Chapter 1564: The Grace of That Sword
The Abyss of Return was now far more perilous than when Qin Mu had last visited it. The tides of light surging forth were fiercer and more violent than before, their power greatly amplified.
Even as Heavenly Venerables, they felt a chill of fear facing the Abyss of Return in its current state. Ever since the Heavenly Court had established itself in the Ancestral Court and the Heavenly River had returned to its original course, the Abyss of Return's power had multiplied many times over. Additionally, with the Empress and her sister merging into one, it seemed to have invisibly enhanced the Abyss of Return's might.
Qin Mu and Palace Heavenly Venerable stood silently opposite each other, neither making a move immediately. Their minds raced, calculating every possible outcome.
They were the most powerful beings in the world when it came to divine consciousness. Divine consciousness was thought and awareness, but far stronger and purer than ordinary people's thoughts. Only when one elevated their thought awareness to the divine realm could it be called divine consciousness.
Divine consciousness had many uses. Besides enhancing the power of techniques, it could forcibly erase another's thought awareness or even take over their body. But its greatest advantage was the ability to deduce countless possibilities in an extremely short time, allowing one to act before their opponent!
It could even predict every future move the opponent might make, all within one's calculations!
Some called this ability foreknowledge, but for experts in divine consciousness, it was merely a probability algorithm—calculating all your moves in advance.
For powerhouses like Qin Mu and Palace Heavenly Venerable, their divine consciousness stood at the pinnacle of this world. Combined with their understanding of each other's Dao and techniques, they could anticipate each other's subsequent actions.
However, when two beings of comparable divine consciousness clashed, the variables became too numerous.
Neither Qin Mu nor Palace Heavenly Venerable had ever refined or devoured another's divine consciousness during their cultivation, nor had they accepted worship from others. Even when Qin Mu obtained the Imperial Emperor's divine consciousness, he hadn't refined it to enhance his own cultivation. If he had taken shortcuts, his probability calculations would have been corrupted by chaotic divine consciousness. This was why the Imperial Emperor's Dao had never reached perfection.
The Beast Realm's Lord, Dragon Xiao, also suffered from insufficient wisdom for the same reason.
Both Qin Mu and Palace Heavenly Venerable strove to maintain the purity of their divine consciousness, avoiding temptations that would taint it. While Palace Heavenly Venerable's reliance on men was contemptible, her will was incredibly tough and resolute, decisive and ruthless—qualities worthy of admiration.
Their divine consciousness operated at full speed, their auras growing stronger by the moment, ready to unleash a thunderous strike at any instant.
Cold sweat dripped from Palace Heavenly Venerable's forehead. She encountered immense difficulty in calculating Qin Mu's possible moves. Only now did she realize how complex his learning, insights, and cultivation were, filled with various unknown Dao techniques and divine abilities.
In contrast, her own Dao techniques and divine abilities had been thoroughly explored by Qin Mu during the Heavenly Court's attempt to refine him, when he had fought within the Myriad Dao Heavenly Wheel!
In other words, Qin Mu knew everything about her, while she knew little about him.
"If our cultivation levels were similar, I would surely lose!" she thought silently. "But my strength lies in my deeper cultivation! He hasn't reached the Jade Capital realm, while I am already halfway to the Heavenly Court realm! I'll activate the War Horn, amplify my blood and qi, multiply my explosive power severalfold in an instant, and strike a fatal blow! I might get injured, but not fatally. As for him, though he might save his life, he'll be knocked into the Abyss of Return!"
"Quick victory!"
"I must achieve a quick victory!"
"The longer this drags on, the more possibilities he can calculate against me!"
With this thought, she raised her brows. Just then, the Empress's voice suddenly rang out, shrieking, "Wrong, wrong! This reincarnation technique is wrong! Doing it this way won't refine that little vixen! Mu Heavenly Venerable! Mu Heavenly Venerable—"
As the Empress's call echoed, Qin Mu's aura fluctuated. Palace Heavenly Venerable seized this opportunity, fully activating her Great Heavenly Court!
Her Heavenly Court layout resembled a horn. As she activated her technique, the horn's sound rang long, instantly elevating her blood and qi to a straight line!
In an instant, the entire Abyss of Return's Twin Lotus Sacred Land was filled with an overwhelmingly terrifying tide of blood and qi!
Palace Heavenly Venerable's strength and magical power soared linearly. With a single step, she seemed to break through the limits of time and space, crossing Qin Mu's Embryonic Spirit Divine Treasury Domain to appear before him!
Her dragon whip transformed into a dragon spear, the great spear trembling violently, spinning as it stabbed toward Qin Mu with a sharp *chi* sound!
The moment she moved, a smile appeared on Qin Mu's face. To Palace Heavenly Venerable, that smile carried a hint of malice and the satisfaction of a successful scheme.
*Ding—*
Qin Mu ignored her overwhelmingly powerful strike and instead flicked his sword. Palace Heavenly Venerable's heart leaped. The sword wound left by Qin Mu's earlier thrust through her chest suddenly erupted!
Countless sword lights burst from the wound, like a silver bottle filled with mercury shattering on the ground, splashing outward!
A silver bottle breaks, and the liquid bursts forth!
"Opening Emperor's sword Dao?" Palace Heavenly Venerable's heart shuddered. As she thrust her spear, she frantically mobilized her blood, qi, and magical power to suppress the injury on her chest!
