Liu Bai stood up.
The disciples of the Sword Garret turned serious when recalling the words their teacher had said previously. They knew that he had decided not to wait anymore, which meant that the fiercest battle in the cultivation field was about to happen.
It was at this moment that the voile on the divine chariot were pulled open. Out of the veil came Ye Hongyu, and she walked into the field.
The West-Hill Divine Palace Coalition Army which was once depressed turned silent for a moment, and then they burst into cheers.
Ye Hongyu was the real genius in Haotian Taoism. She was Prince Long Qing's greatest competition, and the last opponent Ning Que would like to face. Cheng Pipi was the record holder of being the youngest person to reach the Knowing Destiny State, but if Ye Hongyu had wanted to, she could have broken Cheng Pipi's record.
That might not sound persuasive enough, but it had been proved that Ye Hongyu could achieve whatever she wanted. For example, she wanted to be the Great Divine Priest of Judgment.
Seeing Ye Hongyu show up on the field, Liu Bai stopped moving forward, folding his hands at his back.
Liu Bai didn't like those bigwigs in the West-Hill Palace, including the Hierarch Lord. Ye Hongyu might be the only one in there that he liked, or admired.
He was closely connected with Ye Hongyu not because he was the one who had drawn the paper sword in the letter which later helped Ye Hongyu to get on the black jade throne in the verdict of the Divine Palace. It was because he knew that Ye Hongyu was never limited within the realm of the sword, and she had already succeeded in the Divine Skills of Haotian Taoism.
Liu Bai still thought that Jun Mo was more powerful than Ye Hongyu. But he also thought that after Jun Mo said "you're no match for me" yesterday, it was possible that Ye Hongyu could win if she chose to fight at the moment.
He wondered what Ye Hongyu would do.
And he was eager to know the result of the fight between Ye Hongyu and Jun Mo.
So again, he chose to witness the battle.
The morale of the West-Hill Divine Palace Coalition Army had been cut seriously by the iron sword outside the Verdant Canyon. But the soldiers cheered up again when Ye Hongyu came into their sights.
Ye Hongyu walked towards the canyon, and she didn't stop until she reached the center of the field.
Overwhelming cheers came from behind her, getting louder and louder, but then the cheers stopped.
Numerous eyes filled with tremendous excitement and expectation looked at the scarlet Divine Robe of Judgement she was wearing.
She could make such a large impact on the Coalition Army's morale just by standing out there because she was the Great Divine Priest of West-Hill Palace. This was so even though she was the youngest Great Divine Priest of Judgement in the history of West-Hill Palace.
The Great Divine Priest of West-Hill Palace was the position that countless cultivators of Haotian Taoism looked up to, and Haotian believers took the Great Divine Priest as their god. They couldn't possibly think that their god would lose the fight to a mortal.
There were unobservable deployments in the Military camp of the Coalition Army. Tens of thousands of people flowed out of the camp and into the most forefront part of the battlefield. They watched what was happening in the field with excitement, with spears and pikes in their hands.
The cheers and noisy chatter ceased.
The whole world was quiet.
Then a knocking sound rang.
That was the sound of the end of spears hitting the ground.
A growing number of people were hitting the ground with the weapons in their hands, and it was becoming louder and louder.
Tens of thousands of spears and pikes hit the ground, and the ground started to shake.
The impacting sounds were disordered at first, but they eventually grew in-order, and the beat became faster. At last, it ended with the loudest and heaviest sound.
Boom!
The sound which was once like beating war drums finally rumbled like thunder.
And just at the thundering moment.
Ye Hongyu pulled out her sword.
Faced with a horrible opponent like Jun Mo, Ye Hongyu had to make sure that she had waved the sword at her best.
While she was waving, her black hair banded by the Golden Divine Crown was blown backwards and danced in the wind.
Her eyes lit up, and deep inside her eyes, two sparks of the Divine Light started flaming. In the golden flames it could be seen that the purest soul was dancing.
