Chapter 197 — A Gathering of Masters
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 3 of 4
The city gates stood wide open, and two companies marched out, drawing up to left and right of the gate, Primordial Qi behind them condensing into phantoms of gods and demons—some divine, some demonic.
"Experts of the Celestial Realm. " Shen Mu steadied himself.
Experts of the Celestial Realm could already manifest gods and demons, and the two companies before Daxiang's gates held as many as sixty or seventy of them!
"This display still isn't grand enough. " Yue Qinghong breathed a sigh of relief and laughed.
"When our Imperial Academy examines the scholars of the realm, the examination before Qingyang Hall alone dispatches ninety-nine Celestial Realm experts to test the candidates.
The rebels have only this handful of Celestial Realm experts—not enough for our Imperial Academy to bother killing. " Those dozens of Celestial Realm experts kept their eyes on their noses and their noses on their hearts, deaf to her words. They passed through the gates and saw two more ranks of Celestial Realm experts standing along both sides of the long avenue, one every ten paces, stretching from the gate all the way to the city center with no end in sight—likely more than a thousand!
Yue Qinghong's heart quaked, and she dared not speak again.
Shen Mu remained fairly composed; the Youmo Cult too had several hundred Celestial Realm experts, so it was no wonder to him. "This rebellion involves not only the sects, but also nations that had already been destroyed.
" Imperial Teacher Jingping said calmly, "Back then, to win hearts, I did not exterminate the experts of those nations to the last man, and so they have harbored treachery anew. Besides the sects and the nations, there are also the great clans.
The turmoil of the great clans is no small matter either.
" Shen Mu reckoned it over: above the Celestial Realm lay the Life and Death Realm, and above that, the Divine Bridge Realm. With so many Celestial Realm experts here, there must be no few Life and Death Realm experts as well—likely a hundred or more—while Divine Bridge Realm experts probably numbered a dozen or more. A dozen or more figures of Cult Master rank, plus experts from hidden holy lands like Little Yujing—on this journey Imperial Teacher Jingping was delivering his own head to be chopped off.
As for Shen Mu and his companions, they had all but severed their own heads and hung them at their belts. The experts lining the street were solemn and silent, making no sound at all; only the footsteps of Shen Mu's party echoed. In this city there was no one left but the rebels' divine-ability practitioners.
More than that, Daxiang City held no buildings at all: every house had been razed, uprooted together with its foundations, leaving the city bare. Only tens of thousands of soldiers remained, arrayed in various formations, silent as the grave, wordlessly watching them.
To walk forward under the gaze of tens of thousands of divine-ability practitioners was an immense psychological burden; even Shen Wanyun, veteran of countless battlefields, found his palms trembling beyond his own control.
Shen Mu had seen gods before—he had even pissed on a divine statue—so he remained fairly at ease; he felt the pressure but did not lose his composure. The city center, too, had been remade.
The city lord's mansion was nowhere to be seen, replaced by a lofty platform with thousands of steps, rising dozens of zhang above the ground, far taller than the gate towers, like a small mountain peak. When Shen Mu drew near, his heart stirred slightly: this platform did not resemble a small mountain peak—it was a mountain peak. Someone had hauled a mountain here to crush the old city lord's mansion, then cut the mountain into its present shape!
They came to the foot of the steps and ascended them one after another, walking neither hurriedly nor slowly. At last they reached the summit.