Chapter 535 — The Sword of Kalpa Fire
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 1 of 4
"This one sword technique alone is still not enough to defeat the Primordial Ancestor."
Shen Mu sheathed his sword and gazed at Taihuang Heaven shrouded in darkness, where that dazzling flash of sword light had faded from the sky.
On the battlefield the flames still crackled and burned, not yet extinguished, and the air was thick with the smell of scorched flesh.
That strike he had just unleashed—though it had poured all the emotion and feeling in his heart into a single sword, reaching a height he had never attained before—was still a considerable distance from defeating the Primordial Ancestor, the Human Sovereign.
Without the pressure of the Primordial Ancestor, without the encounters he had met upon entering the Dark Realm, it would have been hard for him to take this step, hard to walk out from beneath the Village Head's sword diagram, hard to walk out from beneath the Butcher's blade art.
That one strike was not merely the creation of a sword technique that belonged to him alone; it had also pierced through the gloom that had hung over his heart all this time.
Sang Hua stared blankly at his back. The youth's practice of cultivation and swordplay upon the altar just now had left a deep impression on her.
Especially Shen Mu's final strike—pointing at his brow, thrusting out his sword—the artistic conception contained within that sword was so vast and magnificent that in her daze she seemed to see a mighty upheaval in which heaven and earth were remade, to see countless noble and resolute souls struggling amid blood and slaughter, pressing forward one after another.
The sword techniques Shen Mu had displayed earlier—Sword Treads Mountains and Rivers, for all its grandeur, for all its spirit of charging forward to slay gods in heaven—merely described mountains and rivers, its exquisite craftsmanship diluting its grandeur.
One Sword Opens the Emperor's Bloody Ocean was a move of murderous intent that reached the heavens, too overbearing, possessed of the makings of a Sword God, but its sword intent was a remembrance of fallen heroes, a wallowing in antiquity.
Shanghuang's Kalpa Stirs was too desolate and wasted, recounting the history buried in the Shanghuang era.
These three sword techniques each had their strengths, but each also had its shortcomings.
As for grandeur, she felt the previous three techniques were still inferior to the one Shen Mu had just unleashed—but precisely wherein it excelled, she could not say.
"A fine sword technique."
She rose to her feet, came to Shen Mu's side, and asked, "What sword technique is this?"
"The Kalpa Sword."
Shen Mu turned his head, watching her come to his side, then lifted his gaze to the distance.
Suddenly a fierce wind rushed at them, and before the altar it landed and transformed into an incomparably magnificent tiger, its body patterned in alternating black and yellow, patches of its fur curling in whorls, majestic and extraordinary. A small tuft of down grew upon its ears, which stood erect and could swivel in every direction.
"A fine sword technique! That move was truly brilliant!"
The tiger god stepped onto the stone stairs of the altar, and halfway up its forelegs left the ground, transforming into a deity with a tiger's head and a human body. It walked toward Shen Mu, its voice booming: "Why is it called the Kalpa Sword?"
This tiger god was the mount of the Woodcutter Sage, summoned into this world together with him, bearing the Woodcutter Sage into battle, fierce and valiant.