Chapter 707 — The Subterranean Demon Altar Traps Two Heroes
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 2 of 4
A great host of demon-gods had transformed into stone statues and descended upon the Shenduan Mountains, searching for this blade, intending to rescue their ancestor. In the end, Shen Mu had broken that world's blood sacrifice with his mirror images; the demon-god statues failed to reawaken and burrowed down into the earth, one after another, vanishing. Shen Mu had once suspected that world to be Luofu Heaven, but when he later saw Luofu Heaven for himself, he realized his guess had been wrong. That world of the demon-god statues was far higher than Luofu Heaven. It should have been a demon world under the dominion of the Heavenly Court; Luofu Heaven's strength was nowhere near that demon world's.
As for this long blade, none of them had possessed enough power to so much as shake it. And the blade seemed, more than anything, a treasure left over from the Kaihuang Era, meant to cut off the encroachment of the Barren Wastes' darkness upon Jingping. Thus no one had ever touched it. Back then, Granny Zhu and the others, and the gods of the High Heaven as well, had had their primordial spirits drawn into the space of the blade—but because Fengdu happened to pass by this very place, their spirits had drifted out of the blade-space in a daze and returned to their own bodies, and so they had not lost their lives.
Gazing outward with his primordial spirit, Shen Mu could see his own flesh-and-blood body. If he wanted to rescue his spirit, he feared, nothing would serve but Fengdu passing this way once more.
He had been to the world of Fengdu several times, it was true, but only ever to its first divine city. There were other divine cities he had yet to visit, and King Yan had never opened those cities to him.
Fengdu still held many unsolved secrets. The crucial thing now was how the three of them could leave the inner space of this blade. The world within the blade stretched away in a boundless pale haze, like two immaculately white mirrors laid across the void, clamping the two of them between two sheets that had no thickness at all—no end in sight.
Their bodies and their primordial spirits gazed at one another across the mirror-like barriers. Though the spirits seemed to tread upon the very soles of their bodies, close enough to touch, they could never return to the flesh. "When will Fengdu circle around to this place? I remember Sister Jing saying that the last time, it was Youdu's invasion—King Yan led Fengdu's divine demons to resist Youdu, and that was why they came to the Shenduan Mountains.
But now King Yan probably has no idea that I'm trapped here. . . " Shen Mu frowned.
With his primordial spirit held prisoner here, even the Triple Origin Spirit-Convergence Art was beyond him; he could not reach Si Yunxiang, Ling Yuxiu, and the others. Since they knew nothing of this, they could hardly ask Fengdu's King Yan to act.
"If we die in the space of this blade, no one will ever know. . .
" He steadied himself, took a step, and walked deeper into the blade's interior.
Qi Jiuyi had recovered somewhat.
His primordial spirit fought its way upright and followed Shen Mu, and the Dragon Qilin scrambled after them. Shen Mu studied the mirror-surfaces above and below in minute detail but could discern not the slightest trace of forging. What material this blade had been refined from, what technique had been employed—with his standard as a forging grandmaster, he could not see through any of it.
For in the way of forging, the Silent Artisan was revered as supreme, and Shen Mu, having studied under the Silent Artisan, ranked second in the forging craft under heaven. If even he could find no trace, no one else could hope to make anything of it. Qi Jiuyi's eyes flew wide.