Chapter 1686 — Jingping's World-Suppressing Artifact

The crisis of the Primordial Realm came on in a rush and departed just as swiftly; the Ancestral God King and the Celestial Venerable Void withdrew one after the other, leaving the ground littered with ruin behind them.

The soldiers of Jingping and Wuyou Township swept the battlefield and found the casualties heavy on both sides. Emperor Yanfeng flew into a rage and at once ordered the ghost domains throughout the Primordial Realm purged.

The Nether Capital had been able to invade so smoothly this time chiefly because, during the Battle of the Nether Capital long ago, the monsters, demons, and ghostly deities of the Nether Capital had slipped into the Primordial Realm and into the various great heavens attached to it, founding one ghost domain after another. And since the death of Earl Tu, no one had been left to draw those orphaned souls and stray ghosts into the Nether Capital, so the reach of the ghost domains had only grown wider with every passing year. In former days the ghost domains had been no more than a skin-deep affliction; but in this invasion, they became gateways for the Nether Capital's incursion in every region, and a very great share of the Primordial Realm's casualties sprang from them.

The various regions of the Primordial Realm and each of its great vassal heavens at once moved their troops, razing the lurking Guixu one by one. In addition, the Nether Celestial Venerable and Shen Fengqing established the Nether Capital of the Primordial Realm, drawing the orphaned souls and stray ghosts of the ghost domains into it, rewarding the good and punishing the wicked.

As for the officers and soldiers who had fallen in battle, they were led into Fengdu to serve as a ghost army — in itself a force of no small might. King Yama submitted a memorial to Kaihuang, Emperor Yiyue: "To guide souls into the Nether Capital of the Primordial Realm is no different from what Earl Tu used to do; it will only increase the burden of that Nether Capital.

If things go on this way, the Nether Capital of the Primordial Realm will come to be plagued by an overabundance of ghosts. Shen Fengqing does not have Earl Tu's power; sooner or later he will be unable to hold them in check, and ere long the Nether Capital of the Primordial Realm is certain to breed disaster. This must not go unheeded.

" Emperor Yiyue summoned the Heavenly Master Wen Tiange and asked: "Does the Sage Master have any insight?

" Wen Tiange replied: "I have heard that the Celestial Venerable Mu of Jingping has cultivated the Dao of Reincarnation.

Upon that foundation a treasure could be forged that would cause the souls of all living beings to turn through death and rebirth across the myriad heavens and worlds, punishing evil and rewarding good. " Emperor Yiyue journeyed to Jingping, sought an audience with Emperor Yanfeng, and told him of this matter. Emperor Yanfeng laughed.

"Kaihuang need not worry," he said.

"This treasure is already in the forging. " Emperor Yiyue was startled and asked: "When was the forging begun?

" "Ever since our defeat in the Battle of the Nether Capital," said Emperor Yanfeng, "Emperor Yanxiu and the Celestial Venerable Mu commanded the great foundries of Jingping to cast every kind of mighty vessel against the wars to come.

This treasure is one of them.

Jingping's master artisans have labored day and night, and many of the mighty vessels have already taken on their full scale.

" "Might I go and see them? " asked Emperor Yiyue. Emperor Yanfeng gladly led her to the Jinjiang Foundry.

There, giant foundries lined both banks of the Jin River in ranks like one long dragon, while countless tower-ships shuttled across the river's face like weavers on a loom; some of the giant tower-ships carried no more than a single component of a divine artifact!

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.

" Emperor Yiyue nodded in silence. Suddenly she caught sight of a familiar mighty vessel and exclaimed under her breath: "The Creation Artifact? " It was a divine artifact much like the Creation Artifact of the Zaofu Palace of the Celestial Court, though somewhat smaller — and vastly different. Five supports shaped like mountain ranges held eight round wheels at the center; those five supports looked like five mineral lodes, stamped all over with runic marks of every kind, a construction fundamentally different from the Creation Artifact of old.