Chapter 1104 — A Fame That Dazzles Through the Ages
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 1 of 3
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.