Chapter 937 Saint of the Sword and Saber
Li Mu was stunned into dawning bewilderment.
“Li Mu…” w.a.n.g s.h.i.+yu moaned, his face managing a weak smile. At the corners of her eyes, a crystal-clear bead of tear rolled down the side of her face. “Could you forgive me now?”
Seeing this wrenched Li Mu’s heart.
He knew what she was talking about. Back when she had decided to accept the role to become heiress to Fairy Emperor of Light’s crafts and power, she had surrept.i.tiously been involved in the extirpation of many powerful sects and orders. Evil as they might be, no one could deny that her ways had been callous and brutal. Li Mu had learned about this, and although he made no remarks, almost everyone who knew him immediately noticed how he began keeping his distance from w.a.n.g s.h.i.+yu.
Before his departure to return to Earth, Li Mu had expressed his wish for w.a.n.g s.h.i.+yu to turn away from everything here and come back to Earth with him. That was his olive branch; his way of telling her that he was ready to give her a chance to repair things.
But w.a.n.g s.h.i.+yu declined the offer.
Self-absorbed in her obsession with wanting to become stronger ever since she discovered how mighty Cultivators could be—especially since she sampled the thrill of having power at her fingertips when she began training—w.a.n.g s.h.i.+yu had decided to remain in the Heavenly Lands.
It was a decision that broke Li Mu’s heart and left him disappointed.
Li Mu never saw her anymore.
They had been so close since they were children; Li Mu had always seen her parents as his own. Yet for reasons too awkward and too difficult to articulate, there has always been a gap between them. A divide that they both could feel despite not meeting each other face-to-face.
The last time he heard anything about w.a.n.g s.h.i.+yu was when news came to him about how she had managed to achieve success in breaking out of the sphere of the Heavenly Lands and ascending into s.p.a.ce. That was the last time he heard about her.
And just when w.a.n.g s.h.i.+yu vanished, w.a.n.g Yanyi came into his life.
The timing was just right.
He recalled how the cold and callous w.a.n.g Yanyi had, again and again, gone on a limb to help him on the home planet of the White Foxes, White Earth. Only, the reminiscences of his time together with “w.a.n.g Yanyi” made this reunion all the more bitter-sweet.
He had shunned her, once the prettiest girl in school, and here she was all along, keeping him safe all the time up until now.
She could have left. But she chose to stay and watch the entrance. She chose to thwart an enemy that would have been impossible for her to defeat. Still, she was not daunted, like a moth that dives into a flame with reckless abandon.
Clank!
The rusted sword flew back at last and fell beside w.a.n.g s.h.i.+yu’s hand with a clatter.
The incredible stroke earlier had all but depleted every ounce of spiritual force w.a.n.g s.h.i.+yu imbued with it. Utterly drained, the sword now returned to its rusted self like a piece of tin can from the trash, faded, smudged, and blemished.
“s.h.i.+yu! Hold on, s.h.i.+yu!” Li Mu screamed, his heart aching as if a knife had just driven through it.
w.a.n.g s.h.i.+yu did not reach for her sword.
Instead, her hand came up to caress Li Mu’s face.
She had made the mistake of choosing the sword over him. She was not going to repeat that mistake. Life had shown how badly she had erred in losing the single most important thing in her life: him.
“P-Please… Li Mu… Would you forgive me?” w.a.n.g s.h.i.+yu pleaded; her eyes gleaming with the light from the fading embers of her life.
Tears burst out from Li Mu’s eyes. He could hold himself back no more.
He reached for and held her hand. It felt chilly, as cold as a lifeless piece of rock. He placed it on his face. “I should be the one asking for forgiveness, s.h.i.+yu! This is all my fault!”
She smiled as radiantly as she could. Yet the light was gone from her face.
“I want to go home,” she murmured weakly.
Hearing that pained Li Mu even more.
There was no doubt; life was leaking out of her like the sands pouring out of a broken hourgla.s.s, falling grain after grain with speed and time that no one could reverse. That final attack had sapped away chances to save her. To make sure that no foe could harm him, she had given her all—her complete all—with not one iota of hesitation.
“All right. Let’s go home.”
Li Mu hugged her tightly; holding her firmly in his arms as if he was afraid that the moment he loosened, she would disintegrate and vanish into the air like dust.
