Chapter 2490 - An unprecedented Duel of the Dao of the Sword

Su Yi was instantly surprised. He’d never considered the possibility that Lu Shi had already mastered Supreme Metamorphosis, Obscurity, Simplicity, and Emptiness.

As if reading Su Yi’s mind, Lu Shi shook his head. “I borrowed these powers from other people. I haven’t truly mastered or understood them.”

He said with an air of self-deprecation, “Although I became Eternal in the early days of the God Domain’s history, I never mastered any of the Five Supreme Source Powers. Fortune... truly wasn’t in my favor.”

“And do you really think I’ll help you?” asked Su Yi.

“Duel me in the Dao of the Sword,” said Dao Venerate Lu Shi. “If I win, the chaos source in the stele is mine. If I lose, it’s yours. How about it?”

His gaze was clear and full of calm confidence. When his Daoist robes fluttered in the wind, invisible sword intent surged forth, transforming into resplendent purple sword flowers. They bloomed repeatedly up and down his body, then withered, and repeated the cycle in an endless flow. It was a strange, mysterious sight.

Bone-piercingly sharp sword intent filled the air as Lu Shi readied himself for battle.

Luo Qingdi’s gaze focused.

What a strange aura of the Dao of the Sword. It’s just a wisp of his aura, but it’s far beyond a Nine-Tribulation Master God!

In Su Yi’s eyes, Dao Venerate Lu Shi seemed to have transformed into a sword. He was like a sword reborn amidst destruction, the truths of Undying readily apparent amidst withering!

This was a type of utterly tyrannical sword intent.

Just sensing it was enough to stimulate Su Yi’s life force. His qi silently circulated, and his power of the Dao of the Sword stirred as if eager for battle!

Now that they were staring each other down, Su Yi had no choice but to admit that, as much as he looked down on the underhanded means Lu Shi had used to bring him here, Lu Shi was a rare opponent.

He too was a sword cultivator with unparalleled attainments in the Dao of the Sword!

Su Yi no longer hesitated. “Very well.”

Off in the distance, Lu Shi smiled, gratified. He could sense what Su Yi was feeling.

Sword cultivators, especially sword cultivators like them, saw such rare duels of the Dao of the Sword as grand strokes of good fortune, the type that could only be happened upon by chance!

No true sword cultivator would refuse such a challenge.

Lu Shi took a step forward, his Daoist robes swaying around him, stood in midair, and gestured to Su Yi. “My Dao of the Sword is called the Nine Extremes. It uses lightning as its base, and it’s utterly murderous and utterly destructive.

“The moment I stepped onto the River of Destiny, I had another awakening, and I grasped the Dao of New Life. I fused it, too, into my Dao of the Sword.

“I’ve used this Dao in battle ever since, and I now struggle to find worthy opponents among cultivators of the same level,” said Lu Shi, his voice like the ringing of a bell. It resounded throughout the cloudy dome of heaven.

Every last inch of his skin was covered in flowing, mystical light of the Dao of the Sword. It shone like the dawn of a new day, radiant as divine lightning.

The nearby skies silently caved in. Countless fragments of sword intent rumbled like thunder and roared like a coursing river.

A tyrannical aura emanated from Lu Shi, as if no one between heaven and earth could stand in his way.

He was like a hegemon amongst swordsmen, gazing down over the eight wastes and the six directions!

Boom!

Off in the distance, the Divine Stele of the Dao of the Sword rumbled, and countless imprints of the Dao of the Sword appeared reflected around it.

These were the imprints of the most dazzling Daos of the Sword left in the stele throughout the ages. Lu Shi’s aura of the Dao of the Sword had completely awakened them all!

The stele rumbled and boomed, and ten thousand swords hummed in unison!

Luo Qingdi’s heart shook, and his gaze heated up.

What powerful sword force! What terrifying mysteries of the Dao of the Sword!

