Chapter 933 — The Sword Falls, the Immortal Bridge Breaks
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 1 of 5
Wenchang, the Emperor of Literature—the form Yun Jianli had taken—chanted the archaic tongue of the Dao, and set his brush to the scroll, drawing a single stroke.
What Wenchang decreed, the law enacted: the words of the Dao on his lips became the world's divine powers. Ask for wind and wind came; ask for rain and rain came; let him open his mouth and speak the Dao, and storm clouds, thunder and lightning were summoned.
His brush rendered whatever he painted: paint a dragon and the dragon flew; paint a rope and the rope bound fast; paint Mount Sumeru and Mount Sumeru came crushing down! And yet, though Yun Jianli had become Wenchang, he still could not hold Shen Mu back.
Shen Mu's fist-intent and spirit swept all before them like rotted wood; every divine power of Wenchang's was smashed to pieces by him. In close combat, Shen Mu was all but invincible!
Another banner flew up and wrapped itself around the retreating Yun Jianli; the banner burst, and a three-legged golden crow rose bearing a great sun on its back and pounced upon Shen Mu.
Yun Jianli shifted form again and again—from the Star Lord of the Great Sun to the Star Lord of the Five Luminaries, from the Star Lord of the Seven Slayers to the Heavenly Dipper and Earthly Sha—three hundred and sixty orthodox gods, changing at will, dazzling the eye. When Heavenly Venerable Yun fell in battle, the Purple Empyrean and Azure Vault Art could only be called newly formed; yet across the ages the art kept evolving, perfected again and again by the Yun clan.
Only today had it reached great completion, revealing a charm unlike any other art. A cultivation art that had taken several hundred thousand years to mature—Heavenly Venerable Yun might be dead, but his art was enough to set him alongside the other Heavenly Venerables.
This was precisely where the charm of Heavenly Venerable Yun lay. Shen Mu still fought Yun Jianli with his martial divine powers, fusing the spirit of the Jingping Reform into his martial spirit.
Whatever ancient god faced him, he smashed with his fist and slew with the sweep of his palm, fierce beyond measure.
However exquisite Yun Jianli's divine powers, however perfect the likeness he assumed, in Shen Mu's eyes they were riddled with flaws. As the founder of the Taiwei Book of Calculations, Yun Jianli had used the Dao Ancestor's classic arts of number to compute the runic Great Daos of the ancient gods—and to Shen Mu they fell far short of perfection.
Suddenly banners floated into the air, merging one after another, and Yun Jianli's figure soared skyward, becoming one with those banners.
The whole sky blazed bright, and there emerged the body of a towering ancient god, a god seemingly composed of pure light, with white brows, white hair, white beard, and eyes of snow-white, radiating brilliance. Heaven's Lord. Behind Yun Jianli, forty-nine Heavenly Daos took the form of forty-nine strange treasures, suspended in the sky.
The Purple Empyrean and Azure Vault Art Yun Jianli displayed had reached consummate perfection; had it not been for the Jingping Reform, no flaw whatsoever could be found in this art.
Shen Mu sighed in admiration, and at last the third eye at the center of his brow opened; a halo appeared behind his head—a wheel of dark radiance that devoured all light, like a black hole. His fleshly body transformed along with it; the third eye at his brow grew brighter and brighter, as though the raging divine fire of Youdu were burning within it.
From his forehead flame gushed forth and a pair of horns grew, nine bends and eighteen twists; his face became a tiger's face, and his body swelled joint by joint, more and more imposing. Terrible demonic qi of Youdu poured forth from the Jade Sea, turning a hundred li around into a realm of Youdu.