Sage Monarch

“That’s not a magical sword, it’s a sword bone!”

The sword energy radiating out of the magical treasure bag wasn't coming from a sword, but a piece of bone. It was white as snow, pulsing with a frigid energy, and covered with complex designs. Sword Seventeen reached out and grabbed it, and as he swished it through the air in front of him, dazzling light shone out from it and the designs on its surface resolved into lines of script. There were numerous types, including bird script, seal script, hieroglyphic script, and even immortal script. [1]

There were thousands of them, but they were all variations of the same character: sword 剑.

The host of sword characters flowed almost like a river. Even more interesting was that they weren’t carved into the surface of the bone, but existed there naturally. Each one carried different meanings, including different aspects of sword will, sword energy, sword divinity, and sword hearts.

“It’s a thousand swords bone!” Sword Seventeen exclaimed in delight. “According to the stories, if someone cultivates the dao of the sword to the ultimate level and gains the most profound enlightenment of sword will, their body will become sharper than a sword. Sword energy will become a part of their bones and eventually form sword characters.

“If I absorbed this sword bone, my sword technique would reach a much higher level. At the very least, I would become ten times stronger than I am now. What a pity there's only one piece. This obviously came from some consummate sword cultivator who passed away in meditation, but there should be a complete corpse. With all the bones together, it would be a ten-thousand swords skeleton. If I got something like that I could easily kill enemies three or four levels higher than me. In other words, second and third order Demi-Immortals. And those in the fourth order might be beyond my ability to kill, but they also wouldn’t be able to kill me.” [2]

“A sword bone…” Yang Qi said, sighing in admiration. Even just looking at the numerous sword characters, he could imagine what enlightenment this bone could bring regarding the dao of the sword.

Of course, it wouldn’t do Yang Qi much good. He didn't cultivate sword techniques or focus on ‘sharpness’, but rather on the imposing strength to crush everything. The Sovereign Lord existed above all creation, controlled the cosmos, and inhaled and exhaled suns and moons.

WHOOSH!

Sword Seventeen absorbed the bone, and a moment later his cultivation base pulsed with the aura of a heavenly sword. Instantly, his sword will, sword energy, sword divinity, and sword techniques all became more profound.

To Yang Qi’s senses, Sword Seventeen seemed to suddenly shrink down into a point like the tip of a sword. If Sword Seventeen wanted, he could focus all of his power and energy down into that single point and use it to conquer every obstacle. Not even Yang Qi’s Hand of the One God could do something like that. In terms of precise attack power, none of Yang Qi’s energy arts could compare to Sword Seventeen’s.

Yang Qi’s only viable tactic when facing a powerful opponent was to bash through the person’s defenses. But Sword Seventeen could become the razor-sharp tip of a sword and slice through such defenses.

“Alright, Junior Brother, I need to go find more sword bones. These things are perfect for the sword-based physique I cultivate. Even with just the enlightenment from this single bone, I should be able to break through to the Demi-Immortal level as soon as we get out of the Myriad Worlds Monarch Chart.”

“Alright. Let’s get going!”

There was nothing else in the magical treasure bags that could give them any immediate benefit, so the two of them continued exploring the world junction in the hopes of finding treasures.

The deeper they got, the more Yang Qi realized that the space here was unpredictable and erratic. Sometimes it was as soft as water, and other times it was as hard as steel. Even Demi-Immortals who tried to travel through places like this would have difficulty and would have to skirt certain areas.

A few times, Yang Qi was speeding along rapidly only to run into an extremely solid, mountain-like expression of space. The mere impact caused his God Legion Paradise to tremble violently.

Occasionally, he would find himself in mazes of spatial hardness, which he had to navigate with great difficulty. Thankfully, he had his primeval godworm, which was strong enough to eat through the walls of such labyrinths.

Hours passed without a single treasure appearing, nor any other cultivators. However, the world junction was so large that even if millions upon millions of cultivators were present, they would be like grains of sand tossed into a river.

Thankfully, the journey itself was beneficial to Yang Qi, and especially his true energy. As the primeval godworm ate the space around it, it caused Yang Qi’s sea of energy to expand and his God Legion Paradise to grow more stable.

His twenty-eight imperial snakecharms also grew stronger. In fact, he was now convinced that with enough true energy, and the help of the snakecharms, he could actually fight an enemy more than ten levels higher than himself.

Like ordinary magical treasures, true immortal items were limited in power; if they were imbued with too much true energy they would explode. And when that happened, the immortal motes in them would disappear.

The imperial snakecharms were different, though. As long as they had enough power, they could be used to stop immortals.

