Chapter 419 The Top One in the World
In the void, the inky demon qi surged like a pot of boiling water. It boiled frantically but eventually returned to quietness and slowly dissipated, as though the last bit of unwillingness to be outdone of Emperor Qin Ming finally faded away at the end of his life.
Li Mu slowly landed on the ground.
By that point, Longcheng Pa.s.s had become a city dwelt only by ghosts.
When Emperor Qin Ming cast the Heavenly Devil Tactics, the hundreds of thousands of soldiers in the Heaven Inspire Army and the imperial army were turned into dried corpses, for Emperor Qin Ming had sucked away all their essence and blood just like last time Yingshan Snow-eagle employed the Extraterrestrial Devils’ power to devour the vigor of all the imperial soldiers at his command.
The entire force was annihilated.
The Heavenly Devils’ secret arts were killing techniques, which were wicked beyond the extreme.
Holding that Magic Seal against Heavenly Devil, Li Mu gasped for breath, his body trembling so hard that he almost could not stand still.
Emperor Qin Ming had gotten one thing right.
The punching style called the Endless Waves was indeed not to be activated at random.
To perform any style of the Zhenwu Boxing, the performer’s physical strength must be extremely high. The physical strength Li Mu had before was already regarded as invincible in the Sage Realm. Still, that was not enough to bear the power of the Endless Waves. Only when he had proceeded to the third tier of the Xiantian Skill did he manage to withstand the mighty power of that style and master it.
The power of the Endless Waves was marvelous. Its gist was the art of immortality. It required no overlaying of the previous forces but only swinging one’s fist forward. It did not shorten his lifespan or consume his qi or blood. The only thing it needed was a body strong enough to bear the power the punching style generated.
A bowl could not hold the stream.
A well could not hold the sea.
Likewise, if one’s physical body was just a well, it was naturally unable to exert the power of the sea.
By then, Li Mu’s physical strength could be said to be invincible in all the realms beneath the Void-breaking Realm. That was why he could pull off the lethal punch at the last moment. To Li Mu, the power that punch produced had way outstripped the power in the Void-breaking Realm, which imposed an immense pressure upon his body and caused serious damage.
“Your honor…”
“Sage Li has won!”
“Emperor Qin Ming is dead!”
Zhang San, Mu Qing, and the remnants of the army of the Great Moon Empire rushed into the city from the outside and broke into wild whoops and exclamations.
What just happened was really unexpected.
With the determination to die in the battle, they came back to fight with Li Mu side by side. They all made the decision to sacrifice themselves and never knew they could go back alive.
After all, everyone had to die in the end. They knew that day would be the day they unflinchingly faced death.
Yet, a miracle arose from despair.
Sage Li did manage to turn the tide at the critical moment and kill Emperor Qin Ming in Longcheng Pa.s.s.
Emperor Qin Ming was the man who had practically taken the throne of the world’s top one super master.
But Li Mu had killed him. So, what did that mean?
A new top one pract.i.tioner in the world had come into being?
The soldiers flooded into the city and skidded to a halt three meters away from Li Mu. They all gazed at the short-haired, white-robed young man in reverence, as though they were admiring a deity.
Li Mu took a few deep breaths while operated the Xiantian Skill to adjust his qi flowing, which forcibly suppressed the cracks in his flesh. Then, he began to examine the Magic Seal against Heavenly Devils, wis.h.i.+ng to rescue Yu Hualong’s soul that had been trapped there.
Admittedly, Emperor Qin Ming’s soul gathering method was quite excellent. Inside the Magic Seal against Heavenly Devils, a little figure looking like Yu Hualong was sitting cross-legged in the center. His eyes were closed shut, unaware of the pain or his injuries. But the energy fluctuation of his soul was distinct, which indicated the soul was intact.
However, as the power of the Magic Seal against Heavenly Devils should not be underestimated, Li Mu dared not try to unseal it when he was so badly injured. After all, Yu Hualong’s soul was sealed in it. The soul was a very fragile and special existence. Unlike the tough body, a little bit of injury to the soul was likely to lead to unpredictable consequences.
After pondering for a while, Li Mu suddenly felt that it might be more appropriate to let Qing Feng crack the mystery of the seal.
Those days, Li Mu had thought very highly of the little attendant.
“Your honor, what should we do next?” Asked Zhang San, who had fixed Li Mu with an awed look.
