried in the One-Eyed God's skull.

The One-Eyed God was a sinister creature, and he was not one-eyed at all: originally he had two eyes, but his cultivation arts were strange and his attainments in the Way of Creation extraordinary.

By the wonders of Creation he had moved one eye to the center of his brow, and the other to the back of his skull, where it was covered by his hair, so that men took him for a god with but one eye. Little did they know that he could see both before and behind him. He knew the Imperial Preceptor of Jingping was his fiercest rival and the foremost figure in Jingping's reforms; and so this time he had been willing to sacrifice an eye to send the Imperial Preceptor on his way. Yet cunning as he was, and though he had staked the loss of one eye, the Imperial Preceptor of Jingping was a move ahead of him in the arts of the heart.

The power of Realm-Settling hidden in his skull erupted. Cracks appeared across the One-Eyed God's head, and from those cracks surfaced streams of snow-bright sword-light.

His eyes, ears, mouth and nose suddenly turned a dazzling white, and then sword-light came gushing from his eyes, ears, mouth and nose; as more and more cracks opened across his head, more sword-light burst from them, and in an instant that snow-bright radiance lit the surrounding snow mountains as though it were broad daylight!

Thud! The One-Eyed God's fist came smashing down upon the Imperial Preceptor of Jingping; the earth cracked with a splintering roar, and fissures spread in every direction from the Imperial Preceptor, no one knew how far.

The Imperial Preceptor coughed blood, and heard the sound of his own bones breaking. Everything above the One-Eyed God's neck had vanished; his corpse swayed and toppled. At the bottom of the pit the Imperial Preceptor lay motionless, blood welling ceaselessly from his mouth, his breath a thread of gossamer: "Jade-Faced Poison King.

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. save me.

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" At that moment the Lame Old Man, with the Alchemist on his back, was racing headlong, fleeing frantically through one combat circle after another.