She had waved out the sword, but the Taoist Sword was still in her hand.
The thin Taoist Sword didn't turn into a long rainbow and fly to the Verdant Canyon, neither did it vanish in the wind. It was held in her hand, pointing at the man in the far-away Verdant Canyon.
The Taoist Sword wasn't drawn out.
But the swords were.
The sky was gloomy.
And the field before the green mountains looked bleak.
Suddenly, thousands of turbulence arose between the heaven and earth, heading straight to the Verdant Canyon.
A white turbulence was a sword mark.
Ye Hongyu figured out the boundaries of Heaven and Earth with the Divine Light, and she waved out sword marks with Haotian Divine Skills.
Hundreds of sword marks flew over the field, crossing the corpses littering the ground and blood stains, and flew directly towards the Verdant Canyon.
More sword marks soared directly into heaven. When they were reaching the dark cloud layers, they fell in perfect arches like arrows, heading directly towards the Verdant Canyon.
These sword marks were closer to heaven. They took in the daylight in the cloud layers and reflected it into colorful rays which looked like real light swords.
It was as beautiful as a dream.
Countless solemn and pure sword marks were given out by the point of the Taoism Sword held by Ye Hongyu. Some of the marks were slow, and some were swift. Some of them soared into heaven and some leaned on the Earth. All of them were heading directly to Jun Mo.
Watching the incredible scene, cheers burst out from the Military camp of the West-Hill Palace Coalition Army.
However, Liu Bai frowned with confusion.
Jun Mo's armor was the best in the world.
The bloody and dusty armor needed no more than a flutter of a breeze to shine as if it were new.
The shining armor reflected the scene of the world around like a mirror.
The dismal sky above the green mountains.
The field soaked in red blood.
And hundreds of solemn and pure sword marks.
Those bright sword marks looked extremely gorgeous with the dismal sky as the background.
It was like a festival's firework display.
The reflection on the armor grew brighter and brighter, indicating that those sword marks were approaching.
Second Brother looked up at the sky and did nothing.
This might be a mere moment in many people's eyes, but he had been waiting for long.
He was waiting for the moment when tens of thousands of sword marks converged and became one.
Yet the moment never came.
When he was sure that the tens of thousands of sword marks wouldn't converge, he raised his eyebrows.
And that was the first time that his expression had changed since the fight began.
Because he still wondered why Ye Hongyu had so many swords.
People in the same realm as he and Ye Hongyu knew what real power was.
Beauty, like the fireworks reflected on the armor, was not real power.
Purity, like the Divine Light in her eyes, was not real power.
Magnificence, like the tens of thousands of astonishing sword marks flying in heaven and over the earth, was not real power.
The real power was concentration.
The fireworks made of thousands of Taoism Swords were based on Ye Hongyu's high-level West-Hill Divine Skill. It was too magnificent, and too broad to concentrate.
Like the storm in the summer of Chang'an. The rain poured heavily and frighteningly, but it went off fast. And it barely left a mark on the old city wall.
Like the water dripping off the eaves of the Academy, they were silent but continuous, and after thousands of years, the stone under the eaves would be perforated by these droplets.
The Second Brother had never fought with Ye Hongyu before.
And with the help of Ning Que, he saw the sword Liu Bai had drawn for Ye Hongyu. And he also knew it from Ning Que what Ye Hongyu was like.
The girl had dared to go straight into the verdict of the Divine Hall for the throne as soon as she had comprehended Liu Bai's sword style. As such, he thought that she was definitely the most powerful amongst the younger generation.
She was more powerful than Pipi.
She was more powerful than Ning Que.
Or she wouldn't have understood what real power was.
Her most powerful strike had to be a single sword.
And it couldn't be so many swords.
Second Brother was waiting for the tens of thousands of sword marks to converge into one.
He decided to defeat her when she waved out her most powerful sword.
Only by that could he feel the pleasure.
Yet Ye Hongyu didn't move as he expected.
