Chapter 1706 — The Battle of the Five Chariots
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 2 of 4
The Earth Division was on the earth, and it possessed the various overland armies — the Five Chariots, the Beam, the Four Aides, the Seat Banner, the Three Terraces, the Xuanyuan, the Bow and Arrow, and others — charged with the ground, each army with its own duties, its categories exceedingly fine. The Heavenly Court's Five Chariots were divided into the War Chariot, the Broad Chariot, the Gate Chariot, the Screen Chariot, and the Light Chariot, with the Celestial Arsenal Towers at the center; each Celestial Arsenal Tower was a godly pagoda unattainably high, and a mighty treasure of the Heavenly Court.
Storey upon storey of the divine towers opened their doors, and out poured the chariots of every army like a tide.
Unlike Jingping's flying chariots, which could make the pill furnaces that powered them extraordinarily small — one furnace to a chariot, four bronze beasts, and the thing could rise into the air and seize the sky — the five kinds of precious carriages of the Five Chariots Army, because their casting craft could not keep up, were seldom able to fly, and their carriage bodies were for the most part monstrously huge. Within each carriage body were three pill furnaces: one furnace handled the transmission of the mechanism and drove the carriage forward, one furnace supplied the firepower and provided energy to the heavy divine cannon mounted on the carriage, and one furnace was charged with the two bronze beasts at the rear, which spewed flame for speed.
Three furnaces required three pill masters to tend them, and because the medicinal stones did not burn completely, the carriages usually bore smokestacks that belched rolling black smoke; hence the Five Chariots Army was mockingly called the Smoky Army, and wherever it passed, a foul black haze followed.
The reason the flying-chariot furnaces Jingping produced could be refined so very small was not only that Jingping's casting was unmatched, but also that it had trained pill masters in enormous numbers. The Jade-Faced Medicine King had spread his craft abroad, and what burned in Jingping's furnaces was often spirit pills.
Using spirit pills of exceedingly high purity in place of medicinal stones meant complete combustion: fewer furnaces were needed, their size could be shrunk to the limit, and they accelerated faster with fiercer bursts of power. That said, the Heavenly Court's Five Chariots Army had extremely strong ground combat power.
The Water Division was above, attacking the ships and navy of Carefree Village, while the Five Chariots were below, pushing forward flat across the ground.
The chariots' divine cannons, in concert with the navy, fired from below upward, ray after ray of divine light piercing the air and weaving into a net, and for a time Carefree Village suffered grievous losses.
Yet aboard Heavenly King Di Shitian's Other Shore Ark, the flying chariots from Jingping had already flown out. This kind of flying chariot was called a cloud chariot.
A cloud chariot bore a sword pagoda, and the gods and demons of Carefree Village aboard were all masters of swordsmanship or powerhouses of the sword path; when the carriage doors opened, the sword pills in the sword pagoda came tumbling out. The sword pills fell, each like a glowing silver ball.
No sword pill was large, but each was terrifying in weight, for every single sword pill was composed of two thousand flying swords refined to the utmost minuteness.
As the sword pills fell, the sword-art and sword-path gods and demons on the cloud chariots each linked their divine sense and vital essence to the pills; the pills began to spin madly, and needle-sized flying swords whirled out of them, swelling swiftly larger.