Putting the Magic Seal against Heavenly Devils away, Li Mu said weakly, “If we can retrieve both the body and soul of the crown prince, we might have a chance to bring him back. But we need time to discuss it in detail. So, don’t rush it. Now that Emperor Qin Ming has died, the border area still belongs to the Great Moon Empire. Perhaps it’s up to you guys to rebuild your world here.”
“These things can be left to our subordinates.” Zhang San said with confidence.
Hearing that there was a chance to bring the crown prince to life, everyone found it hard to hide their ecstasy.
That was definitely more exhilarating news than the death of Emperor Qin Ming.
Li Mu nodded.
Unfortunately, Li Mu failed to locate their souls on the battlefield when Ning Jing and Dong Xue were killed. Therefore, he could not resurrect them. Perhaps it was destined. Everyone had their own fate after all.
Undoubtedly, Yu Hualong was the lucky one.
If his body and soul were both crushed by the blow Emperor Qin Ming launched, Li Mu would have no means to rebuild a new body and soul for him even if he had the most unbelievable power.
Li Mu then asked Zhang San to send some messengers to the Northern Song, Taibai County, and the Yue Mountain Faction and tell them he was okay. After that, he started another closed-door training in Longcheng Pa.s.s to heal his injuries.
Although Li Mu had just killed Emperor Qin Ming, he felt no excitement about it.
Because Caicai and her grandmother had died, too.
For Li Mu, it was the second blow he took since the death of Ning Jing and Dong Xue. The death of close friends had made Li Mu, the top one expert in the world, feel sorrow and helplessness.
In the afternoon, the army of the Great Moon Empire found the bodies of the folks of Longcheng Pa.s.s that had been slaughtered at a hill 10 miles away from the city.
Li Mu also went there in person.
Those folks had died a tragic death. They were all ripped into pieces by slas.h.i.+ng swords. Broken limbs were everywhere, smashed under horses’ hooves and covered in blood. It was almost impossible to identify the victims. Tens of thousands of corpses were piled there, one’s body parts mingled with another’s. That sight brought everyone to tears.
“Those Western Qin soldiers should be killed a million times!”
“They have no hearts!”
Many soldiers of the Great Moon Empire lowered their eyes and wept, their teeth clenched tight.
Li Mu searched for a long time, but still did not find the bodies of Caicai and her grandmother.
Caicai should be wearing the protective jade Li Mu gave her as a present. But considering the great number of martial arts experts in the Western Qin’s army, Li Mu had a dim feeling that the jade was already broken. Yet, part of him still hoped that the two had escaped somehow, though deep down he knew that lovely little girl must have died in the tragedy along with her grandmother.
Caicai proved she was a girl of her word. She did overcome all difficulties to stay in the place where her father had battled the enemies and lived there until her last moment.
A huge grave was erected on the hill.
Li Mu stood quietly in front of that grave for a long time.
Since coming to that world, Li Mu had embarked on a wonderful journey that he never even imagined before. Along the way, though there had been setbacks, he had always been the one to laugh to the end, while his opponents one by one fell before him.
However, at that moment, Li Mu felt sort of lost.
He had come to that world in order to learn martial art, to break through the bottleneck and find a way back to Earth. His goal was to protect Earth, to protect those people living there, whether they were his acquaintances who mattered a lot to him or not.
He had lived on Earth for 14 years.
He felt Earth was his hometown.
Earth was the place that raised him.
However, when he looked back, it occurred to him that he had lived on that strange planet for over a year. He had met so many people from all walks of life. Some were his friends, some just nodding acquaintances. Some were opponents, some were his family, and some he loathed…
He seemed to be subtly blending in with that world, didn’t he?
When he heard Ning Jing and Dong Xue were killed, he was depressed for a long time.
When he learned the death of Granny Cai and the little Caicai, he also felt heartbroken.
The feelings he had were real. Then, what was the difference between living on that planet and on Earth?
That world, that land, had also raised him in the past year.
He looked up at the new grave of thousands of people, and then, turned around to look at Longcheng Pa.s.s.
There used to be tens of thousands of people there. It might not be a hustling and bustling place, but it was still full of life.
But now, except for the less than 10,000 soldiers of the army of the Great Moon Empire, there was no sign of human being in Longcheng Pa.s.s. The fertile farming lands were ruined. No trace of life could be seen within 100 miles… The change from vigorous to lifeless took only a few days. Even the nuclear power on Earth could not be more horrifying than the power of destruction that destroyed the whole city.