And he still wondered why.
Second Brother was sure that he could beat her even if she executed her most powerful strike. But now Ye Hongyu's swords appeared in the tens of thousands, and that was to say that the girl had lost it because there was no chance that she could win.
Suddenly, Second Brother understood.
Ye Hongyu wasn't fighting to win today in the first place.
"She dropped her pride so calmly just for the final victory. Isn't that a kind of pride too?"
Second Brother thought to himself, and he looked at the tens of thousands of sword marks approaching the Verdant Canyon, saying, "Is this the Cage?"
He raised the iron sword in his hand and waved it at the Cage Array made up of tens of thousands of sword marks, and he looked serious.
It was not because of the Cage.
It was because of the mental state Ye Hongyu had hidden behind the Cage Array.
The Cage was one of the most complicated and powerful tactical arrays of the West-Hill Divine Palace.
Ke Haoran had simulated his Cage Array with the Haoran Sword, and it trapped Master Lotus for more than ten years. The former Great Divine Priest of Judgement also used the Cage Array to trap Wei Guangming in the Peach Mountain for more than ten years.
Ye Hongyu built the Cage Array with tens of thousands of sword marks, and her inspiration was the Haoran Sword marks she saw at the front gate of the Devil's Doctrine. While she had reached the peak of the Knowing Destiny State now, she still had a long way to go before she grew as powerful as Ke Haoran, and she was even no match for the former Great Divine Priest of Judgement now.
She killed the old Great Divine Priest of Judgement and became the new one because she had taken the advantage of the serious injuries the former Great Divine Priest had gained from Wei Guangming's breaking out of his Cage Array.
In her present state, she could trap countless powerhouses to death in her Cage Array, but she was still not powerful enough to trap Second Brother of the Academy, which was to say she would definitely lose the fight.
But she was not afraid of losing.
And just like what Second Brother had perceived in the end, she had not thought of winning the fight in the first place.
It would be a shame for a Great Divine Priest of West-Hill to lose the fight while being watched by tens of thousands of believers.
But she didn't care.
It was impossible for her Cage Array to trap Second Brother forever, but at least she could trap him for a moment.
And a moment was all she wanted.
The precious moment was enough for the West-Hill Palace Coalition Army to do many things.
Like thousands of cavalries charging.
When the sound of Chinese zither and bamboo flute rang somewhere in the Verdant Canyon...
In the divine chariot, the Great Divine Priest of Revelation reached out his fingers and turned the West-Hill Scripture before him to some page.
Liu Bai stood up.
The disciples of the Sword Garret turned serious when recalling the words their teacher had said previously. They knew that he had decided not to wait anymore, which meant that the fiercest battle in the cultivation field was about to happen.
It was at this moment that the voile on the divine chariot were pulled open. Out of the veil came Ye Hongyu, and she walked into the field.
The West-Hill Divine Palace Coalition Army which was once depressed turned silent for a moment, and then they burst into cheers.
Ye Hongyu was the real genius in Haotian Taoism. She was Prince Long Qing's greatest competition, and the last opponent Ning Que would like to face. Cheng Pipi was the record holder of being the youngest person to reach the Knowing Destiny State, but if Ye Hongyu had wanted to, she could have broken Cheng Pipi's record.
That might not sound persuasive enough, but it had been proved that Ye Hongyu could achieve whatever she wanted. For example, she wanted to be the Great Divine Priest of Judgment.
Seeing Ye Hongyu show up on the field, Liu Bai stopped moving forward, folding his hands at his back.
Liu Bai didn't like those bigwigs in the West-Hill Palace, including the Hierarch Lord. Ye Hongyu might be the only one in there that he liked, or admired.
He was closely connected with Ye Hongyu not because he was the one who had drawn the paper sword in the letter which later helped Ye Hongyu to get on the black jade throne in the verdict of the Divine Palace. It was because he knew that Ye Hongyu was never limited within the realm of the sword, and she had already succeeded in the Divine Skills of Haotian Taoism.
