A massive fire burned through the night, devouring eight streets, 732 households, and claiming over 400 lives!
The next day, as the sun rose above the horizon and bathed the earth in its light, this ancient city looked somewhat wretched under the glare. On the left side of the Imperial City, music and dancing continued as if they were in the midst of a golden age of peace.
On the right side of the Imperial City, there were only ruined walls and scorched earth.
What was unbelievable was that after such a towering inferno, the Imperial City showed no signs of uproar, as if the previous night had been nothing but cool breezes and calm waters. It was as though someone was deliberately suppressing the matter. Yet everyone knew perfectly well that this was no simple matter. After all, the epicenter of the fire was the Divine General’s Mansion.
Lin Huang also knew that last night was a silent attempt to wipe out the Divine General’s Mansion. A massive fire was set to burn it down. Dozens of assassins made their move to kill Lin Beichen. Pang Bai sneaked into the Scripture Pavilion to search for the Thousand Spirits Sword Formation.
Behind all of this lay the shadows of two major powers: the Great Xia Royal Family and the Celestial Thunder Sect!
And Crown Prince Lingyun and Ling Huangyi were the links between these two forces. Crown Prince Lingyun was the current Crown Prince of the dynasty. Ling Huangyi was an Inner Sect Disciple of the Celestial Thunder Sect, the Direct Disciple of Elder Hann Shan, and also the Third Prince of the Great Xia Dynasty, Crown Prince Lingyun’s full biological brother.
What no one had expected, however, was that the Divine General’s Mansion was not as simple as it appeared on the surface. Zhao Changfeng was holding down the fort inside the mansion, there were two Tower Guardian Slaves in the Scripture Pavilion, and Lin Beichen had Yee Sha, the head of the Dark Department, constantly protecting him from the shadows.
The only pity was for the innocent servants who had died in vain within the Divine General’s Mansion.
Lin Huang’s expression was grave. He could smell the oncoming storm. Last night’s fire was merely an appetizer; there would likely be even bigger surprises to come.
The Celestial Thunder Sect coveted the Thousand Spirits Sword Formation, and with Hann Shan’s personality, he definitely wouldn’t let this go. The matter of Pang Bai’s death wouldn’t be resolved so easily either, as he was the most favored Seventh Prince of the Great Chu Dynasty. Furthermore, within this Imperial City, there wasn’t just the Celestial Thunder Sect; there was also the Piaoxue Palace, along with the soon-to-arrive Fengyu Tower and Qianying Valley!
Since the Celestial Thunder Sect coveted the Thousand Spirits Sword Formation, the other sects probably harbored similar intentions.
"The Four Sects’ great selection is truly a perfect excuse!" Lin Huang clicked his tongue.
Every three years, the Four Great Sects would open their gates to recruit disciples. Members of the sects could enter the mortal world to host the Four Sects’ great selection and recruit exceptionally talented disciples. There were still four months until the upcoming selection. Usually, the Four Great Sects would only appear three months prior, making their arrival this time a bit too early. Such abnormality was highly likely aimed at the Thousand Spirits Sword Formation.
That same day, Lin Huang took the Array Diagram of the Thousand Spirits Sword Formation out of the Scripture Pavilion and studied it carefully.
The Array Path was an extremely unique existence on the Azure Sky Continent. It wasn’t as mainstream as cultivating a Martial Soul, yet it possessed power that could surpass it. This was because, at times, the Array Path could replicate the power and Divine Techniques of a Martial Soul. It was unpredictable, versatile, and deeply mysterious.
An Array could form a powerful attack or an indestructible cage. It could draw upon Heaven and Earth Qi to heal wounds or manifest an Illusion Realm. In his previous life, Lin Huang had heard of powerful Array Masters who could incinerate mountains and annihilate tens of thousands of beasts with one hand, or boil the oceans and cook Jiao Dragons with the other. With a single thought, they could lay down an Illusion Array, plunging the inhabitants of an entire city into a deep slumber for three hundred years. Using the earth as a diagram and rivers and mountains as an array, they could manipulate Three Thousand Miles of terrain to trap and kill Divine Demons.
Undoubtedly, the Array Path was powerful. One could even call its practitioners the darlings of the heavens. If an ordinary Martial Artist was proficient in Arrays, they would be virtually invincible among peers of the same realm, unless they encountered an exceedingly powerful Martial Soul. Therefore, if a faction had an Array Master overseeing it, they naturally gained a formidable advantage. And if these Array Masters held Advanced Arrays in their hands, it was like adding wings to a tiger.
This was also why Hann Shan so deeply coveted the Thousand Spirits Sword Formation. Presumably, the Celestial Thunder Sect had a powerful Array Master holding down the fort.
