God-Slayer snorted softly.
He still did not draw the divine sword Lihen from his back. He merely extended his left hand, the five fingers spreading open.
From each finger a line of sword-qi condensed, each one saturated with divine power along its whole shape — five swords, all different, and every one of them able to ruin heaven and annihilate earth. Facing the “Shafeng” charging at him like a maddened bull, God-Slayer had still not been forced to exert himself fully; but the weight he was giving this now was no longer the contemptuous disregard of a moment ago.
Five swords, loosed together.
They punched through “Shafeng’s” four limbs and through his chest and belly.
Shuanghan and the others watched with their hearts hammering. Under those five lines of God-Slayer’s sword-qi, Shafeng’s storm of divine power had turned out to be as fragile as thin paper, offering no resistance at all.
“Shafeng” stood with five swords still transfixing him — the magnificent cannon-fodder extra played by a transmigrated man who had fully entered his role, the pitiable small-timer sold out by his own boss and destined for a tragic ending. And at that moment he burned his little cosmos, blazing with a light that frankly belonged to a protagonist, stealing the scene outrageously. He let out a bellowing roar, a voice like thunder and lightning, and the air detonated with it. The man who should by rights have been one-shot by the great final boss God-Slayer had stubbornly stayed alive — and was still howling at an ultimate opponent forever beyond his reach, still clamouring for a fight to the death, treating the five swords run through his body as though they were nothing.
“God-Slayer, I’m not dead yet! And as long as I’m not dead, I haven’t lost!”
The deathless cockroach “Shafeng.”
Charged on.
Ripping the ground open like a maddened bull, the five swords swaying in him, blood streaming out along the whole length of his path.
He reached God-Slayer at last. Drenched in his own blood, “Shafeng” raised his fist — and discovered he no longer had the strength to throw it.
Astonishment filled Zhaoxi’s face, as though he needed to reassess Shafeng from the beginning. Shuanghan’s face filled with fury instead, both hands clenched tight into fists, an evil fire running loose inside him that he did not let out.
He knew that the person he was angry at was not this idiotic “Shafeng” who had charged in to die.
It was somebody else.
Somebody who had the power to stop it and did not lift a hand.
If you want another man to spend his life for you.
Even supposing you have it in you to ask that.
Then at the very least.
You do something.
To stand at the side, watching, doing nothing at all — to look on that coldly, that cruelly, while another man throws his life away for your sake — was that still a human being? Set purely in terms of interest, it was the optimal choice; but for a man to actually do it was contemptible past speaking of. Thinking that far, Shuanghan felt a sudden shiver run through him, and a body that had never once known the sensation of cold went cold all over.
A chill came up from somewhere deep in his heart, cold enough that he could not steady himself against it.
“You did not have to die. Why spend your life for another man?” This coffin-faced cool customer of a God-Slayer, looking at a “Shafeng” soaked in blood and still refusing to fall, was moved despite himself, and finally looked at him directly.
“He is without benevolence. That does not free me from loyalty.” The Shafeng Yue Yang was playing unleashed one more flourish of performance.
“…” Shuanghan’s body gave a single shudder.
Zhaoxi’s eyes went round.
Hei Zhou, though, felt rage rising in him — just die if you’re going to die, why the extra chatter? Loose talk like that could do real damage to morale.
Just as well this Shafeng was about to drop dead; otherwise Hei Zhou would have been unable to stop himself from beating the mouthy fool into a paste. He had no time to react at all before “Shafeng” scraped together the last of his strength, swung his fist and drove it hard into God-Slayer’s chest. God-Slayer did not defend, and Shafeng’s punch brought blood welling to the corner of his mouth. “For managing one sentence worth hearing, I’ll allow you the punch.”
Shafeng roared, “I’m not just going to hit you, I’m going to butcher you—”
God-Slayer laughed coldly.
And spat out a single merciless line: “You overestimate yourself.”
As Shafeng swung a second time, God-Slayer seized him in his left hand and flung him away like a torn sack, far out into the distance.
Boom!
There was no telling how many kilometres he was sent flying; on the way he smashed through two small hills and one enormous boulder.
In the end Shafeng buried himself deep beneath the earth, the impact like a meteor breaking open the ground. Heaven and earth shook together, and an immense mushroom cloud of smoke erupted skyward.
