The Heavenly Wandering Sword
Chapter 52
All around the platform, the yokai all growled impatiently. Even the yokai lords looked to be especially eager even as they gave looks of warnings to the yokai around the platform to stay back. The sacrifice of the Goddess of Life would bring power to the domain of death without comparison. Mei Min smiled at the tied-up Sun Ming sweetly as she drew the dagger back, ready to drive it into her chest and through her heart.
No one saw Li Jian move. With a single step, he appeared on the platform itself and sent Mei Min flying back with the pommel of his sword as he drew the sword from its sheath. In the same swing, the sword arched back and sliced cleanly through the enchanted Blood Soul binds that held the Goddess of Life to the prisoner’s pole. With his sword drawn, he held up his left hand above and forced his sword force to open a portal to the Heavenly Palace and threw Sun Ming through it. He did not want her to recognize him or see what he was about to do.
“Insolence! Who dares to lay their hand on me?” Mei Min shrieked, recovering at a lightning fast speed as she leaped towards him with the dagger extended. Side stepping the attack, he casually blocked her strike even as she disappeared in a blur to appear behind him. Rolling forward, he avoided the strike from behind before shoving himself off the ground just as blood red spikes appeared from the platform to impale him. He would land softly on the point of one of the spikes, simply standing there as he stared at the vampire Duchess. She let out a hiss and the yokai lords around her attacked, launching themselves forward.
More than a dozen Underworld warlords attacked, their weapons glowing with evil spiritual energy as they proceeded to bombard Li Jian with assaults. Each assault was at the Godly Realm, each attack capable of wiping out a single city by its simple sheer brute force.
“Kon Kon.”
His sword spirit appeared beside him, looking for all intents and purposes like a young adult male dressed in the clothes of a casual peasant. With a single flick of his finger, he sent the attacking yokai warlords flying back. Li Jian appeared in front of Mei Min in a flash, his swing already more than half way towards reaching her in a speed that mortals lacked the ability to comprehend. However, he was still fighting against another deity. She was able to duck under the attack and thrust her claw out in a burst of evil spiritual essence. Without pause, he tilted his torso so that her attack went under his arm as he reversed his grip on his sword instantly to give himself more maneuverability being so close to her and swung his sword towards her neck.
With reflexes that mortals would never be able to develop, she ducked her head back to avoid the strike of the blade and propelled herself back to create distance. With his mask on, his opponents had no idea who they were facing. He knew that he had to get the dagger back some how and flew forward, his grip on his sword straightening as he launched a powerful burst of his sword essence that cut off one of her arms even as she tried to block it. She snarled in pain and picked up the dagger, prying it out of her cut off arm and erupted a pair of massive bat like wings from her back and flew off towards the top of the Deathly Palace.
He looked around the raised platform to see that Kon Wang had sheathed his own sword, a mound of utterly destroyed corpses that used to be yokai warlords at his side. “We must re-capture the Skull Dragon, Master.” Li Jian nodded and launched himself up towards the top of the Deathly Palace where he had seen the bat winged vampire deity fly off towards while Kon Wang flew just behind him.
He quickly landed on a platform where he saw a trail of blood lead away from, right in front of a large polished-bone basilica dome and followed the blood trail inside. The inside of the basilica was a massive throne room where the deities of the Underworld sat. Mei Min stood there smirking at Li Jian as she held the dagger in her hand, while four other deities appeared beside her.
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“Lady Mei, what is the meaning of this? What has happened to your arm? Was the ritual successful?” The Lord of Slaughter Chian Xa asked. The large powerfully built minotaur headed deity looked over at the masked figure who dared to stand in their throne room in such a manner. The other deities stepped forward, while the Underworld Emperor remained in his throne, watching this exchange. He could sense that something was wrong. Each of the Underworld Deities were powerful, and it was impossible for another yokai to simply take the arm of the vampire deity even with the powerful sword spirit that stood behind him.
“This lowly common yokai dared to attack me and disrupt the ritual.” Mei Min had a wicked smile on her face, looking over at Li Jian as if he had made the biggest mistake of his life. “Big brother Chian, please help me take care of this imbecile.” She fluttered her eyelashes at the minotaur headed Yokai Deity while the others also stepped forward. There was a crow headed yokai deity who reeked of poison and a skull faced deity who had bloody hands. The Deity of Poison and Murder respectively. The minotaur huffed his nostrils and held up his massive battle axe as he stepped forward, each of his steps causing a massive fluctuation of evil essence to whirl and collect all around him.
