885 The Yellow River Once Flowed (1/2)
The Song clan elder felt a freezing chill spread across his chest. He stared at his own sword, jutting out of his bosom, and the stream of blood steadily flowing down the blade. As the cold slowly crept over his heart, he realized that he would never be a match for Jun Mo, even with his serious wounds. Jun Mo never actually attacked — with a simple wave of his hand in the autumn breeze, he was able to steal his natal sword and take his life.
The Cui Garden creek bank was such a scene of devastation and death that even the splashing sounds of the Fuchun River were now silenced. The Song clan elder toppled slowly to the ground. Jun Mo left with Mu You, leaning on his cane. Nobody dared to even move.
Wang Jinglue was still standing in the crowd. He'd never even gotten the chance to attack. Only after he had seen flesh and blood strewn around the Imperial Tutor's seat and the pale corpse of Elder Cui did he realize the power of Ning Que's arrow. Only when he saw the Song clan elder bathed in blood and the sword buried in his chest did he realize the capacity of Second Master's sword.
A long time elapsed after Jun Mo and Mu You left Cui Garden before the people emerged from their states of shock. The air was filled with sounds of crying and screaming.
To Qinghe Prefecture, there were many clans, but Ruyang County's Cui clan was where their collective spirits came from, and Elder Cui was to them as the Academy Master was to the Academy. They had just witnessed the Elder, whom they relied on, pulverised and scattered all around them without being able to do anything. How could they not feel unsettled?
News of his death quickly spread to Yangzhou and reached thousands of homes. Naturally, the news was rapidly received in Chang'an.
The Great Tang reacted instantaneously. That night, the craftsmen deployed by the Ministry of Works in the south-central regions and the reserve army in the neighbouring prefectures were sent as quickly as possible to Verdant Canyon in the north.
Last autumn's Battle of Verdant Canyon had seen countless troops buried and the already inaccessible official road had been blocked by huge stones, making it almost impossible to get through. After running its clean-up operation for half a year, the imperial court had only been able to clear a tiny path. Of course, with the manpower from the soldiers accompanying the craftsmen, the speed of clean-up had become exponentially faster.
At the current rate, it seemed that it would only take a few more months for the Chang'an side to finish the initial clean-up operation. It thus followed that it would only be a few months before the Great Tang's iron horsemen would be able to access the south via Verdant Canyon and wipe Qinghe Prefecture out with the force of an iron river.
The famed figures and common people of the Qinghe Prefecture did not know what had happened in Verdant Canyon to the north, but the consequences of Elder Cui's death were very clear to them — the contract between Tang Kingdom and West-Hill Kingdom was now reduced to a worthless piece of paper, and Tang troops could appear in Qinghe Prefecture at any time.
The immense pressure from the north hung overhead like a low-lying dark cloud, even making it hard for some people at Qinghe Prefecture to breathe. They could not understand why the Tang Kingdom would forsake their contract so quickly after the cruel event that had just transpired.
Chaos had appeared in Qinghe Prefecture, and there would never be peace again.
Wang Jinglue did not leave Yangzhou. He had to wait there for Ning Que, and most importantly, he was in charge of handling all the cultivators of the Tianshu Institute and army spies entering Qinghe Prefecture from Tang Kingdom at that moment. Then, he had to use this power to help Cui Huasheng secure a position of power amongst the chaos.
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A cylindrical channel appeared in the air above the Peach Mountain plateau. The turbulent interference appeared in the air like strands of silk or cotton, making the shape of the passage even more distinct.
This was the scar left by the iron arrow's passage, and it was also the arrow's path.
Ning Que stood before the altar, holding the bow in his right hand and lifting his left hand high in the air like he was seizing a tiger's tail. He was frozen in the posture he held right after the arrow's release, as stable as a wooden carving.
The sounds of the chanting had since stopped. The thousands of people on the plateau looked at him in panic and did not utter a single word. It was as if they, too, had been turned into wooden figures.
Nobody knew where Ning Que's iron arrow flew to, but they knew that someone's life ended. The fact that nobody saw the actual result but already knew the result made the people petrified.
Ning Que returned the bow to his shoulder and looked back towards the Divine Hall of Light, with a somber expression on his face. If the Haotian energy in his body were to dissipate, the Yi Talisman around the altar would also return to heaven, spelling out a certain death for him at the hands of the powerful cultivators around him, but this thought never crossed his mind.
He had just completed the first half of the Academy's plan and his focus was now on the Divine Hall of Light. He had a feeling that the battle in the Divine Hall would result in a fatality.
In the same way that the people on the plateau knew that someone's life was coming to an end when they saw him shoot his bow, he knew that there would be death if anyone entered the Divine Hall of Light. The thought made his heart lurch.
In a battle between heaven and a mortal, the mortal would have to die because the winner would naturally be heaven.
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Sangsang looked at the thousands of worlds on the sword. Her eyes blazed with flames and stars, sunrises and sunsets, the rise and fall of empires and innumerable seasons, as if wading through time in the world of humanity.
Liu Bai's sword was only two chi away from her. The fault lines in the blade became deeper and deeper. Its surface became a mottled grey-white, meaning that it was completely melted and was now starting to erode in the breeze.
The closer things came to her body, the faster time passed for them, and the more damage they sustained due to the ravages of time. Even a sword sturdy enough to endure years of wind and rain would not be able to survive.
It was already extremely remarkable that Liu Bai's sword could enter her little world and come that close to her. This was inexplicable by ordinary principles of cultivation.
His sword was of the mortal world and carried the Sword Garret's intention and the red dust of the mortal world, but was not the mortal world itself. Thus, it would never be able to overcome the ravages of time.