The terror of God-Slayer’s strength set the corner of Shuanghan’s eye twitching over and over. One hand, one arm, a single casual movement — and Shafeng was finished. The divine sword Lihen had not so much as stirred on his back. This was God-Slayer’s power. This was the power of the first man of Mountain Beyond the Mountain. Without an utterly flawless plan, the strength of a handful of men would never realistically be enough to kill him. Shuanghan and Zhaoxi exchanged a look, and each saw a thread of alarm in the other’s eyes.
Never mind them — even the wholly self-assured Hei Zhou.
Felt a touch of dread.
God-Slayer really was too strong.
From far off at the horizon came a muffled boom rolling like distant thunder, as though some vast hand had snapped the pillar that props up heaven and set the sky collapsing and the earth splitting apart.
A strange blade-light, one that seemed able to cut open time and space itself, flickered and arrived from a great distance.
It split the encircling ring of Hei Zhou, Shuanghan and Zhaoxi wide open, unstoppable.
And came through.
The man was like the blade.
And the blade was like the man.
If God-Slayer was a divine sword that split open the heavens, then the man who had just arrived was a divine blade that cleaved apart the earth.
A blade-intent surged skyward and divided into a cross, cutting heaven and earth into four quarters — east, south, west and north. It set God-Slayer and Hei Zhou to the east and west, and set the blade’s bearer, along with Zhaoxi and Shuanghan, to the south and north. He said nothing, but the bearer standing in the south plainly intended to take on North Divine Sovereign Zhaoxi and Northwest Divine Sovereign Shuanghan alone, by himself. One man against two Divine Sovereigns — he was not God-Slayer, and yet his confidence was every bit as complete, his arrogance no less towering.
The newcomer was Mountain Beyond the Mountain’s single greatest supporter of the East Camp, and the West Camp’s single deepest mole; God-Slayer’s most trusted brother and ally, and the most important chess piece in Hei Zhou’s plan.
South Divine Sovereign Tianchou!
Bearer of the divine blade Yinxue.
“God-Slayer — Zhaoxi and Shuanghan, leave them to me!” Tianchou flicked a finger against Yinxue, and the divine blade’s clanging hum was like the screaming of a thousand armies and ten thousand horses, killing intent boiling up to the sky.
“You’re wounded?” God-Slayer’s eye caught the faint trace of a hidden injury in this brother of his, and his brow drew together.
“Hmph. A trifling hidden wound. Hei Zhou may be beyond me, but Zhaoxi and Shuanghan I can still see off.” Tianchou stood proud, blade in hand, radiating the kind of heroic spirit that asks the world at large who in it dares call himself a hero. This South Divine Sovereign — undefeated across a hundred battles, unbowed by a hundred setbacks — was categorically not a man a mere hidden wound could put down. Whenever and wherever, he was a bold, wild spirit born of battle and destined to die by it. So long as a blade was in his hand there was no possibility whatsoever of submission or discouragement, and nothing at all could bend that back of his, straight as the edge of a sword.
“That is recklessness!” God-Slayer rebuked him coldly.
The Eastern Divine Sovereign had never been a man who knew how to show concern for others. Managing even this much was his limit.
Equally, Tianchou, as South Divine Sovereign, was every bit as poor at expressing himself, and he did not accept God-Slayer’s exceedingly rare concern with any grace at all. “Don’t worry. I’ll cut down Zhaoxi and Shuanghan faster than you can finish Hei Zhou. And if the two of you go on refusing to see sense — don’t blame me, Tianchou, for setting aside the friendship of former years!”
Tianchou’s last two sentences were aimed at Zhaoxi and Shuanghan.
At that moment a light of divine fire.
Came streaking in.
Ji Wuri, still in Chiqiu’s shape, laughed uproariously. “What an iron-mouthed South Divine Sovereign Tianchou! Gravely wounded and at death’s door, and still propping himself upright, still full of wild talk. Ha! Is Mountain Beyond the Mountain populated entirely by braggarts of this sort? One stretch of my hand and that hidden wound you’re propping up will erupt, and down you’ll go, never to rise. And you still dare stand here striking poses — I really am in awe of you!”
“You take my brother’s shape and injure me by treachery. What sort of rampant, scheming vermin are you? Today, I, Tianchou, will not rest until I have butchered a menace like you!” The instant Tianchou looked at Ji Wuri in Chiqiu’s borrowed shape, his eyes went blood-red and his fury blazed up.