At the bottom of the steps, Song Yu and Silly Dog watched the spectacle in silence.
Song Yu rubbed his nose to stifle a choke. “Why the h.e.l.l is a stupid hound like you sobbing for?”
“G.o.ds be d.a.m.ned,” Silly Dog scowled with moistness in his eyes, “You’re his enemy! And yet you’re shedding tears yourself! Now be quiet before I give you a bite in your hind parts!”
Swoos.h.!.+
The winds billowed and swirled. White clouds cl.u.s.tered and spiraled.
Li Mu looked up.
The stranger whom the rusted sword had in its final attack blasted into smithereens had reformed himself from the very point where the elements of nature converged as one as if he were Nature itself.
This time, he appeared un.o.bscured and undisguised.
Imperial Lord Void.
Still very much alive.
Imperial Lords carry the fate of Nature on their shoulders. It was only natural that Void could survive a blow like what the rusted sword did to him.
But Song Yu and Silly Dog were terribly shocked to see him, as proven by the looks of aghast horror stamping on their faces.
Especially the former. He failed to sense Void’s presence that still endured. He had been hoping that that was the end of the Imperial Lord. Right at this second, he only wished that this was a nightmare, and he would wake up to find that the Imperial Lord was no more.
Li Mu immediately sensed the Imperial Lord’s presence the moment he felt the winds tossing unnaturally.
But he could care less. He did not even look at the very being whose will and power dictated everything in this domain.
He raised a hand and covered her eyes to prevent w.a.n.g s.h.i.+yu from seeing him. Beaming warmly at her, he said, “Let’s go, s.h.i.+yu. We’re going home.”
w.a.n.g s.h.i.+yu’s smile froze and went rigid. Her hand slipped lifelessly down and hung limply.
What life and vigor in her were gone. Utterly gone.
Li Mu was rooted to the spot with her still in his arms.
Hope, all of a sudden, seemed like something that had just vanished into thin air and would never come back. Ever.
The blinding rays of sunlight that angled into the porch of the palatial building shone on Li Mu’s back, casting a long and dismal shadow that stretched as far as the taper light could reach into its bowels before the rest of the shadow was swallowed by the darkness within, juxtaposing w.a.n.g s.h.i.+yu in his arms and him—the main characters in this picturesque scenario—one in light and the other in the darkness and both forever parted by mortality.
Imperial Lord Void stood outside of the porch.
He peered at Li Mu and w.a.n.g s.h.i.+yu, although his vision remained chiefly centered on the rusted sword.
Void summoned his powers and sent them in a surging rush toward the rusted sword.
Abandoned and forgotten, the rusted sword was lifted into the air and was brought to Void using his powers without resistance as if it had resigned to its fate with the expiration of its mistress.
Void reached out to seize it.
Hum!
The decrepit weapon tremored.
It gave off a sudden burst of force, knocking away the Imperial Lord’s hand.
A huge force that unequivocally resisted Imperial Lord Void’s approach.
That was not just an ordinary attempt to seize the sword. Void was channeling his power when his hand rose, willing the sword to come nearer with his indomitable power. Yet for all the power and deadliness that he wielded, he just couldn’t grip the weapon one that anyone would have flippantly mistaken or just plainly dismiss at a rusted piece of the iron rod from a landfill.
A disbelieving look swirled in the Imperial Lord’s eyes.
One that trumped even the moment when he was unexpectedly thwarted by that mortal man just now, who was a woman who had managed to defeat a lifelike projection of his image by blasting it into pieces.
“This sword is not yours to take.”
A voice resounded deep and hollow, echoing from high up. Far beyond the skies. Far beyond s.p.a.ce and Time.
Void looked up at once with astonishment, his keen gaze piercing as far as it could penetrate. The air roiled and churn high overhead. But even through the stratum of the skies, Void could find nothing. Whoever it was, the origin of the voice was nowhere to be seen.
“A being not of this world?!”
Imperial Void tensed up warily.
He could feel a palpable dread of premonition sweeping by.
Then he saw it. The astral projection of a stranger clothed in olive-green, toting both a rusted sword and a wicked-looking saber. Young and fair, stern and yet das.h.i.+ng, he spoke, “I am the Saint of the Sword and the Saber; The One and Only; The Enlightened and the Eminent.”
He stared down at Void and that growing presence was enough to make the Imperial Lord suffocate.