The Heavenly Wandering Sword

Chapter 42

The Pontiff and his Paladins attacked through the crowd of yokai that were swarming them but they held the upper hand. Where they went, the line of defenders stiffened and fought back even harder. It seemed that they all understood that with the Pontiff and the 12 Paladins on the battlefield, there was no way that they would be able to lose. In fact, the Paladins had started combining their spiritual essences together in the form of a giant sword made up of entirely spiritual energy, the energy sword reaping through the bodies of the attacking yokai and turning them into steaming chunks of corrupted flesh. In response to this, the Tengu Lord raised a hand up towards the sky and summoned a long-curved blade made up of the blackest metal. The sword leaked evil aura, the aura enough to drive those of a lower cultivation level to hold their hands to their head and collapse to the ground, unable to fight back as their minds were filled with that of an unconquerable darkness.

“We.. we can’t win, we’re all going to die! The gods have abandoned us!” One of the witch elf warriors screamed out right before he was cut apart and then eaten by a yokai. The twelve paladins however steeled their mind against the corrosive evil of the sword and kept advancing forward with a determined look on their face. The energy sword became more and more solid as more spiritual force was poured into it, the sword flying through the air to strike at the Tengu Lord. With a single strike, he was able to block the attack and sent the energy sword flying through the air. As the energy sword was struck back, the paladins all coughed out a mouthful of blood. The backlash from a spell this powerful contained enough damage to pierce through the spiritual shield.

With an evil laugh, the Tengu Lord pointed his sword right at the Twelve Paladins and let out a dark energy blast that travelled through the air with an unholy aura, the loud explosion sending the paladins flying backwards. Even the Pontiff coughed out his blood onto the ground at the attack. The Pontiff and the Paladins desperately got up and put their hands up in a massive burst of spiritual energy to form a glowing shield in front of them. “Such tricks will not work on me, soon you will become another feast of spiritual energy.” The Tengu Lord laughed as he strike with his sword, slicing through the energy shield and sending the Church’s finest warriors flying back.

“The gods will not allow our sacrifices to be in vain. Brothers, we will empty every drop of blood we have and meet together in the Divine Hunts Ground.” The Pontiff said, trying to rally those around him as the Tengu Lord advanced closer and closer. “Today we will defy fate and bring you down monster!” If it was not the 12 Paladins of the Church, they would have become smears of blood in the dirt. The Tengu Lord laughed and moved too quickly for the rest of them to see, appearing in front of the pontiff and stabbed his dark evil blade through the chest of the pontiff and lifted him up to the sky. With a loud scream, the pontiff felt his soul being ripped apart as his life essence was being absorbed by the sword itself. At seeing this, even the Paladins became horrified, frozen in their spots as the witch elf who was the most powerful member of the Church could only scream at the pain he felt as his very essence was being broken down and eaten alive.

“Is this truly the end for us?” Fu Rong asked quietly, her voice shaking. “The Pontiff could not stop him. The Paladins look like they are almost dead. Master Li, I think this might be the end of us. The Church's mightest warriors have fallen and along with their death so has perished the light of hope.” Li Jian was quiet for a few moments as he stared at the scene in front of him. It was a decision that must not be made lightly but it must be made. “For you Sister Fu, today I will defy the Heavens to give you hope.” He placed his hand on his sword and breathed in slowly, letting his breath out. He could feel the Will of the Universe, the Divine Dao itself telling him that he could not do so. “Sword Deity, you cannot raise your hand in this matter.”

“Please forgive me Master Dao but I must follow the Universal Truth of the Sword.” He drew his sword as Fu Rong looked at him questioningly, not understanding his statement. “Divine Dao, the sword has no opposition.”

From where he was, Li Jian appeared right in front of the Tengu Lord just as the yokai launched another powerful strike, to finish off the Paladins once and for all. With a single sword swing, the attack was blocked, sending the yokai tumbling back. “What? What is the meaning of this?” The Tengu roared out as he launched another attack. The 12 Paladins looked at the man who suddenly appeared in front of them. Was this someone truly capable of stopping the yokai lord? The Tengu Lord swung his blade in a vicious strike aimed at decapitation, but Li Jian simply swung his sword in a brutal arc, his sword striking against the sword of the Tengu Lord. “Yokai, it is time for you to return to the Underworld.”

“A mortal blocks a few moves and believes himself capable? How stupid.” The yokai lord activated his full spiritual aura, a permeating sense of darkness and death flooding the streets with their immense darkness and power. Yet as Li Jian stood there, the spiritual aura could only part for him as he walked towards the Tengu Lord. Holding his sword up to the sky, he activated one of the most powerful moves in the Divine Sword Art. Divine Sword Art: Sword Judgement. The skies themselves opened, over ten thousand spiritual swords suddenly appearing in the sky before being sent down with earth shaking velocity. The lesser yokai suddenly found themselves being cut apart or pierced into the ground itself as the spiritual swords zipped through the air and began their slaughter.

