Chapter 169 — The Beast Lord
The Sword Questions the Heavens · Page 2 of 7
Out of that silence came a sudden thunderclap, a booming report that shook the hearts of thousands upon thousands; sword light streamed across the sky, brilliant with color, and countless colored sword qi streaked across the heavens, shrieking down.
Like the furious tide of heaven it came surging, purple qi in the lead, stretching beyond sight at a glance, mightier by far than before—and behind the purple, every ten zhang apart, another color of sword qi gathered and flew, rushing and roaring, surging and swelling, beyond anything human power could imagine.
At the sight of this near world-destroying spectacle, not a face remained unchanged; palms grew slick with sweat.
The archaic song that had mingled with the great thunder and the sky-filling shrieks gradually faded away, and those strange drumbeats had long since vanished. Yet the gigantic malevolent spirit, facing this dreadful furious tide of swords, stood defiant and did not retreat; amid the rising black qi it shrieked all the more shrilly, as though taunting the heavens, wild and unruly to the extreme.
In an instant the sword light struck home, and dozens of black qi tentacles surged up at once. Though this sword qi was now beyond comparison with what had come before, the ancient sorcery of the southern wilds possessed uncanny powers beyond the reckoning of gods or ghosts: the black tentacles grew fiercer the longer they fought, and though in an instant they were pierced with thousands upon thousands of holes by countless sword qi, the seemingly endless black qi filled them again in a flash, and their greatest reach instead expanded outward, extending dozens of zhang.
Yet the first wave of purple sword qi charged into the black qi and forced it down by sheer strength; but in but a moment the black qi struck back, rising up and swallowing the sword qi one by one. Even so, before the black qi could return to its former state, the second wave of sword formations was already upon it.
A myriad of phenomena, boundless keen radiance; in the vault of heaven the sword light fell like rain, like locusts, thick beyond counting, and as Dao Yan Zhenren urged on his true art, the ancient sword Slaying Immortal flashed with ever stranger light, while in midair the seven-colored master sword ceaselessly split off more and more single-colored sword qi, faster and faster, wave upon wave forming awe-inspiring giant sword formations that came crashing down into those masses of black qi.
Under the Slaying Immortal formation's furious assault, like a raging tide, the black qi was no longer its former arrogant self; its reach was pressed back from dozens of zhang, shrinking steadily, and against wave after wave of that almost endless, despair-inspiring surge of sword light, the black qi gradually faltered. The gigantic malevolent spirit still roared without cease, but the black qi around its body was growing thinner, each wave of swords drawing closer to its true form than the last; the black qi thinned, the strange tentacles it formed grew weaker, and holding back that sky-filling rain of swords grew harder and harder.
At some point, after that long silence, the crowd below burst forth in a cheer like the tide.
The last six black qi tentacles, after barely withstanding a wave of azure sword qi, at last dissipated and vanished into nothing; in midair only the gigantic malevolent spirit remained.
Heaven and earth stood solemn; sword qi swept all around!
A mournful ancient song; a vast desolate wild!
Like thunder, like lightning, boundless sword light descended from the sky, rushing in from all directions, piercing through the gigantic malevolent spirit in midair.
The enormous white bones burst apart in an instant, countless streams of black blood splattering outward; the malevolent spirit beast jerked its head up and loosed at the heavens a long howl that tore at the heart and lungs.
Wind scattered; clouds dispersed.
The rain of swords gradually ceased.