Chapter 1564: The Charm of That Sword Strike
The current Quy Khư Đại Uyên was even more dangerous than when Tần Mục last set foot here. The torrents of light surging forth were fiercer than before, their power far greater.
Even as Thiên Tôn, they felt a chill of fear facing the Quy Khư in its present state.
Ever since the Thiên Đình stationed themselves in Tổ Đình and the Thiên Hà returned to its original course, the power of Quy Khư had multiplied many times over. Coupled with the merging of the Đế Hậu sisters into one, it seemed to invisibly enhance the might of Quy Khư as well.
Tần Mục and Cung Thiên Tôn stood in silent opposition, neither making a move immediately, both minds racing through countless possibilities.
They were the beings with the most powerful thần thức in the world. Thần thức was thought and consciousness, only far stronger and purer than that of ordinary people.
Only when one elevated their thought and consciousness to the divine realm could it be called thần thức.
Thần thức had many uses. Besides enhancing the power of thần thông, it could forcibly erase the opponent's consciousness, or even possess their body.
But thần thức had another great advantage: it could deduce countless possibilities in an extremely short span of time, allowing one to move a step ahead of the opponent!
One could even calculate every future move of the opponent within one's own predictions!
Some called this ability prophecy or foresight, but for thần thức masters, it was merely a probability algorithm—calculating all your moves in advance.
For powerhouses like Tần Mục and Cung Thiên Tôn, their thần thức stood at the pinnacle of this world. Combined with their knowledge of the opponent's đạo pháp thần thông, they could anticipate the opponent's subsequent actions.
But when two beings of comparable thần thức clashed, the variables became too numerous.
In their cultivation of thần thức, neither Tần Mục nor Cung Thiên Tôn had ever refined or devoured another's thần thức, nor had they accepted worship from others. Even when Tần Mục obtained Thái Đế's thần thức, he did not refine it to enhance his own cultivation.
Had he taken that shortcut, his probability calculations would have been corrupted by chaotic thần thức. It was precisely because of this that Thái Đế's đạo hạnh had never reached perfection.
The same reason caused Long Hào, the master of the beast realm, to suffer from insufficient wisdom.
Both Tần Mục and Cung Thiên Tôn strove to maintain the purity of their thần thức, resisting the temptations that would taint it.
Cung Thiên Tôn, aside from her contemptible reliance on men, possessed an unyielding will, resolute and decisive—qualities worthy of admiration.
Their thần thức spun at lightning speed, their auras growing stronger by the moment, ready to unleash a thunderous strike at any instant.
Cold sweat beaded on Cung Thiên Tôn's forehead. She encountered tremendous difficulty calculating Tần Mục's possible moves. Only now did she realize how incredibly complex his knowledge, insights, and cultivation were, filled with all manner of unknown đạo pháp thần thông.
Her own đạo pháp thần thông, however, had been probed again and again by Tần Mục during the Thiên Đình's attempt to refine him, when he fought within the Vạn Đạo Thiên Luân!
In other words, Tần Mục knew her inside and out, while she knew precious little about him.
"If our cultivation levels were comparable, I would surely lose!"
She thought silently: "But my strength lies in having deeper cultivation than his! He has not yet reached the Ngọc Kinh cảnh giới, while I am already halfway into the Thiên Đình cảnh giới! I will activate the Chiến Tranh Hào Giác, amplify my khí huyết, multiply my explosive power severalfold in an instant, and strike a fatal blow! I might be wounded, but not mortally. As for him—he may preserve his life, but he will be knocked into the Quy Khư!"
"Fight fast and end this!"
"I must end this quickly!"
"The longer this drags on, the more possibilities he can calculate against me!"
With this thought, her brow arched. At that very moment, Đế Hậu Nương Nương's voice suddenly rang out, shrieking: "Wrong, wrong! There's something wrong with this luân hồi thần thông! Doing it this way won't refine that little vixen! Mục Thiên Tôn! Mục Thiên Tôn—"
Accompanying Đế Hậu Nương Nương's call, Tần Mục's aura suddenly rippled. Cung Thiên Tôn seized this opportunity instantly, pouring all her power into her Đại Thiên Đình!
Her Thiên Đình was laid out like a war horn. As her công pháp activated, the horn's call rang long and loud, sending her khí huyết soaring in a single breath!
In an instant, the entire Tịnh Đế Song Liên thánh địa within Quy Khư was flooded with an utterly terrifying tide of khí huyết!
Cung Thiên Tôn's strength and pháp lực surged in a straight line. With a single step, she seemed to break through the limits of time and space, crossing Tần Mục's Linh Thai Thần Tàng lĩnh vực to appear before him!
Her long whip transformed into a dragon spear, the great spear vibrating violently, spinning, and thrusting toward Tần Mục with a tearing sound!
The moment she moved, a smile appeared on Tần Mục's face. To Cung Thiên Tôn's eyes, that smile carried a hint of malice and the satisfaction of a trap sprung.
Ting—
Tần Mục ignored her overbearing strike entirely, instead flicking his sword with a finger. Cung Thiên Tôn's heart leaped—the sword wound Tần Mục had pierced through her chest earlier suddenly erupted!
Countless beams of sword light burst outward from the wound, like a silver bottle filled with mercury smashing onto the ground, the liquid metal splashing in all directions!
The silver bottle shatters, the watery essence bursts forth!
"Khai Hoàng's sword path?"
Terror seized Cung Thiên Tôn's heart. Even as she thrust her spear, she frantically mobilized her khí huyết and pháp lực to suppress the wound on her chest!