In that moment, even Luo Qingdi, the man who’d dazzled his entire epoch of origin, was unwittingly impressed. He sensed Lu Shi’s extraordinariness on a visceral level.

Su Yi looked Lu Shi up and down. “You’re borrowing Yun He’s body to fight me. I’m afraid you can’t display the full extent of your swordsmanship like that. Am I right?”

Lu Shi smiled. “I stepped into Eternity a long time ago. That means I’m already at an unfair advantage.”

He paused, then said, “Yun He is a Nine-Tribulation Master God, while your Undying Realm cultivation is already strong enough to threaten his life. Fighting you in his body like this is as fair as I can make it.”

Fair?

When Su Yi heard that, he instantly understood. Setting aside his estimation of Lu Shi’s character, there was no denying that Lu Shi was a true sword cultivator.

Because when sword cultivators dueled, fairness was key.

“Brother Luo, you should step back, " said Su Yi. “No matter who wins or loses, you are not to intervene.”

𝚏𝐫𝚎𝗲𝕨𝐞𝐛𝕟𝚘𝐯𝚎𝗹.𝕔𝐨𝗺

Luo Qingdi fell briefly silent, then moved further away. He understood how Su Yi felt, and he knew that it wouldn’t do for outsiders to interfere in a duel of the Dao of the Sword like this.

“I can guarantee that no one will interfere and spoil our mood,” Lu Shi said with a laugh.

“That would be best,” said Su Yi, soaring into the sky.

His qi instantly surged forth, like a vast, coursing river. The Epoch Spark, now fully fused into his foundations in the Grand Dao, gave rise to a dreamlike, misty rain of chaos light, letting Su Yi’s cultivation base circulate to its maximum potential.

Boom!

Mysterious, transcendent sword qi rose from Su Yi, cleaving through the clouds of the nine heavens and shaking the firmament!

Heaven and earth shook violently.

The sky collapsed on all sides.

The moment this imposing aura clashed with Lu Shi’s sword force, it produced an unbelievable strange phenomena.

All facets of creation dimmed, and ten thousand Daos cried out as one as two starkly different powers of the Dao of the Sword collided.

The sky was thrown into upheaval at the point of impact, collapsing with a boom.

Off in the distance, the Divine Stele of the Dao of the Sword shook, and the floating imprints of countless Daos of the Sword quivered as if about to fall. In the end, all of them fell dormant.

They were like pious ministers prostrating themselves before their sovereign!

“Excellent!” Lu Shi’s eyes lit up. “The moment you revealed your sharpness, ten thousand swords prostrated themselves. None dared compete, and none dared object. This sword force is extraordinary indeed!”

Even as his voice rang out, his Daoist robes fluttered around him, and his expression grew calmer and heavier. He was now utterly cool and composed.

But his sword force rumbled like thunder, and when it erupted, it transformed into dazzling and resplendent purple sword flowers. They repeatedly bloomed, withered, collapsed, and sprouted anew.

The entire Tianxiu Sword Shrine, and even the powers of the Grand Dao in the sky, were thoroughly enveloped and suppressed!

Only the thirty thousand feet around Su Yi remained unaffected.

“Is it so impressive? We won’t know until we’ve fought,” said Su Yi, his gaze deep and profound as he drew closer to Lu Shi.

His clothing rustled around him, and his sword force bore down on the sky. As he walked, it bore down on Lu Shi, too.

The two had yet to really attack, but their sword forces had already begun a clash so fierce that it threw the entire area into turmoil, chaos, and upheaval.

Luo Qingdi watched with bated breath, not even blinking for fear of missing something. Waves of emotion coursed through him just watching, and he found it hard to stay calm.

Duels like this were far too rare. At the very least, he’d never seen a clash of the Grand Dao like this in his epoch civilization of origin!

Lu Shi’s sword force was like the lightning of divine punishment. It was utterly destructive and immeasurable vast. It could shake the nine heavens!

