Chapter 540 — Pitch-Black as Iron
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 1 of 4
The seductive woman's waist was supple as a willow branch swaying in the wind, and she came toward him with a left-and-right sway, then broke into a titter: "How hard are you, really? I watched you just now — you were the slowest of them all. Not by much, true, but it shows your physical body is a notch inferior to the others'. A single notch is the difference between heaven and earth."
Her steps halted exactly beside the flying swords Shen Mu had buried in the ground, one after another — and she did not step into the ring of swords.
The flying swords Shen Mu had laid beneath the earth were precisely the first stance of the Sword Diagram: Sword Treads Rivers and Mountains. Let the woman but set foot within, and it would erupt, in an instant shredding her into a blood waterfall upon that landscape of rivers and mountains!
Yet her foot had stopped precisely at the outer edge. She must have spotted something.
Shen Mu's eyelid twitched. "Clever indeed," he said in praise. "Good sister, what is your name?"
"I am Tapo Xiangyun, disciple of the True Demon Gandharva."
The woman looked taken aback, then laughed. "The people of Taihuang Heaven, whenever they meet a demon, want only to shout and kill; they never smile. None of them are like you, calling a girl 'good sister' the moment you meet her. If all the folk of Taihuang Heaven were like you, I would not have had to kill so many divine-ability practitioners. I am rather curious — just what is your origin?"
Shen Mu opened his mouth, about to speak, when suddenly Tapo Xiangyun stamped her foot. The ground shook, and one flying sword after another burst up through the earth.
Shen Mu's expression shifted slightly. He raised a hand and grasped: all the flying swords gathered into his palm, clashing ding-ding-ding, and became a sword pellet about to fall into his hand.
Even as he recalled the flying swords, Tapo Xiangyun shot forward at a speed no slower than the swords themselves. Before Shen Mu's sword pellet could take shape, spider legs sprouted behind her — eight spider legs stabbing madly forward, ding-ding-ding, scattering the sword pellet!
The woman was incomparably clever; her eight spider legs attacked like a violent storm, shattering the sword pellet and giving Shen Mu no chance at all!
"You really are the weakest one — the first merit falls to me!"
Tapo Xiangyun laughed softly. Two razor-sharp bone spikes appeared in her hands and plunged into Shen Mu's chest!
"Eh?"
The instant they pierced his body she sensed something wrong. The smile on the Shen Mu before her stiffened — and then he slid down into a pool of ink.
Not only had Shen Mu turned to ink; even the wall of fire behind him, woven of Li Fire and demon fire, had turned to ink!
Tapo Xiangyun whirled to look, and found herself inside a picture frame; outside that frame another Shen Mu was walking toward her, unhurried. Only now did she realize that when she had pounced upon Shen Mu, she had entered a painting!
"A painting? How can a painting move, and speak, and show me no flaw at all?"
Tapo Xiangyun was greatly alarmed. She leaped up, wanting to spring out of the painting, but though she jumped with all her strength she was still within it: all around was blankness, and only the ink on the ground had yet to dry. Tapo Xiangyun shrieked. The eight legs behind her waved and stabbed viciously outward.
Chi-chi-chi — one spider leg after another pierced through the painting. Her heart leaped with joy; she was about to tear the painting open and spring free.
But just then Shen Mu blew a breath, and the painting drifted and fluttered, falling into the wall of fire behind it.
Amid the thick, dense Li Fire and demon fire a shrill scream rang out. The painting burned to ash, and the ash took the form of a spider-woman, still struggling — then she collapsed into the flames and moved no more.