Chapter 701 — Clash of Two Heroes
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 1 of 4
There, two mighty beings of emperor-throne caliber were locked in a contest of dharma across the boundary of worlds. Their spells and divine powers were wielded with a simplicity that was at once vast in scope; their attacks and reprisals followed the supreme principle that the Great Dao is at its simplest and most effortless. With only a handful of variations in their magical transformations, they unleashed might and majesty beyond the reach of countless practitioners of the arcane and even of gods and demons alike.
This was sorcery of the Dao-realm: simple, effective, devoid of superfluous variation. Shen Mu's Kalpa-Opening Sword was the mark of his having attained the gateway by which swordplay enters the Dao. But Shen Mu had only comprehended a single stroke; once he had unleashed it, there was no continuation to follow. Lady Tianyin and the Netherworld Emperor, by contrast, plucked their arts from the air at will; though they fought across the world-wall, the display was a riot of splendor, with rarely a move repeated.
The emperor who crossed swords with Lady Tianyin was indeed, as she had said, a man of gentle, scholarly refinement. Though he wore an emperor's majesty, there was not a trace of overbearing arrogance about him. He was very handsome, with large eyes beneath long, narrow lids like phoenix eyes, and a beard like the character "eight" drawn by some master calligrapher—full of charm and character.
This was the Netherworld Emperor, the one who, long ago, had ambushed Lady Tianyin and seized the Tianyin Realm outright.
"Though my lady has been dead all these many years," he suddenly laughed, "it seems that misfortune has turned to fortune. Your understanding of the Dao has already surpassed what it was in times past. Fighting from across the worlds, I truly cannot overcome you. And so I must rely on a trick."
A sudden shift seized the winds and clouds of the Tianyin Realm. Countless black sands surged like a swarm from every heaven, pouring into the realm, while numberless monsters formed of famished ghosts raced madly toward Lady Tianyin. In the blink of an eye, the whole vast sea was covered with famished ghosts in full sprint!
Not only that—all the soul-black sand of the realm came bearing down on Lady Tianyin at once. The gargantuan famished ghost that was the Tianyin Realm was about to awaken. The realm no longer showed the slightest glimmer of light; it had fallen utterly into darkness.
Lady Tianyin laughed softly. Suddenly she tossed the Heavenly Dipper into the air and gave it a gentle flick. The Dipper spun madly, and it seemed that the entire Tianyin Realm spun with it, heaven and earth wheeling around! With a roar, the sea flipped over into the sky; the land hung inverted; the vault of heaven turned into an empty plain of earth; countless famished ghosts, flailing wildly, were hurled into the air—and then, as heaven and earth reversed once more, they were slammed back down. The spinning Dipper pulled the entire realm along, flinging the ghosts up and dashing them down so that they had no leisure whatsoever to attack Lady Tianyin; the soul-black sand, too, was scattered, and the great famished ghost of the realm could not touch her at all.
The Netherworld Emperor sighed, his form gradually sinking into the darkness of the Nether Capital. "You have truly leapt beyond the fetters of the heaven-born divine, and have even learned my Dao arts from my Dipper. I grow all the more curious about that Daoist friend who resurrected you—who could he be, to have achieved such an astonishing feat..." His face sank into the dark and disappeared. "Yet you still cannot subdue the famished ghosts, nor subdue the Tianyin Realm."
He was a man who knew when to press on and when to withdraw. Once he saw that he could not enter the Tianyin Realm and could not use its famished ghosts to crush Lady Tianyin, he decided at once, wasting no more effort and husbanding his strength instead.