Qin Mu knew the Blind One's Mind's Eye ability well and had long since stopped finding it strange. Although the Blind One could not see with his eyes, what he "saw" was far more than what anyone else could.
He rose and looked into the distance. Around that mountain peak, there were still streaks of golden light, circling it.
The Green Bull ran at full speed, bringing them closer and closer to the mountain. Before long, the streaks of light grew thicker, winding around the peak like ribbons, weaving back and forth and encircling the mountain.
When they drew nearer, Qin Mu saw that the golden lights contained many things. They were the divine arts of the Witch Kings. Some golden lights concealed curved blades, some contained golden figures, and in others golden dragons rolled and twisted.
The Witch Kings' strength was astonishing. Only those who had cultivated to the Celestial Being Realm could be called Witch Kings. Yet the Loulan Golden Palace was, after all, a sacred ground beyond the frontier. Most of the Witch Kings who had come to hunt down Libationer Bashan were in the Life and Death Realm, and there was even a Sect Master-level existence in the Divine Bridge Realm. Their auras were immense.
The Green Bull charged on. When they were only about ten li from the mountain, Qin Mu looked again and saw a Witch King in the sky at each of the mountain's eight corners: east, south, west, north, southeast, southwest, northeast, and northwest.
The Witch King to the east had a bird's head and a human body. He held a round mirror in his hands. The mirror was strange, with twelve snow-white bones growing out of it, and he supported it in his hands as a golden light shot from its surface.
The Witch King to the west had a leopard's head and a human body. He gripped a segmented staff, from whose top hung something like a tail that fluttered in the air, almost as long as the staff itself. At the tip of the staff was a golden skull, its eyes shooting golden light.
The Witch King to the south was a three-headed golden figure, with three wolf heads.
The Witch King to the north had a human head and a bird's body, with a pair of wings growing from his back. Mouthful after mouthful of golden swords emerged from those wings without end. The golden swords became a stream of blades that attacked the mountain at the center.
The Witch Kings in the southeast, southwest, northeast, and northwest were just as bizarre. Some had beast heads and eight arms, some had six legs, some had many wings, and some had multiple eyes growing on their faces, with eyes even growing in the centers of their palms.
Although Qin Mu had witnessed the Witch Venerable Loulu Scripture before, he still could not help marveling at the strangeness and might of this cultivation technique when he saw this scene.
On the mountain peak at the center, blade lights swept in every direction, opening and closing as they blocked the divine arts attacking from all eight sides.
Huge rocks fell from the mountain peak from time to time. Each stone was as large as a courtyard. From far away, such things could not be seen clearly; one could only barely make out objects falling like dust. Only after coming close did one realize how enormous that "dust" was.
The mountain had already been shaved by the divine arts of Libationer Bashan and the eight Witch Kings until it resembled a bare pillar. Only the mountaintop where Libationer Bashan stood still retained a trace of green from its plants and trees.
The Butcher took one look, breathed a sigh of relief, and laughed. "Big Mouth isn't dead. Let's head back."
Qin Mu was caught between laughter and tears, while the Green Bull put even more strength into charging forward.
Before they reached the foot of the mountain, the Butcher suddenly shot into the air. A blade light split the sky, incomparably bright. Qin Mu looked up and felt that after the light flashed past, the sky seemed a little darker. Perhaps the light had been too bright and left the mark of a blade in his pupils; perhaps it had been so sharp that it cut the sky open.
He could not tell which it was.
"Celestial Khan!"
A cry of alarm rang out. A human head came tumbling down from the sky, while a headless, winged Witch King flapped about in midair, golden blood scattered everywhere. It was the human-headed, bird-bodied Witch King from the north.
Of all the Witch Kings present, he alone was a Sect Master-level existence in the Divine Bridge Realm. Yet the Butcher had ambushed him and killed him with a single slash at close range.
The Butcher followed the battle-art path. Once he got close, the outcome was obvious.
