Chapter 427 — The Buddha's Bone Relic
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 1 of 4
This battlefield stretched for several hundred li, cut into more than a dozen separate fields of war, yet all of them lay along the single line of the Divine Severing Mountains.
The Five Immortals of the demon race, the Kun King, the Wing King, the Blind Elder, Lord Huo, the Butcher, the Silent Artisan, the Deaf Elder, the Imperial Preceptor of Jingping, the Headman, Granny Zhu, the Old Dao Master, Old Tathagata, the Hermit of Qingyou — each was locked in single combat with a foe. As the mightiest champions their races could produce, they had long since found scarce rivals left in this world; but measured against the gods of Heaven Above, they stood one notch lower in cultivation realm. The Imperial Preceptor of Jingping and Tu Xingfeng were already among the very highest of the strong: the Imperial Preceptor had fought to the death and slain the One-Eyed God, taking grievous wounds himself, and Tu Xingfeng had perished together with his opponent.
From this one may see how vast the gap in strength truly was. The Five Immortals of the demon race and Granny Zhu were a shade weaker in strength, but richer in devices, and could only keep moving, trading blows of divine ability at a distance; their enemies were too powerful, and wore them down to exhaustion.
Yan Jingjing had arrived at precisely the right moment. When that sun of Xizhou's came down, the Yellow Immortal had already opened the sack upon his back; streams of yellow smoke came gushing out, stinking past all endurance, choking his opponent until his very guts seemed to split, and setting him to vomiting without pause.
The Yellow Immortal moved in to hook out his soul and seize his spirit, only to be stamped flat underfoot, unable to stir. The Willow Immortal, for her part, revealed her true form: a colossal azure serpent like an Azure Dragon, coiling about a snow mountain.
Her opponent revealed his true form as well, tall as the snow mountain itself, his body wrapped in white fur, his eyes like lightning hidden in the dark; he beat the Willow Immortal until she spat blood, until blood ran without cease from her eyes, ears, mouth, and nose.
The White Immortal, the Grey Immortal, and the Fox Immortal likewise took grievous wounds. Granny Zhu, relying on her teleporting banner and the palm-force of the Great Luo Heaven Star Palm, could still hold out, dodging her opponent's killing strokes.
The Five Immortals generally chose to join forces against a single enemy, but even so there were never enough hands; they needed to pin down two gods at once, which strained them terribly, and with Granny Zhu's help the pressure eased somewhat, though it was still not enough to contend with two gods.
On another field, the Old Dao Master had already carried the fourteen chapters of the Dao Sword through to the fourteenth. Of that fourteenth chapter he had mastered only half a move, and with half a move of sword art he fought his opponent, cutting until mountains crumbled and the earth split.
But the flaw in that half-move was quickly found: a divine light shot from his opponent's eye, pierced through layer upon layer of sword-light, and nailed the Old Dao Master to the cliff. "The Dao Sword. .
.
is no more than this! " The god's enormous palm-print came down over the Dao Master on the cliff!
Old Tathagata's Thunder Roar Mahayana Sutra roused the Twenty Heavens; his body was as a great Buddha, ten thousand Buddhas encircling him, and he met hard with hard — yet he too was losing ground, his great Buddha and Twenty Heavens battered and broken. The god who contended with him had three heads and six arms, and the two fought body to body, fist to flesh; soon Old Tathagata was mottled with blood, his white brows dyed red, dripping.
He was old.