“You dare raise your hands up against the Gods? I shall teach you a lesson today, the last one you will ever learn before I send you off to the void.” Chian Sha roared out, collecting evil essence in his axe before appearing suddenly in front of Li Jian, the axe already in mid-swing. Kon Wang appeared in front of Chian Sha and blocked the attack with his own sword, the two of them seemingly matched in strength while Li Jian disappeared only to appear in front of Mei Min with his sword ready. She snarled at him but Chian Sha was not the deity of slaughter for nothing. Holding Kon Wang in place with his axe, one of his hands pointed towards Li Jian and a massive black skull appeared in the air to smash down towards him.
At the same time, Mei Min struck with the Soul King dagger, sending a long spear of spiritual energy towards Li Jian. Underneath his mask, Li Jian smiled. It had been so long since he had been able to use even a small percentage of his power. “Kon Kon. Take care of him.”
“Understood Master.” Kon Wang glanced over at Chian Sha with disinterest before launching him with a fierce kick to the stomach, sending him flying over Li Jian to land on the ground. Even before the minotaur god landed, the Underworld Emperor saw that the fight had been decided. With a roar of defiance, Chian Sha tried to get up but found that he was unable to move. Impossible, how could a single kick have broken every bone in his body? Li Jian swung his sword and shattered the attack that Mei Min had launched and sent the vampire goddess flying back to land next to Chian Sha. She coughed out a splash of blood while looking at the other two. “Don’t just stand there, someone stop him.”
“Stop.” The Underworld Emperor commanded in a loud booming voice. He stood up finally, his form that of a heavily armoured snake headed warrior with a massive scythe. The two other deities dared not move after the command of the Underworld Emperor Wansi. Li Jian simply looked at him as Kon Wang walked up calmly behind him.
“Who are you and why do you dare to cause a ruckus in the Deathly Palace?” He roared out as he looked down at the figures that stood before him, having defeated two of his deities so easily. Li Jian thought about it for a moment before taking his mask and dropping it to the ground. “I am a swordsman. If you dare to unseal the Soul King dagger, then I dare to defy the Underworld.” Emperor Wansi thought about it carefully before pointing his scythe at him and nodded. “If you have the guts, then let us see what you are made of.” Before he finished his sentence, he had appeared behind Kon Wang and struck out with his weapon in a lightning fast arc but the Void Emperor simply disappeared before the attack could land. Instead, Li Jian reversed the grip on his sword and thrust it behind himself, blocking the scythe with the very point of his sword.
Retreating back quickly, Wansi let out his full aura as the Emperor of the Underworld. All around the palace, thousands of yokai felt their own evil essence suddenly disappear, being absorbed by the Underworld Ruler and pushing his power to levels that even the other deities had not seen before. He struck out hundreds of times in a single moment, but for Li Jian it felt like eternity. With a single strike of his sword, the Death Emperor was sent staggering back, his scythe broken in his hand. “Tricks will not get you anywhere.”
“He must be a Heavenly Deity!” Mei Min screeched before looking at the defeated Chian Xa beside him. “Apologies Brother Chian, but you must be useful for something.” She said before stabbing the dagger into his chest. With a loud roar which turned into a shriek of utter pain, the Soul King drank in the soul of the Deity of Slaughter. The palace itself began to shake as strikes of lightning punched through the roof of the basilica dome, the dagger floating up and out of the grip of the vampire. “Mei Min, what have you done?” The Death Emperor said. With the sacrifice of a Underworld Deity, there would only be one results.
In the dark skies above that appeared as the basilica dome finally crumbled, a chain of lightning each struck the dagger multiple times, undoing the seal on the dagger that had kept the Skull Dragon imprisoned for thousands of years. “Master, he is coming.” Kon Wang appeared again beside Li Jian. With a roar that sent every yokai collapsing to their knees including the Underworld Deities, a massive dragon made up entire of bones appeared in the skies above. At his sudden existence, the Underworld itself began to empty itself of souls, each soul being absorbed by the Skull Dragon. This was the Entity of Death Gu Long.