Chapter 171 — Eleven
The Sword Questions the Heavens · Page 5 of 7
The Beast Sovereign stared fixedly at the divine sword and the mass of white light ahead. After a long while, he suddenly burst out laughing. His voice had always been hoarse and ugly; now, laughing with abandon, it was all the more grating—everyone who heard it turned their faces away.
The Beast Sovereign laughed on, his manner frantic, as though in his mind there existed some thing in this world more ridiculous than all else. Yet in the end he did nothing but laugh wildly, and spoke not a single word more.
Above, the wild wind grew ever more bitter and fierce, and the might of the Slaying Immortals divine sword grew greater still. From some unknown moment, as though a voice from the realms of heaven and the courts of the underworld had come, softly chanting a mysterious incantation, it began to echo between heaven and earth.
That blazing white light suddenly rose into the air and came to rest upon the hilt of the radiance-flooded Slaying Immortals master sword. Almost at the same moment, the Slaying Immortals formation was loosed: with the force of one splitting the sky, that mad sword came howling forth—slow-seeming in its approach, yet between heaven above and earth below there was nowhere left to hide.
Meeting a god, it slays the god; meeting an immortal, it slays the immortal!
In all the world today, nothing else possessed such momentum.
The wind rolled up the scattered clouds and sent them all flying. No one would ever know what thoughts filled the Beast Sovereign's heart as he faced that mad Slaying Immortals sword.
Only—he showed not the slightest fear, not the least thought of retreat. Into the wind, into the light, the Beast Sovereign's enormous frame leaped up with all its strength, and he flew straight at the mad Slaying Immortals sword.
Heaven and earth seemed to fall silent; the primeval world held its breath. The people stared slack-jawed at the blue sky above, where black and white streaked across the heavens and crashed together with a thunderous roar!
No one could describe the scene that followed. The sky split, the earth cracked; the Canglan Mountains trembled three times in a single day, and this time was the worst. Amid the towering peaks and sheer cliffs, countless fissures yawned open, and countless boulders tore loose from the mountainsides and came crashing down. In the cold jade-green pool atop Heaven-Reaching Peak, the waters churned and surged, and from the once-smooth surface columns of water kept shooting up several fathoms into the air.
And atop the Canglan peaks, the cultivators of the righteous path and the remnant beast-demons alike were struck dumb with fear. The beast-demons especially—those creatures neither beast nor quite otherwise—were terrified beyond measure, restless and frantic, roaring in madness.
Yet beside that earth-shaking spectacle in the sky, all of it seemed as nothing, and no one paid it any mind.
The vast Slaying Immortals master sword streaked across the vault of heaven and came thundering down. Where it passed, the air hissed with a shrill keen note, and all things along its path were utterly annihilated, leaving not a trace behind. Along the outer edge of the mad blade's keen edge, moreover, one could see a faint dark red rim beyond the white light—whether from the violent friction of the air, or from the blade's own excess of fury, none could say.
That sword came crashing down with a roar. The Beast Sovereign threw back his head and howled to the heavens; all his arms drew together before his chest, his monstrous eyes glaring wide. At the very instant the Slaying Immortals master sword stabbed down, black qi suddenly surged enormously and his monstrous hands flexed and stretched—and with a thunderclap that rolled across the sky, he had caught that divine sword, which could have split the very heavens, in his bare grip.
In an instant, heaven above and earth below were struck with awe.