Chapter 499 — Human Schemes Cannot Best Heaven's Will
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 1 of 5
Beneath the cliff stood two gates, opening onto two different worlds, and the ones within each gate had their own fears to reckon with.
This was not their first meeting, nor their first crossing of blades; many years ago they had fought, back when the Shanghuang Era was on the verge of being buried. After that they had clashed several more times, though by then the Kaihuang Era had already begun.
On this cliff alone they had fought at a distance more than once.
Now they had both left that desolate, deathly world behind; what appeared here were only their projections.
Their cultivation was too high, their strength too great—without some stroke of fate, their true bodies could not enter this world. No living thing remained in this world; nothing could survive here. This was the Ruins of the Shanghuang Era, a place even more hostile than the Ruins of the Kaihuang Era.
In the Ruins there were at least stone statues transformed from gods, sheltering a patch of land and letting living things survive; here there was only the desert, and when night came and the darkness swept in, there was nowhere at all to take cover.
As early as thirty or forty thousand years ago, no living things remained here—only gods.
In the early Kaihuang Era, the gods here departed one after another for other worlds, and the two of them were the last to leave.
"The woman of the Bai family from forty thousand years ago—have you also come seeking the one who left the inscription? " The one-armed godfiend in the stone gate was tall of frame, the long saber on his back ringing with a clang, its blade intent seeming able to pierce through time and space and cut into another world.
He sneered: "So you too have heard word of his emergence and come looking for him.
I long ago sensed that something was wrong with your sword art—it surpasses the Shanghuang Era, and the Kaihuang Era as well. I never expected you to be connected to the Youmo Cult Master after all!
" The woman in the divine light on the cliff face trembled slightly, and boundless joy rose from the bottom of her heart; she paid his hostility no mind at all: "He has truly come?
He who crossed through time and space—he has truly appeared here? " "You cannot stop me! " The one-armed godfiend in the stone gate stood in the gateway, utterly aloof: "I mean to kill him, and you mean to stop me. You and I have fought for many years, and in the end it is all a muddled account—neither of us can do anything to the other.
The reason I have kept this severed arm is so that one day I might find him, and repay the debt of my arm, and the hatred of my humiliated dao-heart. Unless I can break his sword art with my blade art, I will never be able to give free rein to what is in my heart and advance my way of the blade!
For this day I have waited nearly forty thousand years!
" The woman in the divine light on the cliff walked out of the radiance and appeared on the desert. She was only a phantom, and she said softly, "You cannot reach this world. Whatever you say is useless. " The one-armed godfiend in the stone gate turned; his blood-red cloak billowed and covered the whole gateway. Suddenly, where the cloak swept open, a blade light cut through the barrier between the two worlds! The blade intent was vast and terrifying beyond measure—with that one stroke he had actually sliced open the barrier between the two worlds!
The blade light hissed and shrieked, surging out from the stone gate, and at once the desert ahead was thrown up into two waves of sand, with a sheer wall between them, rising a thousand zhang, stretching for hundreds of li! Just as he was about to set foot in this world, a formless power of heaven and earth suddenly flung him back.
The young woman walked back into the divine light and vanished into the cliff: "With your strength it will be very hard to pass through in your true body. Best give up that hope.