Chapter 600 — How Could This Be
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 1 of 4
"What ferocious divine power!
" Shen Mu's excitement rose unbidden. The nine-headed phoenix had not even reached him, yet the hurricane kicked up by the might of that great divine art had already blasted the band from his hair, sending his black mane streaming behind him, pulled taut as a bowstring!
The skin of his cheeks was scoured into ridgeline after ridgeline, and the searing air was hard to breathe.
Zhe Huali and Shen Mu were evenly matched, and Qi Jiuyi struck at both of them at once — a clear measure of the man's confidence.
He was certain he could take down two young masters like these together!
As the disciple of an ancient being of the Heavenly Court, he had excelled even in that most exalted of places. On this descent to the lower world, he presented a gentle, cultivated face and behaved with impeccable courtesy toward foe and friend alike, yet at heart he looked down on the strongmen of the mortal realm, dismissing them all as country bumpkins. This time his great divine art had been long brewing, and in the course of probing exchanges with Zhe Huali he had at last brought Nine Phoenixes Alight on Cangwu to flawless perfection.
It was a supreme divine art of the Imperial Throne method — a stroke which, once complete, sufficed to shatter any opponent of the same realm, matchless, absolutely without rival!
He would take both Shen Mu and Zhe Huali at once, proclaim the Heavenly Court's authority, and teach these mortal bumpkins where Heaven's might truly lay!
Shen Mu's blood boiled.
Qi Jiuyi was attacking both of them at once, and yet Shen Mu felt as though he alone faced the onslaught — this youth from the Heavenly Court was plainly a foe more terrible than any he had ever met; never had he seen such a dreadful opponent! Though Qi Jiuyi's great divine art needed time to shape and condense, the might of the technique left Shen Mu thrilled beyond all reason!
Never had he faced so fearful a foe!
He could not stop himself from sending out a long howl; within his body dragon roar after dragon roar detonated, eight peals in the space of a breath, and once the Eight Sounds of the Ancestral Dragon had rung, the Mystic Body Three-Elixir Art ran a full circuit through his frame!
The nine-headed phoenix shrieked toward him, a blaze of streaming light, dazzling and gorgeous, yet steeped in dreadful power!
In the instant of dropping from the tree it was already before Shen Mu.
Perched aloft it had seemed vast beyond measure, yet when it came at him it had contracted to less than a foot in size. Smaller its body, but all the greater its might, and all the keener its threat.
At the same time, Qi Jiuyi slammed out a palm seal, and the Cangwu tree swept down with a whoosh to greet the demon blade.
Blade met tree, and wave after wave of force spread across the field; the hurricane brimmed with flames and leaping knife-light, howling past to engulf everything around. The ground melted on the instant into magma, and all through the magma danced darting blade-glints.
In that single instant when two great divine arts collided, demon blade after demon blade flung itself up from the molten rock, each wielding a different form of knife-play, each hilt grown with a demonic eye of the most uncanny sort. Those eyes fixed dead upon Qi Jiuyi, and the track of every leaping blade seemed steered by those eerie pupils. Out of the magma likewise rose tiny Cangwu trees to hold off the blades — trees bearing phoenix nests and trailing rays of rosy light, smashing blade after blade as it flew from the lava. In the same instant, Shen Mu's sword elixir flew up to float between his brows; and as his sword finger lightly tapped his forehead, the tiny elixir of eight thousand swords burst into dizzying transformation.