The Butcher descended and landed steadily on the Green Bull's back as before. He called to the bull, "Your master is no longer in serious danger. Once he takes a few more wounds, he can kill his way out. Green Bull, take us to the Loulan Golden Palace."
The Green Bull hesitated. "Grandpa, aren't you going to save my master? He is filial and always speaks of your kindness."
"Why save him? So he can annoy me?"
The Butcher shook his head. "I've had plenty of peace and quiet in the village all these years. Just thinking about being nagged by that fellow gives me a headache. Go where I tell you, or you'll be eating beef if you keep babbling. Do you know what I do in the village?"
The Green Bull shuddered and dared not speak. This clever bull had long since realized that he was a butcher who slaughtered pigs and cattle.
"Master!"
Libationer Bashan's voice came from the mountain peak. He had clearly been wounded, and his voice lacked some of its usual force. Still, he cried out in delight, "Master, it really is you! I knew you weren't dead. You left me in Yankang all these years and ran off to enjoy yourself. How are you going to make it up to me? I have so many things to tell you..."
"Run," the Butcher said.
The Green Bull hurried toward the Loulan Golden Palace. Libationer Bashan was just about to charge out from the mountaintop when the other seven Witch Kings joined forces to suppress him, forcing him back onto the summit.
The seven Witch Kings were also in an awkward position. The eight of them had joined forces to suppress Libationer Bashan, intending to refine him to death. They had never imagined that the Celestial Khan, who was said to have been dead for many years, would appear again and kill their strongest Witch King with one slash.
They had assumed the Celestial Khan would attack them, while Libationer Bashan had also been greatly heartened and unleashed his sharpest attacks on them at the same time, holding them in place and preventing them from escaping. This had frightened them half to death.
Yet now the Celestial Khan had actually left Libationer Bashan there and ridden away on a bull.
Libationer Bashan was just as baffled. He suddenly understood, then began cursing and angrily stabbing the old man's reputation behind his back.
After a little less than half a day, the Green Bull carried them back to the edge of the Weak Water Lake and stopped.
The Butcher looked at the Blind One. "Blind One, come up the mountain with Mu'er and me. I don't have my lower half right now, so I can't beat that old fellow."
"All right."
The Blind One jumped down from the bull's back. Qin Mu told Ling Yuxiu, Hu Ling'er, and the Green Bull to stay there. "We'll be back soon."
Ling Yuxiu nodded. "Be careful."
The Butcher came to the edge of the Weak Water Lake and shook his head. "That boy Bashan hasn't made any progress after all these years. He didn't even move this lake away."
He took a long breath. Behind him, Ling Yuxiu, the little fox, and the Green Bull were aghast. All around them, the wind whipped up and clouds surged. Even the clouds in the sky were swept over by the gale and poured into the mouth of the old man, who had only his upper body left, in front of them!
The grassland stood high, and the clouds were relatively low, but they were still hundreds or even thousands of zhang away. The old man took one breath, and even the white clouds in the sky were sucked into his belly. He was absurdly powerful!
"This... this is... a top expert of the battle-art path!"
Ling Yuxiu's mind shook violently. Ever since the State Preceptor of Yankang had summoned the experts of the battle-art path to discuss the Dao, those experts had died, fled, gone into hiding, or vanished.
However, the most supreme expert of the battle-art path had not appeared in that debate.
The battle-art path was stronger in the physical body. The top experts of the battle-art path had one characteristic: a part of their bodies had already become divine!
They did not need to deliberately unleash divine arts. Every movement they made was a divine art.
Clearly, this old man with only his upper body was such an existence.
The Butcher finished inhaling. Nearly all the clouds around them had been sucked away. Then he blew out in a single breath.
With a roar, the Weak Water Lake in front of them suddenly heaved upward. The waves rose higher and higher, like an ocean standing upright.
The upright ocean rapidly retreated. Almost in an instant, the wind blew it into the snow mountains, filling the large and small valleys among them.
