Chapter 1706 — The Battle of the Five Chariots

Shen Mu and Shang Jun gazed out from afar.

In the heartland of the Primordial Realm, the Heavenly Court's Five Chariots Army had come out in full, attacking from the flank.

Shang Jun said, "Heavenly Venerate, do you need me to act?

" He was a master of assassination; he could lurk amid a chaotic host and cut down the enemy's high command, plucking the head of a general from the midst of ten thousand troops as easily as taking something from a bag. If the commanders of every division of the Heavenly River Navy were slaughtered and the army left leaderless, its battle lines thrown into chaos, then its deployment would inevitably scatter into loose sand, and Carefree Village could win with ease.

"No need.

" Light flickered in Shen Mu's eyes; he shook his head. "Existences of the Heavenly Venerate level overawe one another, and they will not lightly take action. If you act, you expose yourself, and once you have shown a flaw, some other Dao Attainer or Heavenly Venerate will find the opening, and that will be the day you die. For beings like you and me, the moment we strike is the moment we stake our lives outright.

In this heavenly expedition, it is the hosts of gods and demons clashing in the field on both sides that will be the true main force of the war.

" Shang Jun was somewhat puzzled, but he did not press further.

He was not a man who liked to dig to the bottom of things. Shen Mu had thought further than he had.

The war between the Heavenly Court and the Primordial Realm was not merely a war of Heavenly Venerates, but a collision of two ideals. Heavenly Venerates might decide the course of a battle, but what decided the victory of an ideal was still the ordinary gods and demon soldiers, and the nations behind them.

Before this surging torrent, Heavenly Venerates and even Dao Attainers were one member, one part, of the battlefield; a Heavenly Venerate or a Dao Attainer might contribute strength and determine the course of a fight, but they could not determine the outcome between the Heavenly Court's diehard faction and Jingping's reformist faction.

The Jingping Reforms had run one hundred and seventy years, and now the time had come to test their fruits.

Shen Mu looked into the distance, and behind this battle of Carefree Village he saw the Heavenly Court's fortune at its blazing height, lighting up the western sky of half the Primordial Realm.

It was the countless hosts of the Heavenly Court, thronging about the civil and martial gods of the court and Emperor Haotian, pressing toward this place.

The battle of Carefree Village was only a prologue, slowly being drawn open.

And once the prologue was drawn open, what followed was a truly magnificent epic of war! Suddenly, amid the advancing Heavenly Court army, two Dao Trees rose slowly into the air, and their Dao light formed the faces of Emperor Haotian and the Retired Emperor Taichu, vast beyond measure, profoundly shocking.

"Parading your martial might — how does it compare to mine?

" At a thought from Shen Mu, his Divine Treasury domain spread wide, and the World Tree grew broader and broader.

He stepped forward and descended upon Jingping; the World Tree, lush and verdant, spread like a grand canopy, shrouding a stretch of sky.

The commander of the Heavenly Court's Five Chariots Army was the court's Left Junior Chancellor, by name Yan Sheng, a powerhouse of the Imperial Seat, who presided in person over the Five Chariots.

The Five Chariots Army belonged to a branch of the Earth Division among the three divisions. The Heavenly Court had three divisions: the Water Division, the Earth Division, and the Spirit Division.

The Water Division was on the water and was called the Heavenly River Navy; it commanded tower ships and great vessels, galloping along the Heavenly River and ranging through all the worlds. The Spirit Division was in the heavens, made up of demigods born with feathered wings.

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.

At such a moment there was no need to drive any complex sword move or technique; only one basic sword form was required — the thrust. Never mind what moves the enemy used, never mind what treasures the enemy called up, never mind the enemy's formations: from the sky above, downward, with all one's mana and divine sense — thrust!