Chapter 1775 — A Song Piercing the Long Wind

As the Salvation Golden Ship flew onward, points of light kept flashing around it and catching up with the ship at tremendous speed, and beside Lan Yutian there appeared one divine-artifact Lan Yutian after another, each exactly like him.

These divine-artifact Lan Yutians had been sent out under his own control to search for the other blood-sacrifice altars, and now that the altars had been found and a great battle was at hand, Lan Yutian recalled these artifacts to strengthen himself. Among the three of them his cultivation was the weakest, far inferior to Shang Jun and Shen Mu.

Yet his foundation was the most solid, one of the most solid under heaven, his Dao foundation the most stable, and with the Salvation Golden Ship in hand and dozens of divine artifacts beside him, though he would face deadly peril in this battle, he was not without power to fight.

The Salvation Golden Ship flew faster and faster, soon passing beyond the borders of Jingping to the frontier of the Yuan Realm, and ahead lay a place called Flywheel Fort. The Yuan Realm could be called the most flourishing of the myriad heavens and worlds, but because Jingping existed, the men and resources of the Yuan Realm had all been drawn away by Jingping, so that the remoter lands failed to prosper all the more.

Flywheel Fort was such a place.

It was called Flywheel Fort because six heavens stood there, forming the shape of a wheel in the frontier sky of the Yuan Realm, with stars strung between the six heavens like spokes radiating from a hub.

In the Longhan, Crimson Ming, and Shanghuang eras an ancient fortress stood here, a bridgehead with which the Heavenly Court guarded the Yuan Realm, a landing ground for its great armies when rebellion broke out in the Yuan Realm.

It had been abandoned since the end of the Shanghuang era, and in the Kaihuang era Yan Yunxi and Bai Yuqiong once matched their magic here.

Yan Yunxi, disguised as a man, was Kaihuang's Celestial Master Zixi, versed in all manner of learning, and the two women tested each other here in the art of formations, with the result that Celestial Master Zixi lost by a hair, yet from that time Bai Yuqiong loved Yan Yunxi, and the two exchanged tokens of pledged love.

The Heavenly Court of that time could be called the most enlightened of courts, with much exchange between the mighty of the Kaihuang era and the mighty of the Court, and little resistance to reform. After Yan Yunxi and Bai Yuqiong left, however, Flywheel Fort was utterly abandoned and left without human trace, for the two celestial masters had left behind too many formations there, great and small and of every kind, turning it into a perilous ground thick with killing intent, which naturally no one would approach. Within Flywheel Fort formations stood thick as a forest, their patterns and chains interwoven, and though twenty-four thousand years had passed since the duel of Yan and Bai, the power of the formations had not waned at all.

At this moment one great formation in the fort had been activated, turning all within it into an ocean of trees, a forest in which every tree was a living sprite that could tear itself from the earth and wield branch and root as blades to slay its foes, with gnarled limbs like dragons and pythons to strangle any who entered.

Amid the myriad trees one tree stood exceedingly tall, far surpassing the rest, and that mighty old tree had grown into human form, its crown small like the unkempt hair of an ugly man, its body huge and its head small, the crown not so thick as its trunk. Around this strange tree stood other tree giants, great and small.

All here seemed as it should be, for Yan Yunxi and Bai Yuqiong both possessed fearsome attainment in the art of formations, evolving all manner of gods and demons to increase the power of their formations, and many such formations remained in Flywheel Fort.

This formation contained the art of spirit-summoning, which was not a power unique to the Western Lands, for the True Heaven Palace of the Western Lands itself came from the Heavenly Court. Nor did the art of spirit-summoning come from the Heavenly Court, but from the Kaihuang era, as one of the fruits of Kaihuang's reforms.

That treant looked little different from the other treants, only larger in size, yet on close inspection the fabric of its flesh was wholly unlike theirs. Its body was not built of formation patterns, but carved of infinitesimal runes, exceedingly fine, as if baptized and honed through countless years.

One could even see in its flesh traces left by the great calamity that destroys universes, the erosion of its chaotic qi leaving unhealable scars upon his Dao body.

He was the Palace Master of Long Wind Palace among the Seventy-two Palaces of Yujing City in the Ancestral Court, and though his flesh was not so ancient as that of the Lingguan Palace Master, in whom innate gods were born, it was nonetheless extraordinary. More terrible still, his Dao tree and Dao fruit were descending together with him.

His Dao fruit was unlike all others, for it hung directly within the crown atop his head.

The Palace Master of Long Wind Palace had attained the Dao as one of a different kind, a divine tree cultivated to godhood, enduring wind and rain and the honing of every calamity until his great Dao was entrusted to the void and he became an Attainer.

His path to attainment could be called legend, and when he became an Attainer even the Master of Miluo Palace was stirred to appear in person and guide him, saying: "Rather than entrust your great Dao to the void to achieve a Dao tree, better to entrust yourself to the void. " Receiving the guidance of the Master of Miluo Palace, the Palace Master of Long Wind Palace was suddenly enlightened, and so made himself his Dao tree and entrusted himself to the void, becoming a unique Attainer.

His flesh was his Dao tree, his Dao fruit hung upon the head of his body, and the perils he faced in passing the apocalyptic calamity were far less than those faced by other Attainers, an achievement envied even by the young masters of Miluo Palace.

"My roots have not yet fully descended.

" The Palace Master of Long Wind Palace hid his light and made himself look no different from the other treants, thinking silently: "Yet it will not take much longer, two years at most, before I fully descend.

Once I have fully descended, this Seventeenth Era will be within grasp.

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" Boom! A golden light flew in, faster than light itself, smashing straight through every formation in Flywheel Fort, crushing all the formations to ruin under its weight.

Within that golden light was a ship that struck the Palace Master of Long Wind Palace full on and tore the great tree up by the roots.

His roots had not fully descended, but many had already emerged, driven deep into the frontier soil of the Yuan Realm. Now some of these roots were ripped out and some torn apart, and the dreadful impact pinned him to the ground and dragged him along beneath the hull, gouging a deep trench in the earth, blazing with fire and crackling with lightning.

With a howl the golden ship crushed him onward out of the Yuan Realm and tore through the sky, while aboard the ship the divine-artifact Lan Yutians stood in staggered ranks, each urging his powers, all of them the Five Tai divine powers, pouring down from the ship and blasting into the body of the Palace Master of Long Wind Palace.

At that very moment, Shang Jun stepped into the cloth shop and threw himself into the painting. Lan Yutian had seized the initiative and, without further thought, hurled every manner of power recklessly at the Palace Master grinding and dragging beneath the hull.

Though his strength fell short of Shen Mu and Shang Jun and his battle experience was far inferior to theirs, his roots were so solid that the subtlety of his arts surpassed theirs.