Chapter 1756 — I Am No Sage: A Certain Gentleman

"Long ago, Sect Master Shen showed me kindness, and his wife Ling Yuxiu looked after me often at Wendao Academy. So I left Sect Master Shen a one-percent flaw, that he might escape from the Dao-Burial Divine Coffin. I left only one percent. I never thought Taichu would turn that one percent into a hundred. What was he thinking?"

Xing An passed silently through the Lanfeng Valley with his box, and came to Jingping.

The battle at Lanfeng Valley was savage beyond measure.

The line had been drawn out to an immense length. With Lanfeng Valley at its heart, it cut almost straight across every divine city in western Jingping, south to north, and Jingping had marshaled every army it could marshal; every kind of great weapon had been brought to bear.

Even Lady Tianyin had led the few demon gods of the Tianyin Realm into this Lanfeng campaign.

The two sides fought seesaw battle after seesaw battle around city after divine city: first the two armies faced off outside the walls, formations shifting and breaking, each storming the other's arrays, flesh and blood flying.

Then they broke into the cities, and the street fighting within the divine cities was bloodier still, every alley heaped with corpses.

Divine city after divine city was battered into ruin and came tumbling out of the sky, trailing billows of smoke.

The armies of Jingping and Wuyou Township had all taken the field, and from the rear ever more newly built cities were being sent up to the front, escorted by tower ship after tower ship, and those tower ships were crammed with every kind of divine weapon and blade.

Once inside, Xing An saw that Jingping had already gone onto a war footing: every supervising foundry was set working, the mines were dug day and night, and it was no longer the peaceful scene of former years, no longer fit for him to pursue his learning in quiet.

On the way he came upon the Sun Guardians and Moon Guardians of Xuandu locked in slaughter with Jingping's own Sun Guardians and Moon Guardians, the two sides battling bloodily on the ground and in the air, and it was most savage.

He came too upon the Buddhist soldiers of the Buddhist Realm led by Tathagata Zhankong, holding pass after pass in the rear of Lanfeng Valley and trading blows with the Heavenly Court's small raiding parties that had broken through the valley, so that great Buddha after great Buddha from the Buddhist Realm died under a welter of blades.

Xing An frowned. "These monks..."

He did not linger. Jingping was the holy land of reform and held a great store of knowledge, and he had no wish to take part in these battles that were none of his concern.

The bond between Xing An and Jingping was one of mutual use: Jingping needed his knowledge and wisdom to drive its reform, and he had repaid Jingping with many of his own findings.

And besides, he was not a man of Jingping. When he was born, Jingping did not yet exist; the nation had not yet been founded.

Some called him a sage who appeared once in five hundred years, but in his heart he had never thought so.

He was only a man seeking the dao.

On the road he met many more demon gods of the Heavenly Court charging deep into Jingping's heartland, burning, killing, and plundering wherever they went, but Xing An did not raise a hand; to him these were no more than passing clouds.

"When I reach Wendao Academy, if there is new work I will stay and study it; if Jingping falls, then I will leave. I go my own free and easy way." So he said to himself in silence.

Suddenly the corpse-aura ahead shot up to the heavens. Xing An gave a start and looked forward, and saw nine columns of unspeakably dense corpse-aura like pillars of black smoke, rising from below and shuddering violently in the sky.

Such overpowering corpse-aura Xing An had never seen in his life.

"In this troubled age monsters and demons come forth together, and many fine things worth collecting have appeared." He could not help feeling the thrill of the hunt.

He walked on, and saw ahead more than a thousand demon gods driving nine huge coffins on cloud chariots, coffins wound all over with chains, advancing eastward.

Among those demon gods there were few of any strength: only one blind old man was a powerhouse of the Imperial Throne, and one woman in white whose strength was barely worth a glance. To Xing An, none of it was of any account.

"Judging by the make of those coffins, they must be imperial coffins."

His heart stirred slightly and he looked back. What these people guarded must be the deep rear of Lanfeng Valley; several thousand li from here lay a few cities of the human race.

"None of my concern."

He was just about to go and seize the imperial coffins when suddenly, before the coffins, divine light and demonic light surged, and there, pouring toward them like a blanket over the sky, came the Heavenly Court's Divine Stratagem Left Guard and the army of the demon race.

"Form up!"

The woman in white raised her sword and cried in a loud voice, "Prepare to meet the enemy!"

The thousand-odd demon gods arrayed themselves in desperate haste; some of them were young, still carrying a certain childishness.

And the blind old man undid the chains on the nine imperial coffins, pushed back the lids, and bowed, saying, "Senior brothers, this is our last battle."

Xing An was doubtful. "These coffins look to be of the Shanghuang era. Can the nine of them hold the imperial corpses of Shanghuang Heaven Emperors? I have never yet had a Shanghuang Heaven Emperor in my collection..."

He had only just thought it when suddenly the box at his feet spread its six legs and left him, heading straight for the woman in white.

Xing An was dumbfounded. The box ran faster and faster, and soon rushed down the peak to the woman's side and nuzzled against her legs, very affectionate.

Seeing the box, the woman in white was both startled and delighted. She bent down to stroke it and murmur something to it, and the box hopped and capered with joy, greatly stirred.

Xing An walked up and saw that the woman was quiet and demure, sweet of face, with a pair of small dragon horns hidden in her hair; she must be of the dragon race.

"The Shanghuang Sword God?"

Xing An tilted his head and thought, then said, "No wonder you know my box so well. I have heard that in those years Sect Master Shen awakened my box and rode it back forty thousand years, and there met you."

"You are Xing An?"

Bai Qu'er was surprised. Stroking the box, she said, "In those years Shen Mu and I did indeed ride that box through a whole night's flight, and I am grateful to it for carrying us out of the Heavenly Court's pursuit."

Xing An nodded, walked to the Shanghuang imperial coffins, and peered inside. Doubtful, he said, "These Heaven Emperors have been dead no one knows how long, and now they have become corpse demons; it is only obsession at work. If you meet the Heavenly Court's Divine Stratagem Left Guard, you cannot possibly contend with them. The fighting strength of the Divine Stratagem Left Guard is comparable to a Heavenly Venerable. The obsession in your corpses will soon be shattered to powder, and even your corpses will not be preserved."

He shook his head, looked back at the thousand-odd Shanghuang gods, and shook his head again. "You cannot hold out a quarter of an hour. You will all die here."

Inside a coffin, a Shanghuang corpse sat up, ghost-fire glimmering deep in its eyes, corpse-aura spreading, and said in a ghastly voice, "We are already dead. What is there to fear?"

Xing An laughed despite himself. "This battle of yours is utterly pointless. You cannot hold them!"

Bai Qu'er stepped forward and said earnestly, "The reason the Divine Stratagem Left Guard and the Youdu demon gods march so urgently is that Jingping's Imperial Preceptor Jiang Baigui is pursuing them from the rear with a great army. If you can hold them for a single day, the Imperial Preceptor can bring his troops up..."