Chapter 455 — The Array Master of the Western Frontier
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 3 of 4
As the saying goes, when the chess player meets his match and the general meets his talent, I should like to paint a picture for you, as a settlement of the mutual admiration between us. " The stone walls around them shifted in ever denser, ever more staggered array. The cube-prison that Yun City had become transformed too swiftly; every step within it held profound mathematical structures.
The mathematical structures of those stones had become the structures of arrays; the stones of the outer layer that no longer moved had already become tier upon tier of killing arrays, binding them fast, while the stones of the inner layers, ceasing one after another to move, likewise became killing arrays. One killing array nested within another, leaving them ever less chance of escape, and once the last layer of killing array was laid, it would become a trap of absolute death.
To move was death; not to move was death as well. Shen Mu chose to stand where he was, lifting his brush and splashing ink, his strokes flying as he painted with all speed.
Pillar after pillar and beam after beam pressed steadily toward them; the array evolved without pause, until at last it came to their fronts and their backs.
Having evolved to the end, the array became six walls that squeezed inward toward the center, and on the six stone walls the blocks bulged and advanced, booming and thundering.
At last the six walls crashed together with a tremendous roar, and a force of immense solidity burst forth; layer upon layer of arrays on the outer perimeter activated, and rune marks on countless stones lit up, driving the six walls into a terrifying crushing pressure.
Beneath that thunderous collision, the whole three-dimensional Yun City shook and trembled!
Under such a blow, to say nothing of masters like Shen Mu and the dragon-qilin—even a sect-master-level master of the Divine Bridge realm could not have escaped death! "Good, very good!
" Yu Bochuan's voice came, clapping and laughing, in admiration: "An Array Master is truly an Array Master. This array of hers is peerless under heaven, matchless by any. The Youmo Sect Master may be full of cunning schemes, but before the Array Master's array he can only die in perfect submission, without half a word of complaint.
" A woman's voice rose, cool and even: "Young Master Yu flatters me.
I have heard that this Sect Master Shen once crossed swords with the Poison Master.
Mu Yingxue has always been proud and haughty, yet she was defeated by him—so there must be something extraordinary about the man. But he has spent too much of his mind on poisons, and in the arts of calculation and arrays he falls far short of me. I reckoned against one who did not reckon against me, and thus I was able to trap him, and force him to bow his head and submit to the blade.
" Yu Bochuan laughed heartily: "He thought Yun City could only overpower him by brute force, so he charged in to flaunt his might, never knowing it was merely the Array Master's stratagem of luring the enemy deep—and so he fell into the ambush. Array Master, Poison Master, Sword Master: the three wonders of our Western Land are each of them truly beyond the common. Array Master, pray unmake the array; I still wish to see the picture Sect Master Shen left me before his death. " A chiming and clanking of stone came without cease; the vast array structure of Yun City slowly came undone, blocks of giant stone sinking into the earth, and houses and palaces rising slowly from the ground, until before long Yun City had recovered its former state, leaving only a single stone wall upon the spot where Shen Mu, the dragon-qilin, and the others had stood—and on that wall hung a painting.