"The Imperial Preceptor of Jingping is the true lady-killer. Beside him, the Yin Son of Heaven is a man of empty reputation!" Emperor Yanfeng looked at Yan Yunxi's forlorn, soul-shattered appearance and felt a little pity for him, but far more admiration for the former Imperial Preceptor of Jingping, Jiang Baigui. This friend of his had always shown women a cold face. Back in Jingping he had set his whole heart on becoming a Sage, and had no thought at all for the pleasures of man and woman; he even counted them a burden, a dead weight. Had he himself not forced a marriage upon him, and had Shen Mu not talked him around, Jiang Baigui would most likely still be a man alone. He had it in him. Jiang Baigui was a man of utter sincerity and true feeling: once his heart was moved, it would never wander again. Even if Yan Yunxi were fairer and cleverer than the wife of the Imperial Preceptor of Jingping, he would not give it a moment's thought. That, too, was why the Imperial Preceptor's wife was easy about his leaving Jingping. With a single sentence Jiang Baigui had smothered the thoughts in Yan Yunxi's heart; cruel, one had to admit, was his method. Jiang Baigui bowed and said to Yan Yunxi, "Martial Uncle, I am worth an army of a million gods and demons. Should Jingping ever be in peril, I beg Martial Uncle to come to its aid with a million gods and demons." Yan Yunxi's face was pale; he nodded in silence. Jiang Baigui straightened and said in a low voice, "Then Martial Uncle may go and bid the Divine King Langwan and Kaihuang make ready." Yan Yunxi departed. Just then a lazy voice came up from below the city wall, laughing: "Little brother, you are quite something." Jiang Baigui and Emperor Yanfeng looked down from the wall and saw a great fellow in rags sitting in the sun below, idly picking lice off himself and chuckling without cease, a man who looked somewhat unsound of mind. Emperor Yanfeng's eyes flickered, and he said softly, "When did this beggar arrive? Mad as he looks, I never sensed him, and Celestial Master Zixi is a great master besides, yet he did not sense him either!" Jiang Baigui leaped down from the wall and stood before the madman with his hands behind his back, and said easily, "I am indeed something." The madman, still picking lice, raised his eyes to him and chuckled: "A disciple of Wen Tiange the woodcutter? You certainly talk with a bull's arrogance." He rose to his feet, put a louse in his mouth and bit it with a crackle, then spat it out and said, "Wen Tiange was never so grand before me, and he has had the worst of it at my hands. The Heavenly Court's Four Celestial Masters are coming, and every one of them is a man of surpassing wisdom. You and Zixi together could not stand against them." Jiang Baigui said easily, "The Heavenly Court's Four Celestial Masters are old, and their skills are out of date. On the field of battle I am wholly confident of holding them in check." "But overwhelming force crushes a man to death." The madman laughed. "How many people has the Land of No Sorrow? How many Creators? How many rounds of attrition can they bear? Soon you will have no soldiers left to use. You are pitting the Creators and the Land of No Sorrow against all the heavens and all the worlds! You cannot win." Jiang Baigui frowned. The madman laughed. "Are your skills so very good? Wen Tiange the woodcutter was arrogant and overbearing, priding himself on his talent and holding all others in contempt; you seem a shade prouder still." Jiang Baigui said modestly, "I am not the best in Jingping. I have a senior brother who, at the same realm, has always held steadily a line above me. But compared with other men, they are triangles, and I am a straight line." The madman was taken aback, and thought a while before he understood him. "I spoke of wisdom, not of force." "So that is it." Jiang Baigui said, "Speaking of wisdom, then my second senior brother cannot hold a candle to me. He is not so clever as I. Compared with me, he falls short by a straight line, and a standing one at that." The madman roared with laughter and said leisurely, "Then let us have a contest. I shall lay a formation, and you shall break it. If you can unravel it, I will help you hold off the Heavenly Court's Four Celestial Masters. If you cannot, I will watch you go to your death." Jiang Baigui raised an eyebrow. "May I ask who you are?" In an instant the madman shed his mad air; he drew himself up, lofty in bearing and terrible in dignity: "The Heavenly Court's former First Celestial Master, Yue Tingge of the Daoist sect! The Heavenly Court's present Four Celestial Masters are all men I have beaten! The four Celestial Masters of Kaihuang, Fisherman, Woodcutter, Farmer and Scholar, were every one of them defeated by my hand, in force of arms and in wisdom alike!" Jiang Baigui was moved, and said without haste, "Jiang Baigui, former Imperial Preceptor of Jingping. I beg you to instruct me!" Yue Tingge's aura pressed upon him; he manifested a formation out of his vital essence, and the vital essence took the shapes of soldiers one by one, of treasures one by one, drawing up troops and laying out arrays. This formation was exceedingly strange: it vaguely took the form of the Glazed Azure Heaven Banner, the supreme treasure of the world, divided into the Twenty-Eight Heavens, and within the Twenty-Eight Heavens were all manner of treasures, and around the treasures were disposed soldiers in formation, not many in number, yet each fitting exactly into its treasure, forming thousands upon thousands of formations in intricate and well-ordered array. And every one of Yue Tingge's formations was different from the rest; ten thousand treasures laid out ten thousand different arrays, and every array fused man and treasure into one! More terrible still, the number of men he used was exceedingly small, yet the structure of each formation made formation, man and treasure one with heaven and earth, inseparable, truly a thing easy to hold and hard to take! When Yue Tingge had finished laying his formation, he said in a low voice, "This formation is called the Longshan Wanderer's Grand Formation Diagram. The Second Celestial Master, Shang Pingyin, was defeated by the ancient recluse the Longshan Wanderer, and went mad for tens of thousands of years, until he restored the Longshan Wanderer's formation diagram and drew it into a book. Shang Pingyin summoned the wise men of the world to break it, and for hundreds of thousands of years, through countless sages, none could. It was I who broke the Longshan Wanderer's Grand Formation Diagram, and won the name of the Heavenly Court's First Celestial Master." The Imperial Preceptor of Jingping looked at the formation that the Glazed Azure Heaven Banner had become, and his heart was greatly shaken: "In this formation, many of the arrays seem to be arrays studied during the Jingping Reforms! Who was this ancient Longshan Wanderer?" In the great formation diagram of the Glazed Azure Heaven Banner there were far too many arrays that were Jingping arrays. Of those in Jingping with the deepest mastery of formations there were three: Jiang Baigui, former Imperial Preceptor of Jingping, was one; the Holy-Eyed Blind Elder of Yincan Village; and He Yiyi, formation master of the Western Lands. These three had created many different kinds of formations, drawing up troops and laying arrays, entering the Dao through the transformations of formations. Besides the three of them there were others: Shen Jian and Shen Baoyue, Grand Generals of Heavenly Strategy, famed throughout the world for their killing formations; Situ Xiuleqing, famed for laying formations by borrowing the momentum of heaven and earth; and Quan Dingwu, General of Agile Cavalry, famed for battle formations, each with his own strength. Of the arrays used in the Longshan Wanderer's Grand Formation Diagram, half, astonishingly, were Jingping formation diagrams! And most of the other arrays we