Chapter 1008 — The Sword Realm of Thirty-Three Heavens
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 2 of 4
It was the feeling of his youth—a torrent of passion, the belief that a power to overturn heaven and earth was hidden within his small callow frame, and that no gale could dash him down, no wave could wear him away, no mountain of trials could crush him! Every hardship, every obstacle, every setback, every tribulation—all of it only drove him forward, tempered him stronger!
He would shield the people of this calamity-ridden land; he would make them fear no god, dread no demon; he would let them live with backs straight as pines, with no need ever to read the faces of gods and demons.
Beneath their two swords, the mountains and rivers of Taihuang Heaven crisscrossed in splendor; sword light became rivers, roiling and thundering. Inside Yujing City, in the heavenly court of Kaihuang, every god and demon, old and new alike, fixed unblinking eyes upon the scene.
Shen Mu wore the face of a youth, but Kaihuang had long since turned middle-aged, weighted with the majesty of an emperor—yet what all beheld now seemed to be two young swordsmen, dashing and high-spirited.
Sword like a rainbow, Dao like a painted scroll; a single sweeping slash, and a thousand li of mighty mountains and rivers came crashing into view.
Within those mountains and rivers, sword qi towered like peaks, sword light shimmered like ripples on a lake, sword qi rolled like clouds unfurling and gathering, and sword gleams split the sky like furious breakers!
Their sword lights overlapped, then exploded without warning—a great many of the younger generation of gods and demons fled the inner city of Yujing in panic.
For their sword light had shattered the Chengtian Gate, sweeping all the way from the Zhuque Gate to the Xuanwu Gate, from the Anfu Gate to the Yanxi Gate, from the Hanguang Gate to the Anli Gate, from the Shunyi Gate to the Jingfeng Gate, from the Zhide Gate to the Anshang Gate. The sword light gushed through those gateways and toppled the celestial gates one after another; palace after palace and building after building burst apart in the blaze, replaced by the magnificent, surging vistas of Taihuang Heaven!
The Taiji Palace, the Yeting Palace, the Eastern Palace—in a flash, they were replaced by mountain ridges leaping out of the earth; the Xiude Hall, the Fuxing Hall, the Changle Hall, the Daning Hall were replaced by a seamless sweep of lake and sky.
Then their sword lights suddenly gathered, swirling around the two of them into a stream of teleportation light.
It was a scene of blazing splendor.
Their bodies did not move, but their flying swords spun around them, and the dazzling blades reflected all manner of teleportation runes. The runes shone from the flying swords onto their bodies and activated the art of teleportation; sword light swallowed their frames as they shot through the air like twin bolts of rainbow lightning, clashing with ringing clangs over the city of Yujing.
At every collision, their sword light flared like the sun itself, and sword qi sprayed outward in all directions like perfectly straight rays of light. Down below, the outer city of Yujing took the brunt of it: the roofs of the Pingkang, Xuanyang, Xingdao, Kaihua, and Guanglu halls—all the divine halls—were riddled through and through as strands of sword qi stabbed into them.
To perform teleportation through swordsmanship left even a grand master of esoteric arts like Su Maiqing staring in a blur of wonder, clapping his hands and cheering aloud.
More of the young gods and demons fled the outer city, but before they could find their footing, the figures of Shen Mu and Kaihuang in the sky suddenly checked themselves.
Then there was a single thunderous boom—the second sword of the Thirty-Three Heavens Sword Path exploded forth!