The Divine Martial Stars

At that request, Li Mu immediately smiled.

“He already knew I used a fake name?”

Dao Zhen was truly intelligent without seeming so. He did possess an exceptional brain.

Last year, as the flaws in his character were magnified, he lost his bearing in a jumble of confusion and obstinateness and digressed off the road. If it had not been those flaws, Dao Zhen would not have ended up where he was today. So, from that perspective, it’s not completely wrong for Dao Chongyang, a man who claimed to be the Taoism Master in the world, to pick Dao Zhen as his successor.

Li Mu suddenly had a vision that if Dao Zhen could really become the leader of Mount Qingcheng, the number one Taoism faction that just survived a hardship might reveal its pure brilliance and grow unprecedentedly powerful under his governance.

“We’ll cross path someday. If you turn out to be not a disappointment then, I’ll tell you who I really am.” Li Mu answered with a roar of hearty laughter.

Afterward, clouds materialized under his feet as a stream of power gushed out. Taking Zhao Ji and Qing Feng, Li Mu leaped to the air. As if really traveling on clouds, Li Mu flew to join Yuan Hou and the Huskie outside Green Hornet Gorge and disappeared in the distant sky like only an immortal could. No one else could make an exit in a way that unrestrained and elegant.

“Could that Taoist Zhang be one of the Nine Superbs?” The waiter whose belly was wounded by a sword sighed with emotion. “He came in and exited like a mysterious dragon. How sublime!”

The others nodded their concurrence.

They all thought the bearing of that Taoist named Zhang Sanfeng was an expert living in seclusion.

“Head, where shall we go now?” A Taoist asked.

All the people whipped around to look at Dao Zhen.

Without hesitation, Dao Zhen said, “Back to Mount Qingcheng.”

His tone was steady, his eyes sparkling with fighting spirit.

…

…

Getting out of Green Hornet Gorge and locating the white crane, Li Mu, Qing Feng, and Zhao Ji climbed onto the back of the white crane, where Yuan Hou and the Huskie were already waiting for them.

The white crane flashed across the sky like the wind.

After settling himself on the back of the white crane, Li Mu fixed his eyes on the Huskie. The dog’s mouth was clean, showing no trace of blood. But its eyes seemed evasive. “What has it done if he didn’t go biting the bad guys? Did it really go to help Yuan Hou?”

“Why are you staring at me?” The Huskie called General barked unyieldingly.

Li Mu craned his neck to look at Yuan Hou.

But just as the ape was about to open its mouth to speak, General beat him to it. It snapped, “Monkey, I’ve warned you. If you dare tell my human pet that I’ve swallowed the weapons and treasures of those damn Taoists, I’ll bite off your leg!”

Yuan Hou was speechless.

Li Mu was speechless too.

After saying that, the Huskie also felt something was wrong.

“Sounds like I’ve… exposed something.”

Li Mu kept gazing at the dog. “Swallowed weapons and Magic Treasures?”

“Its teeth are that sharp?”

Suddenly, something crossed Li Mu’s mind.

When they were in Taibai County, Li Mu found several weapons missing from the warehouse. Failing to discover any clues of theft, Li Mu thought he must have made a mistake in counting last time. After all, that weapon warehouse was guarded by mechanic schemes. No one could enter without his permission. But given what he just heard… it couldn’t be the work of the dog, could it?

Li Mu had been aware that since the Huskie was transported to that world by the old faker, it gained some unconventional skills out of no reason. For example, it could apparate and disapparate despite some restrictions, tactical deployments, space, and distance. Li Mu had already asked the Huskie about that, but the answer he got was that the dog itself had no idea how to control the mysterious power. Sometimes it worked, sometimes not. But as long as there was something the Huskie truly wanted to do, the mysterious power would click into place.

Giving it a thought, Li Mu decided to do an experiment.

He quickly threw out a low-ranking spiritual sword at random. That sword was snatched from Huang Shengyi’s storage instrument.

“Woof!” The Huskie reacted at once. Like a flash of lightning, it bounced up and gripped that sword with its teeth. The blade forged with icy black iron immediately crumbled like creamy croutons. The dog munched away at the sword and swallowed it down in no time.

After that, it feverishly wagged its tail at Li Mu, as if eager to have more.

After a brief deliberation, Li Mu casually tossed it a ranking-less, fine steel sword.

General leaped up without thinking and snapped at the sword. It crunched the whole blade in a few bites, but soon spat the fragments out and snarled, “Pah! Human pet, what are you doing? Are you teasing me? How can I swallow this kind of sh*t?”

Li Mu looked at the silly dog’s teeth and nodded inwardly.

“Holy Boundless Master!”

“I’d got to keep a lookout for this silly dog. How come its teeth are so scary? I’m afraid even Taoist instruments cannot be spared from those sharp teeth. When I’m not looking, perhaps the silly dog will also chew up my Samsara Knife!”

“Come to think of it, in front of such teeth of the dog, perhaps even the iron flesh of a Sage cannot survive, can it?”

“If being bitten by the silly dog, even a great Sage has to lose a big chunk of meat.”

“No wonder Yuan Hou has been intimidated by the silly dog!”

A few inches away, Zhao Ji broke drops of cold sweat as he watched the dog chew the weapons.

He had found the two-tone-eyed dog quite adorable and was once tempted to stroke its soft fur. At that moment, he realized he was truly the one who knew nothing feared nothing. That yearning of his was too dangerous. He was practically fooling around at the risk of his life!

Therefore, subconsciously, Zhao Ji edged away from where the Huskie was sitting.

Capturing that movement, Li Mu grinned but did not say a word.

