Chapter 259 — Killing the Immortal
The Sword Questions the Heavens · Page 2 of 10
Just then, however, the demon cult army's offensive temporarily stalled. There was no other reason: the righteous forces on Jietian Peak, relying upon the terrain, had made a desperate stand at the Rainbow Bridge. The Rainbow Bridge was a marvel wrought by heaven and earth, and now it had become an insurmountable chasm and natural stronghold against the demon cult army. The great span of the bridge was ordinarily rather broad, but at this moment, for a hundred thousand demon cult soldiers, it was no different from a single-log bridge.
Those crazed, mindless creatures rushed onto the bridge in droves, but moments later screams of "Aah! Aah!" rose from time to time—some could not check their steps, others were shoved by the crush of bodies—and were forced clean off the bridge into the bottomless abyss below, swiftly becoming specks of black swallowed by the deep sea of clouds.
On the righteous side, they had at first been caught off guard by the demon cult's surprise attack, and the gap in strength was indeed too great, so they had collapsed in an instant above the sea of clouds. But now the elites who had been gathered at Yuheng Hall joined the battle one after another, and their fighting strength swelled enormously; merely by the radiance of magic treasures wheeling and slashing through the air over the Rainbow Bridge, one could see they were now many times stronger than before.
Though the demon cult had numbers, only a few dozen of them could actually fight head-on. The vast majority of that army were people whose minds the Demon King had bewitched with the demonic power of the Four Spirits Blood Array. True, the Array could draw out their potential, making them immensely strong and able to climb like flying—but it could never, in a single day, teach them all the immortal arts of sword-riding and flight. So though the demon cult's momentum was great, most of them could only charge stupidly forward on the ground; confronted by a natural chasm like the Rainbow Bridge on Jietian Peak, they could do nothing but howl in frustration.
To be sure, among the throng there were still many cultivators whose minds had been seized, and these too could ride their swords aloft and fight in midair.
But they were, after all, only a minority. The righteous side sent more hands to hold the Rainbow Bridge's head at all costs while dispatching experts to deal with those few demon cult masters who came flying over; outnumbering them, they suppressed each one in the blink of an eye.
In this way, the righteous side slowly steadied its footing and turned the situation around. On the demon cult's side, by contrast, countless red-eyed madmen bared fangs and claws, yet could only crowd upon the small—if long—Rainbow Bridge, unable to advance or retreat; and as time wore on,
the turmoil grew worse and worse, and more and more of them fell from the Rainbow Bridge to their deaths. Looking at those plummeting black shadows, there seemed to be far more of them than the righteous had killed by their own hands.
This turn of events was wholly beyond the demon cult's expectations, while the righteous saw their morale soar. Though the situation was still far from favorable, it was at least far better than the rout of that sudden opening clash.
Yet this sliver of hope did not linger long in the hearts of the righteous. After the demon cult army was halted at one end of the Rainbow Bridge, that eerie giant blood sphere in the vault of heaven slowly crossed over the Cloud Sea Platform and flew to hover above the Rainbow Bridge.
Its crimson radiance pulsed and stretched out, like a fearsome demon baring fangs and claws in midair.
The surging, churning blood-vapor spun at furious speed, and a moment later, from within the giant blood sphere, a dozen or so pillars of blood-red light suddenly shot down upon the righteous crowd at the Rainbow Bridge's end on Jietian Peak.