Chapter 1463 — A Flying Sword Alone Storms the Ninefold Palace
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 2 of 3
Lord Gong summoned up every ounce of her strength to hold them off, yet she had only time to block some hundred or so streaks before she heard a ripping hiss — a divine sword had run her through, entering at her back and bursting out through her chest. Lord Gong spat blood, gritted her teeth, and fought on with the last of her life; but more sword light pierced her through. Before her, Kaihuang walked out from the Lingxiao Treasure Hall with the Sorrowless Sword in hand, no change whatever upon his face, as though the blow that had wounded Lord Gong were no more than a casual gesture.
The Lingxiao Treasure Hall was now riddled with holes, battered and in ruins. His attainments in the Dao realm were profound beyond compare, long since surpassing the Great Emperor of old.
In his later years the Great Emperor had relied on the power of sacrifice to pile his spirit consciousness ever higher, stacking it up to the Ultimate Void of the Great Luo Heaven; but in the Dao realm, the Great Emperor's comprehension had in truth long since been left behind by Kaihuang, by no one knew how far.
He stood there as though standing within the thirty-fivefold void, his figure hard to grasp. When he moved, it was as though the Sword Dao of all under heaven moved with him; as though the Sword Dao of the thirty-fivefold void moved with him.
This was the unclimbable, unsurpassable peak of the Sword Dao of which the village headman had spoken.
The higher a master of the Sword Dao rose in comprehension, the deeper his insight into the Dao realm, the more surely would he see a figure standing ahead of him — towering, immense, planted there like the sky itself. Masters of the Sword Dao were many in the world, but those who had cultivated to the level of the village headman Su Mozhe were few indeed; and fewer still — a mere handful, countable on the fingers — could feel the supreme majesty of Kaihuang's Sword Dao. Even Shen Mu could not sense the might and majesty of Kaihuang's Sword Dao; how much less could any other.
Yet any who did sense it would feel as though gazing up at a mountain too high to climb — and would need to shatter the god within their own heart.
For years the village headman Su Mozhe had kept silent and withdrawn, seeking to shatter the god within his own heart, to break the despair and oppression that Kaihuang's Sword Dao had laid upon him; but to this day he had never shattered that god within, never climbed up out of the valley.
Even the Sword God, so dazzling and resolute in his day, could not for a time walk free of Kaihuang's shadow.
And at this moment, Kaihuang did not merely inspire in masters of the Sword Dao that sense of a mountain too high to climb; to all — Heavenly Venerables included — he gave that same sense of a peak beyond reach. In the twenty thousand years since the Kaihuang era ended, he had not fallen into decadence; it was the Sorrowless Land that had fallen.
The gods and demons of the Sorrowless Land, and even their descendants after them, had all suffered their Dao hearts to be broken; only his Dao heart remained as it had always been, never once defeated. No fellow Daoist supported him or encouraged him; no fellow Daoist stood with him, each upholding the other.
Even those old comrades-in-arms of the Sorrowless Land had misunderstood him, failing to grasp his painstaking purpose.
Yet even so, his Dao heart had never withered, never wavered.
From ancient times to the present, of all who possessed such strength and such steadfastness, he alone stood. This was the very reason he had been able to comprehend the Thirty-Fifth Heaven of the Dao realm.
Lord Gong's Dao of spirit consciousness erupted.
Spirit consciousness was skilled at branding the void, and hers excelled above all in illusions; now layer upon layer of phantasm burst forth, fold upon fold, surging endlessly toward Kaihuang.