Chapter 1686 — Jingping's World-Suppressing Artifact
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 2 of 5
When the tower-ships bearing artifact components reached the greatest foundry of all, the Divine Mechanism Foundry, dozens of deities had to join forces before a single component could be unloaded. It was here that Emperor Yiyue saw a giant divine artifact taking shape, tens of times more towering and vast than the altar of the Spirit-Energy Transfer Bridge, the greatest artifact the Celestial Court had ever built — magnificent beyond compare. She craned her neck to look up, and the shock in her heart was beyond all measure: the crest of this immensely intricate round wheel had already pierced the clouds, rising even higher than Jingping's Upper Capital, which stood upon the crown of the Primal Tree!
Multitudes of Jingping's deities, their primal spirits freed from their bodies, joined their powers to bear enormous components aloft into the clouds and set them into the wheel, while many more deities labored to join the runes into place. Vast as those components were, beside the wheel they seemed utterly minute.
"This must be the greatest marvel of a mighty vessel in the past twenty thousand years! " Emperor Yiyue praised it from the bottom of her heart.
"To forge such a vessel one needs an incomparably mighty divine nation; one needs tens of thousands of trades working in closest concert before it can be brought into being. In the Kaihuang Era of old we, too, could have wrought such a vessel — but no longer.
" She sighed deeply within herself and said with a wry smile: "My Wuyou Township, as it stands now, no longer possesses these trades. Your Majesty, what is this great vessel called?
" "It is the Six Paths Heavenly Wheel, which holds sway over the turning of life and death.
" Emperor Yanfeng said, smiling: "Once this divine artifact is complete, it will hold the Nether Capital of the Primordial Realm in eternal suppression, making it hard for ghosts and spirits to breed disorder; and its might will be inconceivably vast.
The Celestial Venerable Mu has said that when the artifact is complete, Earl Tu, Shen Fengqing, will be able to contend head-on with the Celestial Venerable Void — as for victory or defeat, that will still depend on Shen Fengqing's own cultivation. " Emperor Yiyue nodded in silence. "But the Six Paths Heavenly Wheel is not the only divine artifact now under construction," said Emperor Yanfeng.
"Apart from it there are several dozen more, and none of them is much smaller than this one. " Emperor Yiyue's heart gave a violent jolt.
After a moment's hesitation, she asked: "May I ask how many heavens Jingping commands?
" What she truly wished to learn by this question was Jingping's financial strength. In the Kaihuang Era of old, she had ruled the thirty-three heavens and commanded more than a hundred of them; and yet the wealth of that era had sufficed only to forge such a mighty vessel as Wuyou Township. Once Wuyou Township was finished, forging two Othershore Divine Boats had drained the Kaihuang treasury completely! "Under Jingping there are only forty-six heavens.
" Emperor Yanfeng led her to see the other mighty vessels.
Passing through a teleportation gate, they came to the Jiangling Foundry, which was equally magnificent, its foundries rising like a forest. "Yet more than two thousand seven hundred heavens have concluded compacts of mercantile trade with Jingping," said Emperor Yanfeng, "and more than two thousand heavens engage in commerce with her.
Add the mines we have bought through the years; thus, though Jingping's heavens are few, her wealth can still bear the strain.