Chapter 1104 — A Fame That Dazzles Through the Ages

The Nether Lord sneered on and on, waiting to watch Dragon Qilin make a fool of himself.

How frightful was the power of the Heavenly River Navy's battle formations?

This navy was vast beyond counting, a thousand ships and ten thousand vessels, and its formations had been devised by the finest formation masters in all of Heaven, framed according to the fleshly constitution and the rune-dao of ancient gods, god after god. Even a man of the Nether Lord's strength would shatter at a touch and fall at a single blow beneath the might of those formations.

This fellow surnamed Long, with a qilin's head on his shoulders, was throwing his formations together every which way—he was certain to take a grievous loss!

Yet though Dragon Qilin had boasted boldly, his heart was not wholly at ease.

He was no great hand at mustering troops and laying formations.

He had learned a great many things at Shen Mu's side, but Shen Mu's learning was too vast and too varied; some things Shen Mu could master down to the last particular, and Dragon Qilin could not. "Lord Sect Master, what do we do?

" he asked Shen Mu in secret, where the man hid within the halo of light.

Shen Mu gathered his spirits and, with the remnant of his divine consciousness, taught him how to direct the masters within the palace so as to draw out the utmost power of the Azure Sky Canopy of Colored Glass.

Though Dragon Qilin knew little of the way formations shift, he traced the gourd's shape as he went: he mustered the Soaring Serpent deities and the Dark Turtle deities of the palace and ordered them into the twenty-eight heavens of the Azure Sky Canopy of Colored Glass, there to knit formation upon formation and guard treasure upon treasure within it. Their formations were exactly such as to bring out the full might of those treasures, and their defense was firm besides. Most crucially, the treasures within the Azure Sky Canopy of Colored Glass were many and of every kind, and the formations Dragon Qilin laid down managed, in truth, to fit the ground and the occasion—according to the differing natures of the treasures, he arrayed formations each unlike the last!

Within that canopy stood several thousand strange treasures from the Ancestral Court, and Dragon Qilin actually laid down several thousand formations, no two of them alike!

Crown Prince Youming was already prostrate with admiration; and though the Nether Lord found Dragon Qilin thoroughly distasteful, seeing the man's skill at mustering troops and setting formations, he could not but admire his learning. The principles of those formations, their very structures—even he could not make them out; his two eyes were blind to them.

Just as Dragon Qilin finished laying his formations, the Heavenly River Navy came on.

Yet from whatever direction the navy came, Dragon Qilin dispatched troops and officers as easily as breathing, sending out a few palace deities to lay formations, and held the navy off with ease. The might of the Azure Sky Canopy of Colored Glass was fierce beyond measure; though the folk of the Black Tortoise Heaven Palace were far from a match for the Heavenly River Navy, once the navy's tower ships drove into the Black Tortoise Heaven Palace and rushed into heaven after heaven, they saw treasure after treasure of dreadful power give off wave upon wave of dao-patterns, which came crashing down upon the tower ships.

When that dread tremor reached the ships, the tower ships broke apart into fragments and the gods aboard perished in droves—not one of them lived.

The Heavenly River Navy attacked again and again, losing men and officers, and could not force its way into the Black Tortoise Heaven Palace.

At once the navy's commander wheeled his formation about and attacked anew, and Dragon Qilin was thrown into confusion, not knowing what to do. "Pi, divide each of the twenty-eight heavens' canopies of the Azure Sky Canopy of Colored Glass into three hundred and sixty celestial degrees.

" Shen Mu's divine consciousness came to him, instructing him: "Rotate the first heaven eight degrees, turn the second heaven three degrees widdershins, rotate the third heaven sixty-two degrees. . .

" Dragon Qilin hurried to the pillar of the Azure Sky Canopy of Colored Glass and bowed low; and lo, heaven upon heaven of the canopy revolved, each on its own, and the various treasures within that treasure, and the Soaring Serpent goddesses and Dark Turtle deities who guarded them, shifted at once, each moving off in a different direction!

The navy's commander had framed his formation to counter the guardian formations that held each treasure; now the formations changed and the treasures were traded about, throwing the whole of the Heavenly River Navy into chaos, with grievous losses.

The commander came himself to attack, and Dragon Qilin sent Crown Prince Youming out to meet him.

Crown Prince Youming, though honest and simple of heart, was an Emperor's Throne powerhouse of a cultivation rarely seen in the world, and with the blood of the Dark Emperor and the Martial Emperor in his veins his fighting strength was frightful; within a few exchanges he grievously wounded the navy's commander.

The ships of the Heavenly River Navy swarmed in, fighting to the death to hold Crown Prince Youming off, and at last dragged their commander back. Dragon Qilin sighed inwardly.

"If the Lord Sect Master himself were wielding this Azure Sky Canopy of Colored Glass," he thought, "I fear he would wipe out this whole Heavenly River Navy with ease! " For Shen Mu's guidance in laying formations was, after all, a step slow. Crown Prince Youming returned in triumph, beside himself with joy.

"Brother Dragon, you are truly a scholar of Heaven and man! " he laughed.

"This skill of yours has indeed shaken the world!

You would be fit to serve as the Heavenly Court's Heavenly Master! " Dragon Qilin hastily disclaimed the honor.

"The Heavenly River Navy has taken a beating, but they will hardly let it go at that.

For now it is only the navy that bars our way north; the rest of Heaven's armies have not yet come up. We must not be careless.

" Crown Prince Youming could not praise him enough, and the Nether Lord, hearing it, was quite put out, though he had to grant that the qilin-head's abilities were indeed beyond the human and into the holy.

"A disciple of the East Emperor? Strange—I have never laid eyes on the man.

" The Nether Lord's gaze flickered. He thought: "I know every one of the East Emperor's princes and princesses of power and position, and my friendship with them is not poor—yet I have never seen this fellow.

With such ability he should not be nameless in the Azure Dragon Heaven Palace, and yet his name does not show. The East Emperor, it seems, is a deep and calculating one as well.

.

. " With Dragon Qilin here, commanding the Azure Sky Canopy of Colored Glass, the Nether Lord was left altogether useless, and he ground his teeth in hatred of the man, with never a chance to trick the canopy away. That strange treasure was the purpose of his coming.

Crown Prince Youming was a man without a scheming bone in his body; the Dark Emperor of the North's treasure was seldom shown to outsiders, yet the crown prince had brought hosts of dubious friends to view it several times over, and so it was hardly surprising that Yin Chaojin and Wei Suifeng had set their hearts on it. The Black Tortoise Heaven Palace pressed on northward, yet outside, the Heavenly River Navy still clung to them like shadow to shape, though it did not attack again; only its officers kept urging Crown Prince Youming to halt and return to the Heavenly Court.

Suddenly the navy's ranks parted, and an army thrust in from the flank, passing beyond the navy's tower-ship formations to the front, where god after mighty god sized up the Azure Sky Canopy of Colored Glass's formations.

Crown Prince Youming's face changed greatly. "The Divine Martial Guards of the Heavenly Court!