Chapter 1050 — The West Emperor's Perilous Predicament
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 2 of 5
They obeyed the tally, not the man; they acknowledged the Heavenly Emperor, not the Heavenly Worthies.
Back in the Longhan Era, Wei Suifeng had led a single Feather Forest Army of a hundred thousand gods and demons and wiped out the Longbo Kingdom — and that was when the Longbo Kingdom had held the Empress trapped in Guixu for years on end!
There was much trickery hidden in that affair, and the Empress in those days was not the fearsome thing she later became, yet even so the fighting strength of the Ten Guards was plain for all to see.
To move the Ten Guards required the Ancient God Heavenly Emperor's personal order — and for the Ancient God to give that order, the Ten Heavenly Worthies had to reach agreement among themselves.
Otherwise they would all be scrambling to ride the Heavenly Emperor's fleshly body at once, and there would be nothing but chaos. If the Ten Heavenly Worthies were at war with one another, then none of them could move the Ten Guards!
Yet the Ten Guards had now been moved. Therefore this could only be a trap to lure the snake from its hole!
"This is a trap aimed at the Ancient Gods! The schism and civil war among the Ten Heavenly Worthies are only the surface — the truth is a lure to draw out the snake!
" Shen Mu frowned and said decisively: "If any Ancient God fails to see this and believes the Ten Heavenly Worthies have truly fallen apart, then he is a dead man beyond all doubt! " Suddenly the Heavenly Dragon Palanquin jolted slightly: they had come to the Western Pole Heaven. Just then the Heavenly Dragon's voice came from outside the carriage: "Heavenly Worthy, we can go no farther ahead.
The gods and demons stationed here have sealed the road!
" Shen Mu stepped out of the palanquin and looked forward. Tens of thousands of gods and demons, a whole army, were encircling the artifact Yutianzun and building the Heavenly Rampart City.
The towering walls were a magnificent sight, joining earth to sky. The Western Pole Heaven is rich in metal, and this Heavenly Rampart City was a divine city forged of pure metal, its height terrifying — taller than the mountains of the Western Pole Heaven — and its thickness no less terrifying.
Countless gods and demons cut their wrists and let divine blood leap from the wounds to spatter the metal walls, while others skilled in talismans flew along the walls with great brushes like rafters, dipping them in divine and demonic blood, writing talismans upon the wall.
Rune after rune was branded into the ramparts, some shedding golden light, some crimson. And within the Heavenly Rampart City the alchemical furnaces of warship after warship were lit, and enormous bronze beasts spewed flame downward for dozens of li, lifting the vessels slowly into the sky. Aboard the warships hundreds of gods and demons rushed to and fro, donning divine armor and taking up divine weapons, forming great formations at the bellowed commands of their officers.
In the city itself, beast after beast strained to haul huge cloud-carts toward the walls, carts heaped with divine weapons.
Along both sides of the streets, countless alchemists fired up pill furnaces so vast that a dozen men with arms linked could not encircle them; beneath the furnaces divine dragons breathed fire, and the Heavenly Court's alchemists each plied his own art, refining pills like men possessed, while pill boys kept feeding herbs of every kind into the furnaces. The finished elixirs were carried up to the walls, to heal the wounded when the fighting came.
Watching it all from afar, Shen Mu knew the Heavenly Court had a million troops quartered in the Western Pole Heaven, and now the war machine had been set in motion; the speed at which the Heavenly Rampart City was raised was terrifying.
Rotten as the Heavenly Court might be, that speed of mobilization filled him with profound dread!