Chapter 843 — One Sword Breaks the Heavenly Dipper
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 2 of 5
Before the Daoist palace, Shen Mu, Lin Xuan and Xiao Chunfeng noticed that the old Daoists looked straight through them and hurried off; each of them silently approved: "There are men of insight in the Qingyun Sect. They have seen the situation clearly."
Their thoughts were exactly as Yuchenzi had guessed: they would not leave their lives and interests to the Dao Ancestor's judgment. They would finish off their opponent first and force the Dao Ancestor to choose in their favor!
"The skies here are truly a shifting storm."
Shen Mu looked up. The wind rolled and the clouds surged, veiling the artificial sun and moon and letting the artificial rivers of stars and constellations emerge — a sight of extraordinary beauty. He could not help praising it: "The Daoist school's arts of calculation and divine power are no small matter. They can evolve every Daoist art in the world."
Xiao Chunfeng also looked up and said in praise, "Shen the Overlord Body truly has uncommon vision. The reason the Heavenly Court values the Daoist school is precisely that its mastery of the arts of calculation is unmatched under heaven, the finest of all ages. The Heavenly Court's armies of gods and demons, including the Ten Guards, all have their weapons and their formations designed by the Daoist school."
"So if one would contend with the Heavenly Court for the world, one must have the Daoist school's support," Shen Mu said.
Suddenly a youth behind him gave a roar, shot into the air and leaped into the sky, crying loudly, "You there, surnamed Shen! Let me see for myself what an Overlord Body is!"
The youth stood in the air and suddenly shook his body. Behind him his primordial spirit appeared, tortoise and serpent entwined: the tortoise with a dragon's head and a tortoise's shell, the serpent bearing a thousand pairs of cicada wings that beat with a rustling clatter, its bloody maw gaping wide.
It was Xuanwu, the Black Tortoise.
As the Xuanwu primordial spirit appeared, a mighty river came into being beneath its feet, surging across the sky, the long river crashing against the void with a vast, resonant roar.
Shen Mu looked at Lin Xuan and smiled. "Dao Master Lin, a disciple of the Northern Emperor Xuanwu — are you sure of yourself?"
Lin Xuan did not look at the Northern Emperor's disciple in the sky. He smiled and said, "Sect Master Shen, your head is built differently from other men's. You are always having strange and wonderful ideas, and then you do not carry them out yourself but hand them to us. And you are forever running off in all directions, often gone a year or two at a stretch. This time, back in Jingping, you have been rushing about as well; I daresay you have not yet learned how far the Daoist arts and divine powers of Jingping's Daoist school have advanced in these few years?"
Shen Mu was slightly taken aback. Dao Master Lin Xuan, long sword on his back, took a step and rose higher with each stride, walking toward the Northern Emperor Xuanwu's disciple. He said with a smile, "Xu Shenghua once said that of the two lines of research you gave us, the Taiwei Calculation Canon and geomagnetic force, geomagnetic force is the easiest to yield results, but it is the Taiwei Calculation Canon that has brought the greatest upheaval to our methods. Geomagnetic force merely adds one more system of divine powers to the world, whereas the Taiwei Calculation Canon can transform every Daoist art and divine power under heaven — even the very structure of divine weapons and of formations! These past years, everyone in our Daoist school has devoted themselves to the Taiwei Calculation Canon! The canon you gave me contained only the general framework; in these years our Daoist school has refined it, extending it into ever finer methods of calculation, and thereby improved our divine powers!"