The tens of thousands of lives had gone.
All of a sudden, Li Mu felt as if his heart was loaded.
Looking back on all the battles he had had, he found every battle had cost countless lives. On that day of the fight against Yingshan Snow-eagle, several thousand imperial soldiers were wiped out in an instant. Although those soldiers were on his opposite side, what had those ordinary soldiers down to deserve that? It was the commanders and the emperor who waged the war that should take the blame.
And the most crucial part was, what the common folks had done to deserve that?
In Zhang Yanghao’s poem, Thinking of the Past on My Way to Tong Pa.s.s, he said, “The empire’s rise is people’s woe; the empire’s fall is also people’s woe.”
Had it not been for the death of his friends and family, Li Mu might not have experienced what that felt like.
He had worked hard studying martial arts and made himself almost invincible. Still, why couldn’t he keep his loved ones from harm?
And that tragedy had occurred more than once.
Li Mu was a little confused.
Back then on Earth, he had read a famous novel called Legend of the Condor Heroes. Guo Jing, the leading character, forced his way out after his mother was killed in the tent of Genghis Khan. Along the way, Guo Jing pondered over what was the point of martial arts study. Failing to come up with a proper answer, he got sick of learning martial arts. When Li Mu first read that chapter in his first year in junior high, he could not help mocking Guo Jing’s cowardice and sensitivity in his head.
But it was not until that moment that Li Mu began to realize what had baffled Guo Jing was.
When he first read the novel, he did not understand its underlying meaning. But when he read it the second time, he was already experiencing the same situation as the character.
Striving to straighten his muddled thoughts, Li Mu stood quietly for an entire afternoon before the ma.s.sive grave for tens of thousands of people.
In the next few days, surprisingly, Li Mu did not practice much as usual. He was silent most of the time. And he was often sighted standing before the large grave where Granny Cai and Caicai were buried in silence.
Zhang San, Mu Qing, and the other generals of the Great Moon Empire all thought Li Mu was devastated by the death of Caicai and her grandmother, so they also felt rather guilty. After all, they had failed to protect the one girl that was very important to Sage Li.
In the meantime, the news of Emperor Qin Ming’s death bandied about wildly.
The news spread like a plague. Each time it reached a place, it generated a turbulent wave.
Emperor Qin Ming, the man who could kill any of the Nine Superbs, was widely considered the number one pract.i.tioner in the world. The glory that he had displayed in the past half a year could be said to be overshadowing anyone else in the history of the martial art. He was the one who had climbed to the top of the highest peak in the martial world in 1,000 years.
Whether willing to admit it or not, most of the forces in that world all reckoned that emperor would create an era of his own that would last at least for centuries.
The age of the “Millennium Emperor” was about to begin.
However, in the blink of an eye, the human emperor who was the first to reach the peak of martial art in 1,000 years had met his downfall?
And it happened without any prior signs.
He was killed by Li Mu outside Longcheng Pa.s.s just like that.
That news made countless big shots speechless. They looked at one another in silence, exchanging complicated feelings. What had the royal family of the Western Qin done to run into Li Mu, their nemesis? From the prince to the crown prince, then to the emperor himself, none of them managed to escape from Li Mu’s broadsword.
Li Mu was truly a fierce guy. What resentment had he held against the royals of the Western Qin on earth? Why did he always go after the royals surnamed Qin? It might not be a big deal when he killed the second prince and the crown prince. But now, he had also killed Emperor Qin Ming, the number one pract.i.tioner in the world.
Come to think about it, that kind of thing seemed quite funny. But the funny part also coupled with a trace of blood-curdling horror.
Changes occurred every day.
Now that Emperor Qin Ming had been killed in a battle and fell off from the throne, it was doubtless that a new top one in the world had risen.
That man was also from the Western Qin. And that was Li Mu.
Li Mu, an emerging legend.
Given that even Lord Jin, the most powerful rebellious lord of the Northern Song, also died in his hand, Li Mu was not only targeting the royals of the Western Qin. For that reason, he had gained him a new nickname popular across the Divine land— Royals’ Terminator.
But of course, with the death of Emperor Qin Ming, a series of new problems surfaced.
First and foremost, who would be the one to rule the Western Qin in the future?