Chapter 696 — The Holy Mother of the Netherworld
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 2 of 4
Shen Mu was stunned, then furious. "What a faithless wretch! I shed a few tears over you, at least! If you can run that fast, you might have carried me along."
Suddenly Lady Tianyin reached out a hand to seize him. As the palm thrust down from beyond the heavens into the atmosphere of the Tianyin Realm, it scraped violently against the air, and roaring flame blazed up around it — yet not a hair of her was scorched.
Her palm came down on Shen Mu like a vast continent falling out of the sky.
Behind Shen Mu's head the Book of Life and Death blazed with light, and before her palm even arrived, her fingers one after another went limp, as though the air had been let out of them.
Even so, when that palm came down it would be enough to cover Shen Mu beneath its center!
Just as Shen Mu was about to be covered by that continent of a palm, countless runes whirled up around him; his teleportation divine ability erupted in an instant, the runes spinning madly about him like numberless sheets of yellow spirit paper. When the runes burned to ash and were gone, Shen Mu was gone with them.
The next moment Shen Mu appeared a thousand li away; at once countless runes surfaced around him again, and his body vanished once more. When he reappeared he had fled another thousand li.
His figure flickered again and again. He would spend every last shred of his cultivation if he must, so long as he burst out of the Tianyin Realm before Lady Tianyin caught him.
Behind him, the Wave-Resting Long Bridge kept collapsing under Lady Tianyin's tread; the long bridge could not bear the footfalls of this heaven-born divinity at all.
By now Shen Mu was not far from the shore. Just then, numberless monsters in the sea leapt up like ghosts and demons; as Shen Mu was about to teleport again they surged forward all at once, a swarm of them clinging to his body.
"Get off me, all of you!"
Shen Mu drove the Book of Life and Death. With a hum, countless monsters turned into empty husks and dropped away — and above his head, Lady Tianyin's palm slammed down!
BOOM!
The sea of the Tianyin Realm convulsed; the land along the shore shook without cease. Frightful fissures spread in every direction, thunderous crashes rolling in from all sides, magma spouting from the cracks — though even the magma here was a gray, murky color.
Lady Tianyin lifted her hand. Beneath her palm the long bridge was broken, the sea driven aside, revealing a seabed utterly parched; the water that had been there was steamed away to nothing.
In the instant her palm rose, countless runes whirled beneath it, and at their center a huge sword pellet, like a ball of metal — beaten now half flat!
Crash—
The runes burned; the metal ball vanished, and the next moment it appeared in the town by the sea.
Lady Tianyin, suspicious, did not see Shen Mu teleport away; she searched all around and still could not find him.
In the town, the Kaihuang god stealthily poked out his head. The sword pellet was clanging and clattering to and fro through the seaside town, Shen Mu hidden inside it, rolling at furious speed as the metal ball dropped and bounced.
Inside the pellet, Shen Mu set the Sorrowless Sword upright and used it as an axle to prop the pellet open. Lady Tianyin had nearly flattened him along with the pellet; it was by bracing the pellet with the Sorrowless Sword that he had kept from being smashed to death.
The pellet, however, had been beaten out of shape.
When the pellet bounced up again, the metal ball split with a swish into eight thousand swords. Shen Mu leaped out, stretched his limbs, and raised one hand. The eight thousand swords clashed with a ringing sound and became a small sword pellet that dropped into his palm.
Suddenly a crack sounded in his palm: the little sword pellet burst apart, becoming a cloud of fine dust that drifted down and pattered onto the ground.
Shen Mu's face darkened. He looked at his palm: nothing there but the Sorrowless Sword and a heap of metal dust.