Chapter 734 — A Battle Body Unrivaled Since Antiquity
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 3 of 4
The burst speed of a martial-dao divine ability was astonishingly swift, swift enough to rival Shen Mu's Opening the Tribulation sword.
The burst speed of such a divine ability far surpassed Qi Jiuyi's great divine ability, faster even than Zhe Huali's blade Dao; it left a man almost no time to react. Wind Shakes the Soughing Pines, Quaking the Vale.
He loosed this punch, plain and simple, but once it was loosed Shen Mu saw the afterimages wrought from the spirit of his fist intent, a whole chain of afterimages formed of different techniques and divine abilities stretching out from within Hu Bugui's body.
Shen Mu drove the Profound Body Three Elixirs Art, three heads and six arms, the six arms working every kind of bodily divine ability to hold the blow; in the very instant of contact he felt an unimaginable, overwhelming might come surging in, smashing and shattering the strength of his own flesh like rotten wood.
His arms shook and went numb, his bones shook, his primordial spirit shook, his vital essence could scarcely gather. The martial spirit borne on Hu Bugui's move was vast and mighty, driving straight in, one force shattering ten thousand arts, majestic beyond measure and impossible to withstand.
He had already achieved the return to plainness and truth, gathering the ten thousand methods of martial learning into a single punch; the punch looked utterly simple, yet the changes hidden within it were beyond imagining. Shen Mu retreated, a long whistle pouring unbroken from him, and exerted himself to the utmost, unfolding every bodily divine ability he had ever learned.
Lord Huo's fist, heavy as Mount Sumeru; the Butcher's blade, cleaving open the false heaven; the Lame Elder's leg, swift as lightning; and the many divine abilities of the human emperors through the ages, the First Ancestor's Seal of Heaven and Earth, the Buddhist divine arts of the Deva King Buddha Sakra, all of them he brought forth.
He broke through Hu Bugui's first afterimage, but the second came hard on its heels, and Shen Mu kept retreating, the flagstones bursting beneath his feet.
He was like a novice who had only just learned the martial arts, rousing every scrap of his strength, rousing his martial soul, gathering all his power into his flesh to stand against Hu Bugui.
Bodily divine abilities were by nature quicker to unleash than spell-based ones, and with three heads and six arms he unleashed them three times faster than an ordinary man. Moreover, as Shen Mu shifted his feet, his body turning a third of the way round in half a step, the divine ability of another pair of arms burst forth at just the right moment to meet this great martial-dao divine ability of Hu Bugui's. He was like a top spinning madly as it retreated, hurled back more than ten li in an instant, smashing through the rear gates of hall after hall, blasting straight through them one by one.
In that single instant his six arms worked I know not how many kinds of bodily divine abilities, and his latent potential was driven to its absolute limit in a flash; before, his qi and blood had been a rainbow, and now they blazed like a sheet of fire flooding the sky. And Hu Bugui still stood there in the very posture of having loosed his punch, while before him afterimage after afterimage executed all manner of different bodily divine abilities, fist or foot, no two moves alike. Afterimage upon afterimage spread furiously forward at a terrific speed.
So unimaginably swift were attack and defense in that instant that only when Shen Mu had already retreated out of the Jade Capital did the thunder of their bodily divine abilities bursting forth reach the ears of the gods within.