Lin Huang clicked his tongue, thinking that the Tier of the Thousand Spirits Formation shouldn’t be too low. For it to catch the Celestial Thunder Sect’s eye, it had to be at least a Third-Level Array.
In his room, Lin Huang looked at the smooth, warm jade slip in his hands. His Divine Sense quietly merged into it while his hands performed a Sealing Technique, condensing an Array Seal according to the methods recorded in the jade slip.
As time passed, Lin Huang’s ten fingers trembled. A Spirit Seal with translucent patterns gradually materialized in his palm. Threads of light flowed within the Spirit Seal, profound and unfathomable.
BANG...
Suddenly, the threads of light within the Spirit Seal collided, causing the mark in his palm to abruptly shatter and vanish without a trace. Lin Huang shook his head helplessly. Becoming an Array Master truly was an extremely difficult endeavor.
If one’s Soul Power was insufficient to simultaneously control the flow of multiple array lines, they couldn’t condense an Array Seal, let alone set up an Array. Condensing an Array Seal was merely the first step, yet it already placed exceptionally high demands on the soul. And the difficulty of condensing an Array was at least ten times higher than forming an Array Seal.
Lin Huang wasn’t too disappointed about his inability to become an Array Master. After all, the soul requirements were incredibly stringent. Out of a hundred Martial Artists, there would be one Array Master at most. Even a genius like Lin Cangxue had returned the Thousand Spirits Sword Formation to the Scripture Pavilion less than a day after taking it. She had only managed to comprehend a single Sword Technique from the Array Diagram but lacked the talent to cultivate the Array Path itself.
"Old Four, do you want to become an Array Master?"
A voice suddenly rang out in the room, causing Lin Huang to jolt. He looked up and saw that Xiao Yishan was lying on the roof beam, legs crossed, looking completely at ease.
"Master, when did you get here?" Lin Huang asked.
"I saw a busty, thick-bottomed woman last night, so I followed her here," Xiao Yishan chuckled. He had stumbled into the Divine General’s Mansion entirely by accident.
Lin Huang looked embarrassed. The busty, thick-bottomed woman Xiao Yishan mentioned was likely Shen Diexin of the Piaoxue Palace. Given her aloof and cold temperament, if she heard Xiao Yishan’s words, she would probably hack him into eight pieces.
"Master, if my Soul Power isn’t enough, how can I become an Array Master?" Lin Huang looked up and asked.
"No idea. It’s not like I’m an Array Master!" Xiao Yishan shook his head, looking down at Lin Huang with a face full of disdain, as if looking at an idiot. "Old Four, do you even know how to be a disciple? Your master has come all the way to your home. Fine, you don’t introduce me to your family, but you don’t even serve some good wine and food? Do you have any idea that what I ate in the Qinglong Mountain Range was no different from pig slop?"
Xiao Yishan lectured Lin Huang earnestly before adding, "If you treat your master well, maybe I can remember something. After all, someone once told me how to become an Array Master. Sigh... I’m getting old. My memory goes bad the moment I get hungry!"
"This disciple has already booked a room at the Tianxiang Tower," Lin Huang said knowingly. "My grandfather has a jar of old wine that’s been aged for forty years. I’ll bring that along too!"
Xiao Yishan nodded, wearing an expression that said this child was highly teachable.
As the largest restaurant in the Capital City, Tianxiang Tower was always bustling with business. In recent days, business had been especially explosive. The news of the Four Sects’ great selection had caused the entire Great Xia Dynasty to boil over with excitement. After all, such a grand event only occurred once every three years.
What were the Four Great Sects? In the eyes of ordinary people, they were the Dragon Gate—the powers that dictated the rise and fall of the East Spirit Realm’s fate. Their disciples were geniuses from all over, and their backgrounds went without saying. Anyone who walked out of the Four Great Sects was a powerhouse capable of dominating a region.
Therefore, entering the Four Great Sects had always been the ultimate goal for the Martial Artists of the Great Xia Dynasty. As long as one could join any of the sects, regardless of whether they came from wealth or poverty, their lives would undergo an earth-shattering transformation. The Sects were the cradles of the strong.
Take the Sect Masters of the Four Great Sects, for instance. They were all Half-Step Martial Marquis existences. Let alone controlling the rise and fall of a dynasty, even looking at the entire East Spirit Realm, they were among the few top-tier powerhouses. Now that people from the Sects had arrived, wouldn’t the nobles and officials of the Great Xia Dynasty go out of their way to curry favor? Wouldn’t the Martial Artists of the dynasty rack their brains to show their faces?
"Master, is it really possible even if one’s soul doesn’t meet the requirements to cultivate the Array Path?" Lin Huang asked impatiently inside the Celestial Grade VIP Room at Tianxiang Tower.