He had the majesty of a hegemon of the Dao of the Sword!

But Su Yi wasn’t at all inferior. His sword force soared beyond the nine heavens. There was nothing it could not shake and nothing it could not destroy. It was mysterious and transcendent!

In truth, their duel had already begun, but even someone as perceptive as Luo Qingdi found it hard to predict who’d emerge victorious in the end.

The only thing he could say with certainty was that even if outsiders tried to intervene, they’d effectively just be throwing their lives away. Su Yi and Lu Shi’s gathering sword force would slay them on the spot!

Finally, when Su Yi was still a thousand feet away from Lu Shi, their sword forces’ clash reached unprecedented intensity. Both heaven and earth collapsed around them.

It was then that, without any prior discussion, both of them attacked at once.

Boom!

Su Yi’s robes billowed around him. He stretched out his right hand and slashed the air in a simple gesture.

And Lu Shi’s hands formed a sword seal. He too unleashed a simple strike.

In a sense, their attacks were shockingly similar.

It was much like how, when sword cultivators achieved basic proficiency, they practiced the most fundamental of movements: drawing their sword!

That was true even of sword cultivators in the mundane world.

When you gave a child a stick and told him to hit someone, his first instinct was to swing it in front of him. When you gave someone unpracticed in swordsmanship a sword and told him to kill someone, he’d instinctively do the same thing.

Because that was the innate, instinctual response.

When people like Su Yi and Lu Shi cultivated the Dao of the Sword to the limit, they strived for just one thing: ultimate simplicity!

They washed away all that was extraneous and returned to the basics. They wanted to kill their enemies in the simplest, most direct way. That was fastest, most in line with their heart, and strongest, too!

This was clear from their first attacks.

The difference was that when they attacked, their essence, qi, spirit, and cultivation bases fused into their weapons.

Thus, when these two starkly different powers of the Dao of the Sword clashed, they resulted in two starkly different unbelievable spectacles.

Su Yi’s slash overturned the dome of heaven, cleaving open the sky. Nothing could stand in its way, and nothing could break it. It seemed endless and self-perpetuating, undying and inextinguishable.

Lu Shi’s strike was full of the utmost destructive power. Wherever it went, the sky was eradicated, down to lights, shadows, and motes of floating dust.

When these two powers collided, it was as if a thunderclap had gone off over the Tianxiu Sword Shrine, shaking the heavens!

The endless landscape shook, and apocalyptic visions of destruction appeared beneath the dome of heaven.

Throughout the entire Spirit Firmament Divine Province, anywhere that sword cultivators gathered, everyone sensed it. Their whole bodies shook, and their swords rumbled without end.

The sword cultivators all fell into a daze.

What... What's going on here!?

And those mighty Undying Realm Master Gods among them, no matter where in the continent they were or what they were doing, instantly sensed signs like an impending tribulation of the Grand Dao!

It was as if something terrifying were happening somewhere far away!

The whole situation seemed unbelievable.

A duel at the Tianxiu Sword Shrine, a clash between two Daos of the Sword, had alerted the mysteries of the heavens. Its impact had reached the entire Spirit Firmament Divine Continent!

Meanwhile, outside the battlefield, Luo Qingdi watched this grand battle unfold. He tried to glean insight into its mysteries.

But when he did, he felt a piercing pain in his eyes, and his senses fled him. HIs heart and mind instantly suffered a terrifying impact.

He retreated with all his might, not daring to hesitate.

He retreated, then retreated again! Soon, even he’d lost track of how far he’d gone.

The sensation of an impending lethal thread had diminished considerably, but it wasn’t completely gone.

Luo Qingdi couldn’t help but feel horrified.

A moment later, he felt a deep sense of regret.

I have only my wounds to blame. I’m down to the last remnants of my soul. Thus, I’m in no condition to watch this duel or grasp its true mysteries.

I have no doubt that I’ll regret this for the rest of my life!