Blade-light like snow.
One cut, and heaven and earth split alike.
But at the moment it came within a foot of Ji Wuri’s face — on the very point of cleaving him in two from crown to heel —
Ji Wuri, still wearing Chiqiu’s shape, lightly snapped his fingers.
The snap was a light one, but to God-Slayer and Tianchou — both of whom had already been struck from concealment — it was a thunderbolt out of a clear sky. Strong as he was, even God-Slayer swayed on his feet, and the blood that Shafeng’s punch had brought up welled out of his mouth again, sliding down from the corner of his lip and spattering onto the blue-green robe, soaking a patch of it dark. Tianchou’s body bore it far worse. His chest very nearly burst apart; blood sprayed from mouth and nose; the blade-intent that had been splitting heaven and earth shattered entirely. The divine blade Yinxue could not even hold its master’s body up. Tianchou braced himself several times and forced his knees to lock, but his eyes kept rolling back, and he could barely gather them to a focus or recover his senses.
God-Slayer swept over.
He laid a hand flat against Tianchou’s back and poured divine power into him, steadying the injury.
Holding him firmly upright — so that this man of the divine blade, who had never once bent a knee on a battlefield and never once gone down on one, would not be made to fall in humiliation in front of the enemy who had ambushed and crippled him.
“Everything here is mine to handle.” With his other hand, his right, God-Slayer lightly wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth. His brows swept like blades and his pride blazed. “Those four paltry men have no hope of keeping me here! So long as one sword is in my hand, there exists nothing in Mountain Beyond the Mountain that can stop my killing — and that includes you, Hei Zhou!” The last sentence was, naturally, for Hei Zhou to hear. Hei Zhou wore a look of quiet satisfaction just then: the plan was running smoothly, and unless some ancient great god descended and wrecked the whole design, this war, plotted since ten thousand years ago, was already won.
“Give me the time of one stick of incense, God-Slayer. All I need is to catch a single breath!” Tianchou returned the divine blade to its sheath and began frantically healing himself with divine power.
“Now! Kill Tianchou, then surround God-Slayer!”
Hei Zhou gave the shout.
Shuanghan and Zhaoxi moved at once.
A palm strike that seemed to have been fated a thousand years ago went straight for the middle of Tianchou’s back.
Once North Divine Sovereign Zhaoxi committed to a palm, it never fell on empty air. Nobody could escape an attack guided by his Zhenmiao Divine Mirror and his talent domain — nobody, not even the Eastern Divine Sovereign God-Slayer, first man of Mountain Beyond the Mountain, was an exception.
Chains of frost burst out like hundreds of snow-pythons startled from their dens, whirling and lashing, shooting through the void, weaving themselves into an airtight net flung across a river.
God-Slayer and Tianchou were the fish.
Both inside the net.
But the most terrible attack was not Ji Wuri’s finger-snap detonating God-Slayer’s and Tianchou’s injuries. It was Hei Zhou’s. Worthy of his standing as the foremost ruthless warlord of Mountain Beyond the Mountain — the moment Hei Zhou acted, heaven and earth went dark, one solid mass of black in which a man could not see his own five fingers. Everything was devoured beneath Hei Zhou’s divine power and will; nothing whatsoever could escape.
In the darkness, a sword-light kindled.
Like the first light of dawn — no matter how much darker the blackened sky grew, it could not blot out a brilliance that stood comparison with daybreak.
This was God-Slayer’s sword.
He was besieged by three Divine Sovereigns and by one Grand Hall Master of the Sacred Hall of the Central Divine Hall, whose nominal rank fell short of a Sovereign’s but whose strength did not. And the Eastern Divine Sovereign God-Slayer, first man of Mountain Beyond the Mountain, had finally drawn his sword.
Lihen. In his hand.
Whenever this ancient divine sword came out, a life guttered away, and someone was parted from the world in sorrow.
“Break—” God-Slayer swung the sword. The command was not even out of his mouth when, to his astonishment, he saw a blade-intent cut open the void, split heaven and earth from end to end, and come driving at his chest. Set beside the cut that had been aimed at Ji Wuri a moment ago, this stroke was a hundred, a thousand times more powerful. God-Slayer had never in his life seen a blade like it. He had known Tianchou for ten thousand years, and he had never known this brother of his could deliver a stroke of such force. Had it been aimed at the enemy Hei Zhou rather than at him, God-Slayer would have been overjoyed a hundred times over, sincerely glad that his brother had broken through his old boundaries. But as it was, the shock left him with nothing but astonishment, and more astonishment.
