Chapter 164 — The Forbidden Ground
The Sword Questions the Heavens · Page 2 of 6
A low, muffled sound seemed to burst forth from deep within the creature—faint at first, then in an instant like the roar of a savage beast. The skeletal serpent froze in astonishment, halting its attack for the moment, and lowered its head to look. There at its chest, near where the Heaven's Axis had struck, faint cracks had suddenly appeared upon the bone, and these swiftly widened until with a crackling burst the bone shattered and flew apart in fragments.
The Heaven's Axis Divine Sword was a divine weapon of the nine heavens; even a monstrous creature of this caliber had been wounded beneath its blade.
The skeletal serpent let out a world-shaking howl, and from the deep-sunken sockets of its face two flames like will-o'-the-wisps blazed forth—it was plainly in a fury beyond measure. Paying no heed to anyone else, it swung its giant head and lunged straight at Lu Xueling.
In that very instant Xiao Yichen, Zeng Shuyan, and the others arrived, shouting in unison, and their treasures and immortal swords flew up together with Lu Xueling's Heaven's Axis to block the skeletal serpent's thunderous blow.
But with a tremendous boom and light scattering in all directions, Xiao Yichen and the others were shaken violently and nearly blasted from the sky. Fortunately, all of them were outstanding among the younger generation, deep in cultivation, and each steadied himself. Yet as they looked at one another, their faces had paled—the demonic power of such a horrifying creature was truly beyond expectation. Even joining forces, they found the struggle desperately hard, to say nothing of the fact that behind it stood an utterly mysterious Beast Sovereign.
The skeletal serpent, for its part, had been shaken off by all of them, yet none among them were ordinary, and not a single treasure they wielded was commonplace. Several streaks of blue, white, and yellow light rebounded upward and struck the serpent's skull heavily, one of them even splitting a small bone apart. The skeletal serpent roared furiously once more, the ghost-fires in its eyes blazing brighter, and with scarcely a pause it charged again in mad fury—plainly it hated these people beyond measure.
Xiao Yichen, Lu Xueling, Zeng Shuyan, and the rest all took flight. The skeletal serpent's onslaught was too fierce; there was no withstanding its edge head-on. Moreover, this time as its great maw attacked, thick black poison spewed from its mouth, foul enough at a distance to turn the stomach. Unable to do otherwise, the group relied on their agility and surrounded the creature's enormous body, attacking from all sides.
At this moment the beast-demons had six giant beasts in all on the field, but after the initial panic, the elite disciples led by Xiao Yichen and the others—a few against some, a dozen or more against others—had checked these beasts. Hampered by the beasts' formidable demonic power, they could not prevail and were mostly hard pressed, yet they had at least steadied the situation. With the fighting strength of these giant beasts tied down, courage rose at once among the righteous disciples facing the ordinary beast-demons, and the originally chaotic scene gradually settled; the barrier of light began to firm once more.
Outside the Yuheng Hall, Dao Yan Zhenren and the others wore grave expressions, brows tightly knit, watching the ferocious battle in which countless living things were snuffed out in an instant amid the rain of blood and howling wind. Dao Yan Zhenren gazed at the fighting below the mountain. Among the crowd, the black, seething horde of beast-demons that seemed impossible to kill was one thing; but the six giant beasts alone now seemed to fight with ever greater ferocity. Against them, Xiao Yichen and the other outstanding disciples, many against few, were gradually showing signs of decline—it seemed they could no longer hold.