"No," Xiao Yishan shook his head and said with absolute certainty. "However, there are records on the continent that an Array Master once proposed a theory. It stated that a Martial Artist’s soul is like ice, while an Array Master’s soul is like water.
"Ice has a fixed form.
"Water embraces Impermanence.
"Controlling an Array requires multiple streams of consciousness to simultaneously condense Array Seals and construct the Array. Ice is hard to split, but water can gather or disperse, allowing for the formation of multiple streams of consciousness," Xiao Yishan explained.
"So to speak, the soul’s structure is innate, and it’s fundamentally impossible for ordinary people to cultivate the Array Path." Lin Huang was somewhat disappointed. Xiao Yishan’s meaning was easy to grasp.
"But what if you melt the ice into water?" Xiao Yishan tapped his finger on the table and spoke slowly.
"Melt the ice into water? Change the soul’s structure?" Lin Huang’s face froze for a moment before he replied, "A human’s soul is inherently quite fragile. If one tries to alter its structure, wouldn’t it easily lead to the soul’s annihilation?"
Xiao Yishan smiled without saying a word. "It was just a possibility someone proposed, but very few have dared to try it, and even fewer have succeeded."
"Someone succeeded?" Lin Huang’s eyes lit up, and he quickly asked.
"I once met a guy named Luo Hetu. You couldn’t call it a complete success; he died during the final soul transformation," Xiao Yishan said leisurely.
The smile on Lin Huang’s face stiffened, and he inwardly shook his head. "I’ll think about cultivating Arrays after I defeat Crown Prince Lingyun."
"You’re just afraid of dying!" Inside the VIP room, Xiao Yishan scoffed with contempt. He was squatting entirely on his stool, gripping a chicken in one hand and a duck in the other. His mouth was stuffed with food, looking exactly like a reincarnated starved ghost.
"I just don’t court death lightly!" Lin Huang shook his head. After clinking his wine cup against Xiao Yishan’s, he took a sip.
KNOCK!
KNOCK KNOCK!
In the VIP room, just as the two were eating happily, someone knocked on the door.
"Young Master, could this humble one discuss a matter with you?" A waiter walked in, wearing an apologetic smile. "I wonder if you could vacate this Celestial Grade private room? Some important figures from Fengyu Tower and the Celestial Thunder Sect have arrived, and our VIP rooms are currently full, so..."
The waiter emphasized the words ’Fengyu Tower’ and ’Celestial Thunder Sect’ heavily. He didn’t finish his sentence, but his meaning was exceedingly obvious.
"Are you new here?" Lin Huang raised an eyebrow and asked.
The waiter nodded and said, "His Highness the Crown Prince said that as long as you vacate the room, he will pay for your meal."
"His Highness the Crown Prince?" Lin Huang’s long eyebrows arched slightly, a faint smile playing on his lips. His finger tapped against the corner of the table as he said calmly, "Get out. I will pretend you never came in. The Crown Prince’s face means nothing to me!"
"Young Master, the people who have arrived are major figures from Fengyu Tower and the Celestial Thunder Sect, accompanied by Crown Prince Lingyun and the Third Prince. Are you sure you won’t reconsider? The consequences could be very severe!" The waiter squeezed the ten taels of silver in his hand and emboldened himself to speak, his tone even carrying a hint of a threat.
"You may leave!" Lin Huang said calmly as he casually poured wine for Xiao Yishan.
The waiter looked at the two men in the room, his expression shifting rapidly. He wanted to scold Lin Huang but didn’t dare, yet he was unwilling to give up the ten taels of silver he had already gotten his hands on. Ultimately, the waiter backed out. The door slammed shut with a heavy BANG.
"Your Highness, that brat is too unappreciative of favors!" The waiter ran over to Crown Prince Lingyun. A palm print had appeared on his face at some point, and he looked full of grievance and anger. "That brat said, he said..."
"Said what!" Crown Prince Lingyun, dressed in a yellow robe, demanded loudly, startling everyone in the establishment.
Behind him, Ling Huangyi remained expressionless, while Hann Shan and an old and a young man from Fengyu Tower frowned slightly, showing quite a bit of displeasure on their faces.
"He said... even if the Heavenly King himself came, he wouldn’t dream of making him give up the Celestial Grade VIP Room," the waiter said through gritted teeth. He then cast shifting glances at the group from Fengyu Tower and the Celestial Thunder Sect, hesitating to speak further.
"What else did he say?" A young man in a blue robe from Fengyu Tower spoke up. A faint smile appeared on his somewhat bewitching face—a smile that seemed to blend anger, mockery, and disdain.
The waiter trembled all over, appearing extremely terrified, afraid of angering these important figures. He stammered intermittently, "He also said... what do Fengyu Tower and the Celestial Thunder Sect amount to... you’re not even fit to... to carry his shoes... and told you to... to roll as far away as possible..."