“Snow Drinks the Long River.” At that moment Tianchou showed not the slightest sign of injury. On the contrary — in that finger-snap of Ji Wuri’s just now, he had received an empowerment of at least a hundredfold, and the ambush he detonated with it carried a force even he himself could not have imagined.
The tip of the blade went in through the cloth.
Hei Zhou’s eyes, Zhaoxi’s palm, Shuanghan’s chains.
All met God-Slayer at once. Under Hei Zhou’s gaze, appearing out of nowhere, God-Slayer stalled; and the divine sword Lihen, swinging out, was tangled in Shuanghan’s net of ice chains and — though it sheared through them beyond counting — slowed sharply, growing slower and slower, until the sword’s momentum was crawling at the pace of a snail. Nothing existed that could resist the ancient divine sword Lihen; but for Shuanghan to use divine power to delay it temporarily was still within the realm of the possible. And Zhaoxi’s palm came drifting in, light as smoke, and landed in the middle of God-Slayer’s back with the weight of a mountain and the force of a thunderclap.
That palm was not even necessary.
Tianchou’s divine blade Yinxue could have run God-Slayer straight through on its own.
Southeast Divine Sovereign Chiqiu had gone down to this same move — except that on that occasion Tianchou had not unleashed his full strength and had not received Ji Wuri’s special empowerment, and the force of it had been far lesser, not one-tenth of what was being used to ambush God-Slayer today.
Hisss!
Behind God-Slayer.
A blade-aura of matchless sharpness tore across the sky and split ten thousand metres of the earth open.
The residual force of that single ambushing cut alone opened a vast trench in the ground that not even a mammoth could have leapt — fifty metres wide, a hundred metres deep, ten thousand metres long. And God-Slayer, who had taken the full strike of the divine blade Yinxue — what would become of him?
After meeting God-Slayer’s eyes, Hei Zhou felt a faint ache in his own and shut them, enduring the sting of that collision of divine powers.
The moment his eyes closed.
The heaven and earth that had been one mass of blackness returned to light.
Zhaoxi had been blasted away by God-Slayer’s body-guarding divine power. Every one of the great ice pythons had been sheared apart by the divine sword Lihen, which in the same motion opened a wound on Shuanghan’s arm deep enough to show bone. Ji Wuri flung out a bizarre spherical war beast and let Lihen kill that instead, then instantly extracted himself to safety, slipping out from under Lihen’s sword-intent by some uncanny means and putting thirty thousand metres between them. Shuanghan, who had assumed that a single stroke of that sword would injure Ji Wuri’s body just as it had his own, showed open alarm and profound confusion.
Only Tianchou remained where he stood.
Both hands on his blade, unmoving.
He.
Was not standing there by choice.
It was that the tip of the divine blade Yinxue had been pinched between the index and middle fingers of God-Slayer’s left hand, and he could not draw the blade back and disengage. He was forced to stand still.
There was not a single expression on God-Slayer’s face — as though Tianchou’s assassination attempt were the most natural thing in the world, and as though catching Tianchou’s divine blade between two fingers were equally a matter of course. He showed no particular reaction of any kind. He simply stood there, quietly, looking at the Tianchou in front of him.
At the corner of his mouth, the blood brought up by Zhaoxi’s heavy palm welled out for the third time, and fell drop by drop onto his blue-green robe.
Watching this, Hei Zhou and the others could not help drawing in a cold breath.
This God-Slayer, this first man of Mountain Beyond the Mountain — was he really strong to this degree?
Two fingers, and nothing more, to catch Tianchou’s full-force strike with the divine blade Yinxue? And that after Ji Wuri had used his special method to empower the ambush a hundredfold?
Impossible!
This was simply impossible!
“Did you imagine I, God-Slayer, would be stupid enough to let a man ambush me successfully twice?” God-Slayer released his fingers with perfect calm, disregarded the shaken Tianchou in front of him, laid the sword level across his chest, flicked the blade and gave a long ringing whistle. His blue-green robe was stained with blood and he stood there in his pride — and in that instant the feeling he gave off was simply that every living thing in the world was beneath his notice.
(End of Chapter 1183)