Chapter 77 — The Crown Prince of Tiantu
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 1 of 3
From atop the dragon pillar Shen Mu raised his head and looked up. The thunderclouds were spreading ever wider, expanding outward without pause, like a vast vortex; countless thunderbolts and lightning flashes kept striking down, yet still they wheeled in orbit around that vortex.
The thunderclouds were moving—drifting toward the vanguard of the Jingping army. Of a sudden a bolt of lightning struck the ground, and the earth it struck erupted at once with firelight and electric light that went darting in every direction like golden serpents, while in the same instant a world-shaking roar burst forth.
Then, as though they had found their mark, countless bolts came crashing down from the sky in a frenzy, a spectacle like giant plows let down from heaven to till the earth, plowing from the front of the Jingping host straight into the army! Rumble, rumble— Countless thunderbolts met the Jingping vanguard, and in less than the space of a breath the huge beasts were struck charred black inside and out.
Crack, crack—the lightning struck the great beasts, and some were split open, belly and bowels laid bare, as if carved by a sharp sword.
The beasts bellowed in grief and bolted in all directions, some even charging backward, trampling as they went and crushing who knew how many soldiers to death. The rolling thunder followed at their heels into the midst of the army, and in a moment men and horses were thrown into chaos; who knew how many officers and men were struck by lightning and killed where they stood.
A tower ship was hit by several thunderbolts and instantly burst into roaring flame; the pill furnaces at its core exploded one after another, and the fire turned the alchemists and their boy attendants in the furnace chamber into living torches.
The wild medicinal power within those furnaces rushed out of the chamber and poured into the central grand furnace; the grand furnace could not transmute that terrifying power in time, and blew apart with a boom, and the great ship broke into pieces in midair, disintegrating in the sky!
Other tower ships, their grand furnace cores destroyed and their power gone, trailed billowing black smoke as they slid down slantwise from above, crushing who knew how many soldiers who had no time to escape. The Jingping host had once borne down upon the city with overwhelming momentum; now that momentum was gone entirely, and nothing remained but chaos.
"General Lu, this thundercloud has come strangely—as though it were aimed at our Jingping army! " A scout came hurrying with the report; reaching the central command, he dropped to one knee and said with clasped hands, "The thundercloud covers eighty li in every direction, and beyond those eighty li there is not a wisp of cloud!
" General Lu, a man tall and powerfully built, flashed a keen light in his eyes and said in a low voice, "Send in the Wind Marquis Army. Blow the thunderclouds apart!
" "Yes, sir!
Relay the general's order—the Wind Marquis Army is to work its arts and scatter the thundercloud!
" In the rear, the officers and men of one army were dressed in strange and outlandish garb, each bearing on his back a great gourd half a man's height; they opened the mouths of their gourds one and all, and at once gusts of black wind rushed up out of them into the sky.
The men of that army each stirred their vital essence and pointed, and the black wind howled and swelled, turning into a gale that joined into one vast sheet and blew toward the thunderclouds above!
But at that very moment, in the bookshop within the city, the Deaf Elder had finished his second painting: a picture of Whirlwinds and Sudden Rain.