Liu Bai still thought that Jun Mo was more powerful than Ye Hongyu. But he also thought that after Jun Mo said "you're no match for me" yesterday, it was possible that Ye Hongyu could win if she chose to fight at the moment.
He wondered what Ye Hongyu would do.
And he was eager to know the result of the fight between Ye Hongyu and Jun Mo.
So again, he chose to witness the battle.
The morale of the West-Hill Divine Palace Coalition Army had been cut seriously by the iron sword outside the Verdant Canyon. But the soldiers cheered up again when Ye Hongyu came into their sights.
Ye Hongyu walked towards the canyon, and she didn't stop until she reached the center of the field.
Overwhelming cheers came from behind her, getting louder and louder, but then the cheers stopped.
Numerous eyes filled with tremendous excitement and expectation looked at the scarlet Divine Robe of Judgement she was wearing.
She could make such a large impact on the Coalition Army's morale just by standing out there because she was the Great Divine Priest of West-Hill Palace. This was so even though she was the youngest Great Divine Priest of Judgement in the history of West-Hill Palace.
The Great Divine Priest of West-Hill Palace was the position that countless cultivators of Haotian Taoism looked up to, and Haotian believers took the Great Divine Priest as their god. They couldn't possibly think that their god would lose the fight to a mortal.
There were unobservable deployments in the Military camp of the Coalition Army. Tens of thousands of people flowed out of the camp and into the most forefront part of the battlefield. They watched what was happening in the field with excitement, with spears and pikes in their hands.
The cheers and noisy chatter ceased.
The whole world was quiet.
Then a knocking sound rang.
That was the sound of the end of spears hitting the ground.
A growing number of people were hitting the ground with the weapons in their hands, and it was becoming louder and louder.
Tens of thousands of spears and pikes hit the ground, and the ground started to shake.
The impacting sounds were disordered at first, but they eventually grew in-order, and the beat became faster. At last, it ended with the loudest and heaviest sound.
Boom!
The sound which was once like beating war drums finally rumbled like thunder.
And just at the thundering moment.
Ye Hongyu pulled out her sword.
Faced with a horrible opponent like Jun Mo, Ye Hongyu had to make sure that she had waved the sword at her best.
While she was waving, her black hair banded by the Golden Divine Crown was blown backwards and danced in the wind.
Her eyes lit up, and deep inside her eyes, two sparks of the Divine Light started flaming. In the golden flames it could be seen that the purest soul was dancing.
She had waved out the sword, but the Taoist Sword was still in her hand.
The thin Taoist Sword didn't turn into a long rainbow and fly to the Verdant Canyon, neither did it vanish in the wind. It was held in her hand, pointing at the man in the far-away Verdant Canyon.
The Taoist Sword wasn't drawn out.
But the swords were.
The sky was gloomy.
And the field before the green mountains looked bleak.
Suddenly, thousands of turbulence arose between the heaven and earth, heading straight to the Verdant Canyon.
A white turbulence was a sword mark.
Ye Hongyu figured out the boundaries of Heaven and Earth with the Divine Light, and she waved out sword marks with Haotian Divine Skills.
Hundreds of sword marks flew over the field, crossing the corpses littering the ground and blood stains, and flew directly towards the Verdant Canyon.
More sword marks soared directly into heaven. When they were reaching the dark cloud layers, they fell in perfect arches like arrows, heading directly towards the Verdant Canyon.
These sword marks were closer to heaven. They took in the daylight in the cloud layers and reflected it into colorful rays which looked like real light swords.
It was as beautiful as a dream.
Countless solemn and pure sword marks were given out by the point of the Taoism Sword held by Ye Hongyu. Some of the marks were slow, and some were swift. Some of them soared into heaven and some leaned on the Earth. All of them were heading directly to Jun Mo.
Watching the incredible scene, cheers burst out from the Military camp of the West-Hill Palace Coalition Army.