She had once been defeated by the Opening Emperor's sword, and his sword Dao had left an indelible shadow on her—not just a physical wound, but a wound on her Dao heart!
Qin Mu's sword flick caused her to involuntarily awaken her fear of the Opening Emperor. This fear, once awakened, overpowered her reason.
Her magical power diverted to the wound, and the power of this spear thrust diminished.
Then, she immediately realized that the sword light and sword Dao erupting from the wound Qin Mu had left were not as terrifying as the Opening Emperor's.
The Opening Emperor only needed to flick his sword to turn the sword wound in her Dao heart into sword Dao, using her own power and strength to amplify that Dao, cutting her to pieces.
But Qin Mu's sword strike merely activated the residual power of the sword Dao in the wound.
"Damn it!"
Just as she thought this and tried to boost the power of her spear thrust, Qin Mu was already charging toward her dragon spear with a sword strike. In an instant, twenty basic sword forms danced within the sword light, striking the spear in succession.
Twenty crisp sounds rang out, and twenty tremors traveled through the spear shaft. With the first strike, Palace Heavenly Venerable felt as if the dragon spear had been struck at its vital point—seven inches of power running through the entire spear vanished, losing all connection to that segment.
With the second strike, another tremor came, and the remaining spear shortened by another seven inches.
Qin Mu's sword moves were incredibly fast. By the time the twentieth sword form struck the spear, the power of her thrust was reduced to only the short segment she held in her grip!
The sword light leaped from the spear shaft and shot into Palace Heavenly Venerable's brow!
One wrong step led to a thousand mistakes.
Before clashing with Qin Mu, Palace Heavenly Venerable had used her powerful divine consciousness to calculate his various attack methods. But because she knew too little about him and he had thoroughly understood her, she had resorted to overpowering him with brute force.
Yet from her very first move, she had fallen into his trap, and from there, everything went wrong, leading to total defeat!
She was, after all, a Heavenly Venerable. The moment the sword light leaped into her brow, her primordial spirit rose from her Heavenly Court, vast and boundless. Its left hand lifted and struck toward the back of her own head.
Her primordial spirit's left hand actually passed through the back of her head, and just as Qin Mu's Calamity Sword pierced her brow, its left index finger tapped the sword's tip!
*Ding.*
A crisp sound rang out, and the Calamity Sword's momentum was halted.
A drop of cold sweat fell from Palace Heavenly Venerable's forehead, landing on the gleaming sword tip. The sharp edge split it in two, and a bead of blood from her brow slid down the blade.
Across from her, Qin Mu held the sword, only two steps away.
They were so close that any divine technique would be slower than martial combat, and sword Dao techniques were extremely deadly in close-quarters fighting.
But the most terrifying was the blade.
The smile faded from Qin Mu's face. With a shift of his foot, the next moment, Palace Heavenly Venerable felt him behind her. A vast blade intent surged from her back, as if about to slice into her flesh!
This feeling was terrible. She sensed her back exposed to Qin Mu. This wasn't the classic back-to-back formation of martial combat; rather, her back faced his front.
This was the bizarre phenomenon created by the Embryonic Spirit Divine Treasury Domain!
She immediately leaped forward, landing on a massive stamen of one of the twin lotuses. At the same time, the primordial spirit in her Heavenly Court behind her head struck out fiercely at Qin Mu behind her!
But the moment her primordial spirit moved, it froze—because Qin Mu's primordial spirit was now behind hers, also in a back-to-front formation!
Palace Heavenly Venerable's heart shuddered. Even after landing on this stamen, she still felt Qin Mu behind her, and a great blade Dao technique erupted from behind!
Within the twin lotuses, stamens of various colors, each thousands of feet long, stood like tentacles in this beautiful place, swaying with the tides.
Palace Heavenly Venerable raced swiftly, leaping between the stamens, desperately dodging the blade light behind her.
The blade light rose behind her, *shua shua shua*, streaks of light splitting the sky, bright and dazzling, then turning into black lines in the next instant.
She had to be careful to avoid the black lines left after the brightness—they were extremely dangerous, and a single misstep would leave blade marks on her body.
Even so, there were times she couldn't dodge. The blade marks on her body grew more numerous, soon covering her in wounds. Her primordial spirit also raced frantically, dodging the attacks from Qin Mu's primordial spirit.
Her primordial spirit was also covered in blade wounds. If this continued, she would eventually die under Qin Mu's assault.
*Boom!*
A loud crash shook the twin lotuses violently. Palace Heavenly Venerable glanced hastily and saw the Empress half-crouching, half-kneeling in the center of the twin lotuses.
This woman had restored her ancient god physique, incredibly robust, slowly rising in the center of the half-red, half-black twin lotuses.
"Mu Heavenly Venerable—" the Empress let out a piercing scream.
Palace Heavenly Venerable suddenly felt the blade light behind her vanish and breathed a sigh of relief: "Mu Heavenly Venerable has been scared off by the Empress!"
She turned around, and a sword light pierced through her brow.
At the same time, the primordial spirit in her Heavenly Court was also pierced by a sword light.
Qin Mu sheathed his sword and bowed deeply: "Palace Daoist, farewell."
The sword light erupted from Palace Heavenly Venerable's mind!