Chapter 1700 — The Youth Honing His Blade
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 1 of 4
When Shang Pingyin saw Hermit Longshan again, his Dao heart nearly crumbled on the spot.
He still remembered that battle at the Xuanwu Heavenly Palace on the Northern Celestial River all those years ago.
It was the greatest rout of his life!
He had led the Celestial River Navy, the Shenwu Second Guards, and Beiluo Shimen, yet Hermit Longshan had smashed them with the formations of the Glazed Azure Heaven Banner until they broke and scattered, and the slaughter was so grievous that the four great hosts were all but erased from the Celestial Court, leaving him prostrate and spiritless for hundreds of thousands of years! His palms trembled faintly.
Seen today, Hermit Longshan's formations of that year still looked crude, and after six hundred thousand years of advance in formations and arcane mathematics, Shang Pingyin could now unravel those old formations with ease. But could Hermit Longshan have made no progress?
For a heaven-defying genius of that order, what terror must six hundred thousand years of progress hold?
Meng Yungui lifted his head to gaze at Long Qilin standing atop the Twenty-Eight Heavens, his heart full of reverence and awe.
Who was the first Celestial Master of the Court had never been settled.
Some said Shang Pingyin, evergreen through the ages, was the first Celestial Master of the Court, others said Yue Tingge's brilliance far surpassed Shang Pingyin, and still others said Meng Yungui had surpassed his forebears. But as to the first Celestial Master under heaven, there was no such dispute.
There was only one man, the one who had shaken the world in the Longhan Era and then vanished without a trace, Hermit Longshan!
Hermit Longshan could be called the god in the heart of every Celestial Master in history!
That name meant invincibility!
Prince Youming felt uneasy instead, for the trick behind that battle, which Shang Pingyin and Meng Yungui did not know, he knew all too well.
Back then it was Shen Mu who had borrowed Long Qilin to face Shang Pingyin, beating Shang Pingyin together with the Shenwu Second Guards, the Celestial River Navy, and Beiluo Shimen into utter defeat, and forging Long Qilin's peerless renown!
And now the one who had come was only that flippant and hollow fellow Long Qilin himself. Could Long Qilin truly defeat Shang Pingyin and preserve his myth of invincibility?
He had no confidence at all.
Long Qilin himself had little confidence either.
Though he had toiled over arcane mathematics and the way of formations these years until his attainment ran deep, far beyond what it had been, to match wits against a battle-hardened Celestial Master like Shang Pingyin still left him nervous.
"I must not shame myself! " Long Qilin silently cheered himself on: "These years I have studied the way of formations, and though I cannot match the Sect Master, Jingping's formations outstrip these bumpkins of the Court by I know not how much!
More crucial still, the Glazed Azure Heaven Banner has been recast by Blind Master and Mute Artisan, surpassing its past self beyond measure!
This battle, I can win! " With a stir of thought, he set the Glazed Azure Heaven Banner in motion! The soldiers of the Yuhua Camp within the banner at once felt the shifting of the formations through the Twenty-Eight Heavens, lifted and carried by the formations beyond their own control, their mana spilling outward to join seat after seat of formations, changing as the formations changed!
At the same time, they felt themselves joined to mighty treasures, wielding vast power, and could not help but startle with delight!
Yet Meng Yungui, standing likewise within the Twenty-Eight Heavens, hesitated, for what the soldiers of the Yuhua Camp could not see, he could see clearly, that Hermit Longshan's shifting of the formations held a certain stiffness. "Hermit Longshan has not appeared for hundreds of thousands of years, and must be a little rusty.