荒墟牧神 - 第1495章 獻祭之物 - 雲海書庫

he length of Shen Mu's body; as the hand seized at him, divine arts gathered in the palm, and in an instant the palm was filled with razor-sharp threads flying wild in every direction, threading and crisscrossing. Shen Mu had scarce charged into that palm when his flesh was pierced through by countless threads — yet still he swung his staff up to meet the stranger's fingers. Crack! One finger of the gaunt stranger was struck by the staff and snapped backward on the spot, bending into a horrifying arc. Crack, crack — one finger after another was broken by Shen Mu until all five folded back, and Shen Mu, reversing his grip on the staff, wielded it as a sword and drove it with all his strength into the stranger's palm. At that instant the thousand threads piercing Shen Mu's body suddenly yanked in every direction, and with a rip Shen Mu was torn into countless pieces in the blink of an eye. The shattered flesh and blood were drawn by the monstrous eye behind the stranger and fell into it. Then of a sudden a strange ripple of divine art spread out, as though time were flowing backward; Shen Mu's body swiftly reassembled, still in that palm, staff in hand, wielding it as a sword to unleash a world-shaking blow. The third stance of the Tribulation Sword: Answering the Tribulation. The wooden staff had no blade, yet it pierced into the gaunt stranger's palm and, together with Shen Mu's body, drove into his arm. The Sword of Answering the Tribulation was the sword that hewed the Heavenly Palace and leveled the Divine Treasury; it was the sword Shen Mu used to behead himself, and the sword he used to behead others. It had been long since he last brought out his own sword arts and sword dao. For ever since he had comprehended divine arts of deeper mystery, the power of his sword arts and sword dao could no longer keep pace with his divine arts; and the foes he faced were mightier by far than before, so that his sword arts and sword dao had fallen behind his cultivation and could scarce wound an opponent. But now, with Taiyi's staff in hand, it was as though he held an invincible weapon, raising the power of this one stance, Answering the Tribulation, to a height undreamed of in ordinary times. Astonishment showed on the gaunt stranger's face, and he uttered a question whose meaning none could tell, as though speaking of Shen Mu's divine art. By now he had plucked the arrows from the vertical eye in his brow; his other hand rose, its fingers leaping with extreme nimbleness, tapping again and again upon his other arm. Beneath the skin of that arm a sword light rolled like a mighty flood, and wherever it passed it swept all before it, shearing through the bones of hand and arm and severing the great sinews. Under his skin, sinew after sinew stabbed through and stood out, and broken bone pierced flesh — a sight to make the heart quail. More dreadful still, the sword intent came first; before the wooden staff reached his upper arm the sword intent had already arrived there, so that his whole arm felt the blade radiance beyond all keenness and lost every shred of strength. Yet the fingers of his other hand tapped one after another upon that arm, each blow landing with unfailing precision upon Shen Mu as he traveled through it, and each blow so powerful it ground Shen Mu to powder. But Shen Mu seemed to possess a body neither dying nor destroyed; each time he was slain he at once came back to life within that arm, restored as before. The gaunt stranger spoke again a phrase whose meaning none could tell, then of a sudden struck with his hand and hacked off his own arm; Shen Mu flew out of the severed limb, his sword light aimed straight at the stranger's brow. The gaunt stranger smiled, repeated that phrase whose meaning none could tell, and a ray of light shot from the vertical eye in his brow. Boom! The blow shattered Shen Mu outright; flesh and primordial spirit alike, and his Divine Treasury domain with them, were all ground to finest dust.