Chapter 1756 — I Am No Sage: A Certain Gentleman
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 1 of 4
"Long ago, Sect Master Shen showed me kindness, and his wife Ling Yuxiu looked after me often at Wendao Academy. So I left Sect Master Shen a one-percent flaw, that he might escape from the Dao-Burial Divine Coffin. I left only one percent. I never thought Taichu would turn that one percent into a hundred. What was he thinking?"
Xing An passed silently through the Lanfeng Valley with his box, and came to Jingping.
The battle at Lanfeng Valley was savage beyond measure.
The line had been drawn out to an immense length. With Lanfeng Valley at its heart, it cut almost straight across every divine city in western Jingping, south to north, and Jingping had marshaled every army it could marshal; every kind of great weapon had been brought to bear.
Even Lady Tianyin had led the few demon gods of the Tianyin Realm into this Lanfeng campaign.
The two sides fought seesaw battle after seesaw battle around city after divine city: first the two armies faced off outside the walls, formations shifting and breaking, each storming the other's arrays, flesh and blood flying.
Then they broke into the cities, and the street fighting within the divine cities was bloodier still, every alley heaped with corpses.
Divine city after divine city was battered into ruin and came tumbling out of the sky, trailing billows of smoke.
The armies of Jingping and Wuyou Township had all taken the field, and from the rear ever more newly built cities were being sent up to the front, escorted by tower ship after tower ship, and those tower ships were crammed with every kind of divine weapon and blade.
Once inside, Xing An saw that Jingping had already gone onto a war footing: every supervising foundry was set working, the mines were dug day and night, and it was no longer the peaceful scene of former years, no longer fit for him to pursue his learning in quiet.
On the way he came upon the Sun Guardians and Moon Guardians of Xuandu locked in slaughter with Jingping's own Sun Guardians and Moon Guardians, the two sides battling bloodily on the ground and in the air, and it was most savage.
He came too upon the Buddhist soldiers of the Buddhist Realm led by Tathagata Zhankong, holding pass after pass in the rear of Lanfeng Valley and trading blows with the Heavenly Court's small raiding parties that had broken through the valley, so that great Buddha after great Buddha from the Buddhist Realm died under a welter of blades.
Xing An frowned. "These monks..."
He did not linger. Jingping was the holy land of reform and held a great store of knowledge, and he had no wish to take part in these battles that were none of his concern.
The bond between Xing An and Jingping was one of mutual use: Jingping needed his knowledge and wisdom to drive its reform, and he had repaid Jingping with many of his own findings.
And besides, he was not a man of Jingping. When he was born, Jingping did not yet exist; the nation had not yet been founded.
Some called him a sage who appeared once in five hundred years, but in his heart he had never thought so.
He was only a man seeking the dao.
On the road he met many more demon gods of the Heavenly Court charging deep into Jingping's heartland, burning, killing, and plundering wherever they went, but Xing An did not raise a hand; to him these were no more than passing clouds.
"When I reach Wendao Academy, if there is new work I will stay and study it; if Jingping falls, then I will leave. I go my own free and easy way." So he said to himself in silence.
Suddenly the corpse-aura ahead shot up to the heavens. Xing An gave a start and looked forward, and saw nine columns of unspeakably dense corpse-aura like pillars of black smoke, rising from below and shuddering violently in the sky.
Such overpowering corpse-aura Xing An had never seen in his life.
"In this troubled age monsters and demons come forth together, and many fine things worth collecting have appeared." He could not help feeling the thrill of the hunt.