Ahead of them, the lake water dried up. Even the white bones in the lake were blown away. Although the lakebed was still somewhat damp, there was no mud; even the mud had been scraped completely clean.
Qin Mu opened his Heaven's Eye and looked. The veil of mist covering the lake had also been blown away by a single breath from the Butcher, and no one knew where it had flown.
The supreme experts of the battle-art path could not alter terrain through spells or divine arts. But beings like this possessed peerless physical bodies. Why would they need spells or divine arts to change the terrain or the weather?
"If one could possess the physical body of the battle-art path, the swordsmanship of the swordsmanship path, and the divine arts of the spellcraft path, wouldn't one be invincible?"
Qin Mu blinked and followed the Butcher. He cultivated the Tyrant Body Three Elixir Technique. The Tyrant Body Three Elixir Technique was good in every way, except that it had no divine arts, no body-tempering method, and no swordsmanship.
It was precisely because he cultivated the Tyrant Body Three Elixir Technique that the Butcher had not passed on his body-tempering technique to him, lest it hinder his cultivation progress.
In truth, everyone in the village possessed a unique cultivation technique, but none of them had passed it on to him.
The Loulan Golden Palace rang with cries of alarm. With a single breath, the Butcher had blown away the Weak Water Lake in front of the palace. Such an unbelievable divine art that reached to the heavens and earth could not help but shake the minds of the palace's shamans and great shamans.
In front of the sacred hall, the Witch Venerable stood holding his staff. Two rays of golden light shone from his eyes and fell upon the three people walking across the former lakebed. The corners of his eyes twitched.
He was the Cult Master of the Golden Palace. Because he envied the Butcher's powerful physical body, after learning that the Butcher had raised his blade against Heaven and been slain by the gods, he had immediately infiltrated Yankang, destroyed the small sect that had seized the Butcher's lower half, and taken it for himself.
He knew that the Butcher's physical body surpassed his own, so he decisively cut off his own lower half and replaced it with the Butcher's body.
And now, the scene from his nightmares had become reality.
The Celestial Khan had not died. He had survived, and had now come to demand the return of his lower half.
The corners of the Witch Venerable's eyes twitched violently. He turned and entered the sacred hall. On the divine shrines inside, golden skeletons sat cross-legged, some human-shaped and some beast-shaped. There were eighteen shrines in all. Golden skeletons occupied seventeen of them, while the eighteenth held an old man with disheveled hair, reduced to skin and bones, sitting motionless as though dead.
"Great Venerable, the Celestial Khan has arrived." The Witch Venerable leaned on his staff, knelt on one knee, and bowed his head.
The disheveled old man, skinny as a withered stalk, opened his eyes. His gaze was incomparably sharp, and his voice was like an owl's cry. "Where is the reincarnated holy child I told you to find?"
Fine golden beads of sweat appeared on the Witch Venerable's glittering forehead. He said hoarsely, "We haven't recruited one yet..."
The disheveled old man's voice turned shrill. "Without a reincarnated holy child, would all seventeen of my reincarnations have been for nothing? I am only half a step away from becoming a god. Half a step!"
The Witch Venerable lowered his head deeply and did not dare speak.
The disheveled old man said sternly, "With me here, the Heaven Blade will not dare make trouble for you, but I will not casually spend my life to help you either. Return his lower half to him, and find me a reincarnated holy child at once!"
The Witch Venerable's heart jolted. Suddenly, a ray of light flashed and cut across his waist before he had time to stop it.
The Witch Venerable fell silent. After a moment, he said, "Junior Brother Jiacuo, come in."
A Witch King who had heard the summons hurried into the sacred hall and bowed. "What does the Witch Venerable require?"
The Witch Venerable raised his staff and pierced through his head. He then cut off the Witch King's lower half and joined it to his own body. His expression remained as calm as an ancient well as he bowed. "Master, this disciple takes his leave."