The strength of King Heaven-Devourer was beyond question. Right now, the issue wasn’t weakness on the part of the item, but rather the fact that Yang Qi didn’t have enough true energy. If he could awaken all eight hundred forty million particles within him, he would be on the level of a prime paragon elder in the Titan Emperor Collegium.

Roar!

As Yang Qi and Sword Seventeen were traversing a spatial labyrinth, they suddenly heard a roar coming from some location an unknown distance away. There was something about the frequency of the sound that caused Yang Qi’s primeval godworm to shiver, almost as if it were the familiar sound of its mother calling to it.

“Another primeval godworm!” Yang Qi said. “But it's a lot stronger than mine.”

Yang Qi’s godworm was no longer a larva. It was already in the second stage of its life cycle and as strong as a Greater Demi-Immortal, or perhaps even slightly stronger than that. However, it still had a lot of growing left to do.

From the fluctuations of the roar just now, he was certain that this was at least a fifth stage godworm, something so powerful that not even dozens of demon-devils or humans of a similar level could stand up to it.

“Come on, let’s go check it out,” Sword Seventeen said. “We’re too far into the world junction to head back now. Either we pull this off spectacularly, or we die trying!”

Yang Qi was aware that they had reached the point where finding a path back would be too difficult. The best thing would be to continue onward and find a way out. After all, neither he nor Sword Seventeen had a huge desire to return to the Myriad Worlds Monarch Chart. The only thing that awaited them there was eventual death.

Yang Qi immediately called on the power of his godworm to send out the twenty-eight talismans, which transformed into a primal-chaos elder-snake. With that snake, he could travel about much easier, albeit at the cost of a lot of true energy.

“The energy fluctuations are coming from just up ahead.” The primal-chaos elder-snake shot forward at incredible speed, as though it were a part of the primal-chaos itself.

Before long, they arrived at an enormous plane of existence, a vast land the color of flame, like an enormous nest hanging there in the space of the world junction. And in the middle of the nest was a huge godworm belching fire.

It wasn’t an ordinary fire, but rather a peak manifestation of the magical laws of space called space flame. It was immensely powerful and could destroy anything it touched. Compared to flame like that, even the strongest cultivator would be like an ant.

As Yang Qi looked around, he saw that there were other individuals present. 

There were Great Sages and Demi-Immortals, thousands of them, most of them standing within spell formations. They were clearly besieging this fiery plane in the hopes of capturing the godworm. Among them were big shots similar to King Langya and Grand Emperor Rich-Lush, who sent their minions into the fight with no regard for their lives.

“So many experts!” Sword Seventeen exclaimed. “I've heard of some of these people. There’s Emperor Diabolo and Lady Motherwing, and that's Empress Netherdark and Guru Army-Smasher. All of these people are famous in the Myriad Worlds Monarch Chart, and here they are working together to try to capture that primeval godworm.” [3]

They were all famous people who Yang Qi couldn’t hope to fight directly. He had only been able to deal with Grand Emperor Rich-Lush and King Langya because they had been weak and injured, unable to muster more than one one-hundredth of their full fighting capacity.

But no one in this new host of experts was even hurt.

In addition to the enormous godworm in the flaming plane, there were also a whole host of eggs, a mountain of roughly a hundred. Each of those eggs represented the possibility of a larva, therefore everyone present was going all out to succeed here.

“That godworm is so strong!” Yang Qi said. “My heart goes cold just thinking about how much power it has in its substructure. However, it seems weak. I wonder why?”

“Probably because it just laid all those eggs,” Sword Seventeen said. “Normally speaking, these people wouldn’t dare to make a move on a godworm nest like this.”

---

1. The types of script mentioned here are real, with the exception of immortal script. Seal script is an ancient style of writing that was used mostly by scholars and the government. In this case, I'm fairly certain the author intends “bird script” to mean a fanciful type of calligraphy, as opposed to “bird-worm seal script”, which is a subcategory of seal script. As for hieroglyphic script, that is even more ancient and refers to the Chinese type, not the Egyptian type. Here are some examples of each: bird script, seal script, hieroglyphic script.

2. Because this came up in editing, I thought I would mention Sword Seventeen mentioning that he could kill enemies three or four levels higher. I can’t remember the last time his actual fighting ability was referenced, but I the last I remember he was low-level Great Sage who could fight top Great Sages. I think that jumping a “tier” in fighting ability (Great Sage to Demi-Immortal), is a much bigger deal than fighting someone within the same tier. Also, note that there is always a difference between fighting someone in a given level, and killing someone in a given level. If I missed anything in my analysis, feel free to let me know in the comments

3. Emperor Diabolo: no, it’s no typo. A “diabolo” is a Chinese yo-yo. Info here.

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