Sitting cross-legged on the back of the white crane, he began to adjust his breathing with his eyes closed and continued to practice.

During his last closed-door training in Taibai County, he refined the Samsara Knife again. To weld so many Star Stones of the wood power into the Samsara Knife was a huge project. As Li Mu’s internal qi was not sufficient to carry out that project, he had to activate the Dragon-assembling Pattern and draw the power of the geomancy deployment to build a furnace at the eye of the deployment to refine the Samsara Knife. But up to the day Li Mu set off, the refining was yet completed. Thus, he had to leave the broadsword in the furnace so that there would be no interruption on the refining. So, on that journey, Li Mu did not bring the Samsara Knife with him.

In fact, Li Mu left it behind on purpose.

Because he knew weapons were external objects no matter how impressive they were.

Only the strength of his own could accompany him from the beginning to the end.

Only when he learned to perform Dao-using methods without the Samsara Knife could he gain Full Accomplishment in the broadsword art.

Although it might be somewhat idealized to require a practitioner to bear his broadsword in mind instead of grasping it in hands, it was necessary to go through a stage where he should learn to stop relying on his broadsword, if he wanted to comprehend the intendment of the broadsword art.

The strike he launched a while ago had employed a new combat technique he invented during the last closed-door training. By driving the qi of the Southern Fire Emperor with his spiritual force, he successfully performed his Dao-using method and produced broadsword qi.

According to Li Mu’s research on the martial arts theories in that world, for a broadsword, a sword, or any other weapon, once it began to generate relevant qi and killed enemies on the battlefield, it had entered the Way. Once it entered the Way, its power increased considerably. And among all the qi weapons could produce, the tangible qi was at the lowest ranking, followed by intangible qi, then the intent that rose above qi, such as Broadsword Intent and Sword Intent.

The broadsword qi Li Mu cast before was somewhere between tangible and intangible. It was indeed a bit inferior to the Broadsword Intent.

But the gap between the two was not glaring.

Li Mu had entered the Celestial Being Realm and practiced the Five Emperors’ Immortality Scriptures. By far, he had mastered the qi of the Fire Emperor and the Wood Emperor. And to produce the Broadsword Intent, he had to start with his internal qi. That was to say, the process had something to do with the fire qi and the wood qi. When he killed Dao Chong and the others with intangible broadsword qi, the targets stiffened and were blown into ashes after being hit by his half-visible broadsword qi. That signaled his broadsword qi had acquired the initial power of the Broadsword Intent.

But that was not complete Broadsword Intent.

In the case of the complete Broadsword Intent, when he hacked his broadsword, the intent would dash out, and his opponent would feel like being exposed in the scorching sunlight, having no time to escape. Unlike that, the targets hit by Li Mu’s broadsword did not turn into ashes until their vigor of life was exhausted.

Even though Li Mu pulled off a win against Dao Chong and his men without much preparation, he sure had learned something new.

Right now, he kept his eyes closed shut and was immersed in serious meditation, hoping to grasp the Broadsword Intent.

The Broadsword Intent could not be attained through martial arts practice or epiphanies acquired in life-and-death battles. The practitioner had to keep exploring and reviewing his spiritual force, studying the essence of broadsword art and fight spirit, feeling the internal qi circulating inside him. In a word, the Broadsword Intent could only be acquired through the development of one’s spiritual world.

Time flew by.

In a blink of an eye, four days lapsed.

Li Mu and others traveled day and night.

Only when the white crane was too tired to continue the journey did they descend and take a one-hour rest. Other than that, Li Mu never let them make a stop on the way.

Because Li Mu was concerned about whether some unexpected change would occur.

After all, in that world, Wang Shiyu, his old deskmate and campus belle, was basically his family.

At noon on that day, the breeze was gentle and warm, and the weather was crisp and refreshing.

“We’re above Lin’an,” Zhao Ji suddenly announced.

Li Mu opened his eyes and looked down on the ground.

A magnificent city appeared beneath the clouds. It stretched to several hundred miles afar, with towering lofts widespread and long rivers weaving across it. Those rivers looked like green strips that divided the city into different blocks. What was more, scores of large lakes were strewn in the city, which appeared to be pieces of flawless green jade that added to the beauty of Lin’an.

It was a prosperous, splendid city with a rich culture.

Although Li Mu had never set foot in Qin City, the capital of the Western Qin, it was not hard to know the view in Qin City was entirely different from the landscape in Lin’an.

It took the white crane about 20 minutes to cross the length of Lin’an.

“A few miles ahead is Mount Oxhead!” Zhao Ji cautioned, feeling a little unease.

More than 20 days had passed since he set off for the Western Qin to ask for help. He was praying it was not too late.

…

…

At the same time in the Daoyin Temple on Mount Oxhead.

“Your Highness, have you really decided to marry Lord Jin?” Jade, the Countess’s maid, inquired with a dejected look. She did not know what to say at the moment.

A finely carved copper mirror was hanging on the wall of the quiet room.

At the dressing table in front of that mirror sat a girl about 14 or 15. She was putting on make-up rather unhurriedly. The girl was cladding a close-fitting long dress. Her black hair was as dark as dark clouds, which was unaffectedly fanning on her shoulders, bringing out her elegant and refined backside curves.

The reflection in the mirror was a nearly perfect oval face. Her skin was smooth like jade, clear of any flaws. Her complexion was fair and healthy. Her nose was straight and delicate, lips tiny but plump. All her facial features were in proportion and exquisite at the extreme. In particular, her big, black eyes under the guardianship of long eyelashes seemed to be talking silently. Moreover, her face was sending off a forceful, invigorating aura that seemed to be uncontainable.