The Divine Martial Stars

Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!

The heavily-rusted sword emitted a harmless shockwave.

The impossible took place.

The towering freak wave immediately winced and cowered backward like a frightened hare who had just seen a wolf.

The rusted sword glided over the surface of the lake, undeterred and unimpeded this time by the lake that now returned to being calm and serene wherever it flew.

“Huh?!”

The Cloud Light Saintess gasped with her jaws hanging wide with shock.

So did her mentor, who could only behold the unbelievable spectacle with speechlessness.

She knew Wang Yanyi, but could barely confess the same about that rusted sword. She knew nothing about it at all. If that white-robed Lazulum, whose powers now neared the Emperor Realm, could still not defeat or tame the sentient lake water even with the help of his Emperor-class weapon, then how on earth did this rusted sword manage to subdue the water?

“What is the secret of that sword?!”

Silly Dog the Husky was thinking about something else altogether.

There it stood at the sabulous shores of the lake, contemplating about how he did not have a single cent with him. Very loudly, he yelled, “Wait up! Woof! What about me?! Don’t leave me here! Don’t leave a poor and helpless doggy here to fend for himself!”

Whoosh!

A glint of steel flashed past Li Mu’s eyes.

All of a sudden, Li Mu felt himself falling before Wang Yanyi caught him by the waist, and together, they flew away. The fingers of the gigantic hand had released him?!

But how?!

Mysteriously, the gigantic hand seemed to be vulnerable to the rusted sword’s magic as well!

But it quickly recollected itself and flipped itself over to begin storming after Wang Yanyi and Li Mu with its middle and index fingers acting as legs, chasing after them like a boy whose toy had been snatched away.

“WOOF! COME ON! HOW ABOUT ME?!”

Silly Dog whimpered anxiously from the beach.

But Wang Yanyi and Li Mu, with the gigantic hand stomping angrily after it, vanished into the far distance at the other end of the lake.

“BLASTED! BEGONE THIS INSTANCE!”

Lazulum was only too frustrated and resentful at seeing his prize slipping between his fingers. He channeled more power into the magical bowl floating over him. The bowl spun like a top and the tendrils of divine luminescence spewing out from the relic began flailing with its movement like whips, furiously tearing the three-headed giants into countless falling confetti of fluid-formed flakes.

“Let’s go!”

Lazulum barked, sending one of the tendrils back towards the beach where it coiled around Song Yu. The exertion had taken a heavy toll on Lazulum, who now looked like an elderly man in his twilight age with his long white hair billowing as he chased after the gigantic hand.

“Thank you, sir–wait! What?!”

He could only mime what he wanted to say only then did he realize something pulling at his leg. To his surprise, he turned around and saw a dog hanging from his ankles!

“Li Mu’s dog!

Since when did this mongrel hitch itself on me?!”

Song Yu kicked his legs, trying to dislodge the animal from his ankles as he growled with hardly any voice coming out of his throat, “Get off, dammit!”

But all he got in return was a jolt of pain shooting up his leg.

He peered down and found himself staring eye to eye with the angry Husky growling menacingly with its jaws locked around his ankles. The piercing look from the dog looked as if he was saying, “Try kicking me off again and I’ll make sure you’ll have only one ankle to walk with for the rest of your life!”

“Heavens…”

Song Yu inhaled deeply with dread leaking from the pores of his very own face.

“Just how dangerous is this animal really!?”

He wasn’t at all inclined to put the threat to the test, especially when the dog looked absolutely serious in wanting to bite off his left ankle. He cast a glance at the front. Lazulum was speeding as quickly as he could while he hastily recuperated his powers as much as he could with not even a glance back, ignoring what was going on behind completely. That would mean that Song Yu would need to contend with this dog himself.

“What are we going to do now, Teacher?”

The Cloud Light Saintess deferred to her mentor.

“We leave. This has gone beyond what we can handle. We cannot even get past this lake without getting ourselves killed, to say nothing about the rest…” said the Saintess’s mentor with dejected and forlorn misery.

She couldn’t even finish–again.

The waters of the lake just not far ahead of them began to bubble and churn.

A dreadful premonition manifested in the minds of both teacher and student.

They traded nervous looks. Was the lake water going to erupt!? Like a volcano?! Instinctively, their legs involuntarily began pacing backward before they even knew it. Then they turned around and morphed into jets of light and zipped down the same frosted cobblestoned pathway from which they came for dear life.

The entire lake of death suddenly shrank sharply the next second, turning into just one tiny droplet that glittered like a piece of crystal. Then it warped into the distance, ripping the fabric of Time and Space asunder before it vanished.

Leaving only a vast and barren crater with a huge layer of moist earth inside as if the whole depression was just freshly dug.

The Saintess and her mentor went on fleeing for minutes until they realized that danger did not come pursuing them. Unable to subdue the prodding of curiosity and gambling that it would be safe for a peek, they backtracked and headed back, only to find a pit in the ground with the water nowhere in sight.

Both teacher and student traded dubious looks at the very same spot just like how they did just not long ago. Filling the entire vista ahead of them was this blank white translucent wall that they could barely comprehend its distance or its size. Knowing better than to push their luck, they decided to just leave. They would have better luck finding bounty outside than here.

This foray into this palace of the gods had turned out to be a massive failure. Almost everyone from the Divine Clans was dead and as subjects of the Celestial Court, the Saintess and her mentor were fully inculcated by this experience of how weak and helpless they were.

To their utmost surprise, they encountered Fairy Shuiyue, who managed to survive her wounds.

…

The fabric of their clothes snapped in the winds as they sped forward.

“We meet again.”

Li Mu, ignoring the stinging pain, forced a smile in response.