“What? This is divine force. How dare you break the pact.” The yokai lord snarled as his aura started dissipating at the presence of so many divine swords at once. “You are the first to violate the pact. The yokai are not allowed to feast on souls in this manner. Only when they enter the Underworld do you have the right to deal with the evil souls of mortals as you see fit.” The Tengu snarled at him and began easing himself back, his sword still held in his and as he launched another attack, this time the Tengu let loose all of his spiritual energy, burning his own life force in an attempt to strengthen his attack against Li Jian. “Burning your life force? Bring out all your tricks then. Show me if you are worthy of standing in front of me.”

The yokai lord let out a large roar and began gathering up a spiritual spear made up of a few hundred years of his life as well as the lives of all those he had absorbed before. “But after this attack, I will be here still while you will be dead. Burning my life force is worth the reward.” The Tengu laughed before launching his hand forward, sending the spiritual sword towards him. Li Jian simply held out the point of his Void King sword out towards the Tengu’s spear. The spear would hit his sword point on but the spear exploded and dissipated in a violate explosion of spiritual essence. The Tengu began backing away once he saw that Li Jian still stood there. “Yokai, you have broken the rules of the pact. Any who can shall punish you with their might.” Li Jian activated the void sword arts and sent a massive spike of his spiritual energy into the sword he carried. With a single gesture, he struck out and sent the tremendous energy of his sword arts rushing towards the Tengu.

The Tengu found himself unable to move suddenly as the aura of the attack suppressed his asura inner force. His inner sea at that moment was forced down by the utter sheer force of the opposing Dao force. He could only stare at Li Jian as the attack came closer. For the first time in its life, it felt a trickle of a very human feeling crawl along his spine; fear.

The sword strike struck the Tengu, cracking his crow mask in half to reveal a brutal face with a ghostly white skin and hellish fangs. Without a sound, the Tengu fell apart in the middle, his body split completely in half by the power of the attack. The death of the Tengu Lord made the yokai he had summoned with his own blood shriek out in horrible pain as their very existence began to be ripped out of this realm, their bodies being sucked out by a small round black vortex that appeared inside of them. With a horrific scream, the battlefield suddenly was emptied of yokai as well as their bodies. Immediately in the aftermath, the twelve paladins looked at him. Their cultivation levels had already been crippled by the attack they had taken earlier from the Tengu Lord, their bodies broken and barely able to stand. Li Jian looked at them with pity. Given more time, the twelve of them could have transcended to a greater level. He saw that the various soldiers who were still alive stared at him with awe. He could not let this happen.

Raising a single finger, he launched a spark from his fingertip that fired off into thousands of smaller ones, each of them flying towards a conscious soldier or Paladin or anyone in the vicinity. The tiny glowing spark would enter their minds as Li Jian painted a different scenario in their heads. In the minds of thousands, what had happened was the sacrifice of the Pontiff in a forbidden power that also took the cultivation energies of the twelve paladins and destroyed the Tengu Lord. The death of the Tengu Lord had caused a massive backlash that killed the yokai that had run rampant. With almost everyone now unconscious, he dropped down to retrieve a small black orb from the corpse of the Tengu Lord. As soon as he took the black orb, the body of the yokai began to dissipate into black ash that sank into the ground.

He absorbed the soul orb of the Tengu Lord, a power enough yokai had a soul orb that would allow them to come back to life if they were killed. By taking the soul orb and placing it in his own spiritual galaxy to trap it there he had also gained a powerful servant that began to be purified by the Dao essence inside of the sword deity. All universal beings such as deities and true demons were composed of an essence. A yokai had asura essence while deities had divine essence. A deity can be corrupted by enough asura essence but a yokai can also be purified with enough divine essence. The preconditions for such a matter relied on killing the physical body of the universal being. For Li Jian, the fact that this yokai was a tengu lord also made it easier for him. A tengu was a legendary swordsman demon, and inside the inner galaxy of the sword deity the tengu was slowly but surely purified from his asura essence.

Just as he was about to fly back to where he had left Fu Rong, time itself froze. Only Li Jian was still able to move, and he could sense a slightly shake as a bright light materialized in front of him. A human figure made of golden light stepped out of a small crack in the air and floated down until they were face to face. “Sword Deity, I told you that you cannot just make a move like this. The balance has been tilted. You have slain a yokai.” This was the Universal Dao, or the Will of the Universe. He looked at the battlefield and shook his head. “Master Dao, it was not me who broke the pact. The yokai had been influencing mortals to free himself from his confinement here. How did a yokai get sealed in this world in the first place?”