She had once been defeated by Khai Hoàng's sword. His sword path had left an indelible shadow on her—not just a wound on her flesh, but a wound on her đạo tâm as well!
Tần Mục's finger-flick on the sword involuntarily awakened her fear of Khai Hoàng. Once that fear was roused, instinct immediately overrode reason.
Her pháp lực diverted toward the wound, and the power of her spear thrust diminished.
Then she immediately realized that the sword light and sword path erupting from the wound Tần Mục had left were nowhere near as terrifying as Khai Hoàng's.
Khai Hoàng needed only to flick his sword to transform the sword wound in her đạo tâm into sword path, using her own pháp lực and power to amplify that sword path until it shredded her apart.
But Tần Mục's strike merely activated the residual sword path within the wound.
"Damn it!"
The thought had barely formed when she tried to boost the power of her spear thrust once more. But Tần Mục was already meeting her dragon spear with a sword thrust of his own. In a single instant, twenty basic sword forms danced within the sword light, striking the spear in succession.
Twenty crisp ringing sounds, twenty tremors traveling through the spear shaft. At the first strike, Cung Thiên Tôn felt the dragon spear like a great serpent struck at its seven inches—the power running through the entire spear lost a seven-inch segment, the connection to that portion severed.
At the second strike, another tremor, and the remaining spear shortened by another seven inches.
Tần Mục's sword forms were blindingly fast. By the time the twentieth form struck the spear, the power of her thrust was reduced to only the short length of the spear grip in her hand!
Sword light leaped from the spear shaft and shot into Cung Thiên Tôn's brow!
One wrong step, and every step after follows.
Before clashing with Tần Mục, Cung Thiên Tôn had relied on her powerful thần thức to calculate his various attack methods. But because she knew too little about him while he had thoroughly analyzed her, she had decided to overwhelm him with raw power.
Yet from her very first move, she had fallen into his trap. From there, error compounded upon error, and defeat was total!
She was, after all, a Thiên Tôn. The instant Tần Mục's sword light shot toward her brow, her nguyên thần rose from her Thiên Đình, vast and boundless. Its left hand lifted and slapped toward the back of Cung Thiên Tôn's own head.
Her nguyên thần's left hand actually passed through the back of her skull, and at the very moment Tần Mục's Kiếp Kiếm pierced her brow, the left hand's index finger pressed against the sword's tip!
Ting.
A crisp sound rang out. The Kiếp Kiếm's momentum was halted.
A drop of cold sweat fell from Cung Thiên Tôn's forehead, landing on the gleaming sword tip, split in two by its razor edge. A bead of blood from her brow slid down along the blade.
Across from her, Tần Mục held his sword, only two steps away.
They were so close that any thần thông would be slower than direct combat technique, and sword path thần thông was especially deadly in close-quarters combat.
But the deadliest of all was the blade.
The smile faded from Tần Mục's face. He shifted his footing, and the next moment Cung Thiên Tôn felt him behind her. An overwhelming blade intent surged from her back, as if about to slice into her flesh!
The feeling was terrible. She sensed her back exposed to Tần Mục. This was not the classic back-to-back formation of martial combat—rather, her back faced Tần Mục's front.
This was the bizarre phenomenon created by the Linh Thai Thần Tàng lĩnh vực!
She immediately leaped forward, landing on one of the enormous stamens of the Tịnh Đế Song Liên. At the same time, the nguyên thần in her Thiên Đình behind her head struck out fiercely toward Tần Mục behind her!
But the instant her nguyên thần moved, it froze—because Tần Mục's nguyên thần was now behind her nguyên thần, likewise in the formation of facing her nguyên thần's back!
Terror gripped Cung Thiên Tôn's heart. Even after leaping onto this stamen, she still felt Tần Mục behind her, his great blade path thần thông erupting from her rear!
Within the Tịnh Đế Song Liên, stamens burst in profusion, each thousands of trượng long, standing like tentacles in this beautiful place, swaying with the tides.
Cung Thiên Tôn raced at top speed, leaping between stamen after stamen, desperately dodging the blade light behind her.
Blade light rose from behind her—swish, swish, swish—each beam splitting the air, blindingly bright, yet in the next moment transforming into streaks of black lines.
She had to be careful, avoiding the black lines left behind by the brilliance. Those black lines were extremely dangerous too; the slightest carelessness would leave blade scars across her body.
Even so, there were times she could not dodge. The blade scars on her body multiplied rapidly, soon covering her in wounds. Her nguyên thần was also racing at full speed, evading the attacks Tần Mục's nguyên thần unleashed.
Her nguyên thần was covered in blade wounds as well. If this continued, she would eventually die under Tần Mục's assault.
Boom!
A thunderous crash shook the Tịnh Đế Song Liên violently. Cung Thiên Tôn glanced over hastily—Đế Hậu Nương Nương had landed half-crouched, half-kneeling at the center of the twin lotuses.
The woman had regained her cổ thần flesh, her body incomparably mighty. She slowly rose to her feet at the center of the twin lotuses, one half red, one half black.
"Mục Thiên Tôn—" Đế Hậu Nương Nương let out a piercing cry.
Cung Thiên Tôn suddenly felt the blade light behind her vanish, and breathed a sigh of relief: "Mục Thiên Tôn has been driven off by Đế Hậu!"
She turned around—and a sword light pierced through her brow.
At the same moment, the nguyên thần in her Thiên Đình was also pierced by a sword light.
Tần Mục sheathed his sword and bowed deeply: "Cung đạo hữu, farewell."
Sword light erupted from within Cung Thiên Tôn's mind!