A stoic Wang Yanyi rebutted him, “Save your grin for some time. You look hideous.” Not that it was a joke; Li Mu looked more like a rotting corpse than a real living person after his little tour of the underwater necropolis just now, making him as hideous as ever–especially when he smiled.

Li Mu did not know how to respond to that.

“Wait, how did you manage to ward off those freak waves?!” he asked all of a sudden.

Wang Yanyi sighed. “Focus on healing yourself first. You can tuck that curiosity back into that pocket of yours until next time.”

Li Mu stared at him in silence.

That practically shot down whatever desire Li Mu had for further small talk.

Wang Yanyi looked mildly surprised all of a sudden. “Looks like we have company. Get on with your healing on the double. I can’t keep this up for long.”

Li Mu immediately channeled his Xiantian Skill magic and began to first expel all harmful properties of the waters of the Sea of Godly Demise from his body, although even glaciers move faster than his progress.

Blood slicked every inch of his skin, dripping down the length of his limbs and unto Wang Yanyi’s tunic, dying it red.

In his earlier battle against the Rain Clan, Wang Yanyi had been wounded himself and the exertion of using his rusted sword was ripping his wounds open and he began bleeding.

The viscidity of their blood melded their clothes together.

The rusted-covered sword hummed incessantly as it tore through the air at great speeds.

More than tens of thousands of meters behind, the gigantic severed hand of a true god maintained in hot pursuit.

A similar distance away just behind.

Lazulum was slowly regaining his powers. Color has returned to his face and his lips looked once again rosy and healthy. Intricate markings swirled in his eyes like tightly-packed spirals of ornate chains spinning slowly like the winding path that led into the Underworld.

“Run, little mouse, run… The severed hand will be mine… And so will that rusted sword!”

A wicked and sinister grin spread across his face.

Beneath his feet, he flew over a collection of elaborate buildings and intricate towers and spires–a cityscape that fully exemplified full architecture wizardry and beauty by being a city fit for the gods.

Unlike the outer peripherals which had been ravaged and defaced by war and looting, the central region of the celestial palace remained virtually intact with much of its charms preserved as if the city had merely gone into a long, long sleep.

Whiffs of Primeval Qi lingered around the archaic city, hooking its fingers at anyone who would pass by. Even with the hallowed porcelainware protecting him, Lazulum had to force himself to smother the flames of curiosity that had set his mind and soul ablaze.

“Get the severed hand and then the sword,” he told himself, “That will enable us to explore this place safely.”

Success seemed so near that he could almost taste it and the prospect of his triumph left him in a good mood.

His plans of securing the severed hand might have gone slightly awry, but the parameters were still within his control. In fact, the uncertainties and minor setbacks were clearly suggesting greater rewards. That was a price he could live with.

…

About a half hour later.

“Arrghh!”

A pale-sickly Wang Yanyi finally coughed up mouthfuls of blood.

The rusted sword began to lose its tremor that radiated those tiny shockwaves to keep all enemies at bay.

“Oh, no…”

Wang Yanyi had been using up every ounce of natural qi in him before forcing himself to push desperately ahead on empty tanks for more than ten seconds before everything went dark for him. Utterly insensate, he could no longer control his sword and they plummeted.

Now virtually a cripple, Li Mu was similarly passed out himself. As if he was in a trance, he was busy fighting a war inside his body to expel the final vestiges of the lake water’s influence. He did not know what was going on outside.

The beautiful and ornate buildings below them looked dangerously nearer and nearer.

Boom!

In the end, both of them smashed into a tall, gilded spire.

Oddly enough, the impact did not cause enough damage to break anything on the spire, let alone weaken its structural integrity enough for the spire to collapse. They collided with the spire and plunged more than a hundred meters to the ground and lost consciousness.

The rusted sword fell to a harmless clatter beside Huang Yan Yi, its tip lancing diagonally into a stone, its glowing light slowly darkening until what luminescence coming from it completely died down.

…

No one knew how long had passed.

Li Mu gradually opened his eyes.

He had managed to discharge more than half of the decaying influence of the lake water from inside his body and the pain was starting to lessen. But his vision remained murky and dark like someone had put a bag over his head. Carefully he groped around and felt the ground, then he tried to sit up.

“Shh! Quiet!”

A familiar voice rang in his ears.

It was Wang Yanyi.

Li Mu jerked his head around. There was Wang Yanyi, signaling him to be silent.

The aura of a magical field, the Breath-concealing Deployment, was thick in the air and it was masking their presence.

Li Mu carefully sat up.

They were inside a building and Wang Yanyi was sitting just beside an ornate window. Through the tiny slits in the door, she could see the sky outside and there was Lazulum, searching for them.

Then he saw Song Yu, standing not far away like a dutiful servant.

But Li Mu’s focus was not on Song Yu, but rather on a dog wagging his tail with the most obsequious manner ever like it was trying to curry the favor of Lazulum!

“Since when did that useless sack of shit dog defected?!”

Li Mu nearly broke his silence to mutter a curse.

“He’s been searching for us for a long long time. Bloody dogs rather gifted with smell; he almost found us,” Wang Yanyi communicated telepathically. Somehow this tower is able to temporarily negate all traces of our aura.”

Then they saw Lazulum moving further away with Song Yu and Silly Dog in tow.

The dog trotted by Lazulum’s ankles, shaking its tail so vigorously like it was trying to make his new master proud!

“What double-crossing filth. I knew we couldn’t expect anything from him.

Then Li Mu remembered a story from each about how the police departments from all around the world refused to use huskie as police dogs. Their subpar intelligence could see them switching allegiances at any moment’s notice.

“Gods, it really is real…

Stupid dog…”