However, Liu Bai frowned with confusion.
Jun Mo's armor was the best in the world.
The bloody and dusty armor needed no more than a flutter of a breeze to shine as if it were new.
The shining armor reflected the scene of the world around like a mirror.
The dismal sky above the green mountains.
The field soaked in red blood.
And hundreds of solemn and pure sword marks.
Those bright sword marks looked extremely gorgeous with the dismal sky as the background.
It was like a festival's firework display.
The reflection on the armor grew brighter and brighter, indicating that those sword marks were approaching.
Second Brother looked up at the sky and did nothing.
This might be a mere moment in many people's eyes, but he had been waiting for long.
He was waiting for the moment when tens of thousands of sword marks converged and became one.
Yet the moment never came.
When he was sure that the tens of thousands of sword marks wouldn't converge, he raised his eyebrows.
And that was the first time that his expression had changed since the fight began.
Because he still wondered why Ye Hongyu had so many swords.
People in the same realm as he and Ye Hongyu knew what real power was.
Beauty, like the fireworks reflected on the armor, was not real power.
Purity, like the Divine Light in her eyes, was not real power.
Magnificence, like the tens of thousands of astonishing sword marks flying in heaven and over the earth, was not real power.
The real power was concentration.
The fireworks made of thousands of Taoism Swords were based on Ye Hongyu's high-level West-Hill Divine Skill. It was too magnificent, and too broad to concentrate.
Like the storm in the summer of Chang'an. The rain poured heavily and frighteningly, but it went off fast. And it barely left a mark on the old city wall.
Like the water dripping off the eaves of the Academy, they were silent but continuous, and after thousands of years, the stone under the eaves would be perforated by these droplets.
The Second Brother had never fought with Ye Hongyu before.
And with the help of Ning Que, he saw the sword Liu Bai had drawn for Ye Hongyu. And he also knew it from Ning Que what Ye Hongyu was like.
The girl had dared to go straight into the verdict of the Divine Hall for the throne as soon as she had comprehended Liu Bai's sword style. As such, he thought that she was definitely the most powerful amongst the younger generation.
She was more powerful than Pipi.
She was more powerful than Ning Que.
Or she wouldn't have understood what real power was.
Her most powerful strike had to be a single sword.
And it couldn't be so many swords.
Second Brother was waiting for the tens of thousands of sword marks to converge into one.
He decided to defeat her when she waved out her most powerful sword.
Only by that could he feel the pleasure.
Yet Ye Hongyu didn't move as he expected.
And he still wondered why.
Second Brother was sure that he could beat her even if she executed her most powerful strike. But now Ye Hongyu's swords appeared in the tens of thousands, and that was to say that the girl had lost it because there was no chance that she could win.
Suddenly, Second Brother understood.
Ye Hongyu wasn't fighting to win today in the first place.
"She dropped her pride so calmly just for the final victory. Isn't that a kind of pride too?"
Second Brother thought to himself, and he looked at the tens of thousands of sword marks approaching the Verdant Canyon, saying, "Is this the Cage?"
He raised the iron sword in his hand and waved it at the Cage Array made up of tens of thousands of sword marks, and he looked serious.
It was not because of the Cage.
It was because of the mental state Ye Hongyu had hidden behind the Cage Array.
The Cage was one of the most complicated and powerful tactical arrays of the West-Hill Divine Palace.
Ke Haoran had simulated his Cage Array with the Haoran Sword, and it trapped Master Lotus for more than ten years. The former Great Divine Priest of Judgement also used the Cage Array to trap Wei Guangming in the Peach Mountain for more than ten years.
Ye Hongyu built the Cage Array with tens of thousands of sword marks, and her inspiration was the Haoran Sword marks she saw at the front gate of the Devil's Doctrine. While she had reached the peak of the Knowing Destiny State now, she still had a long way to go before she grew as powerful as Ke Haoran, and she was even no match for the former Great Divine Priest of Judgement now.
She killed the old Great Divine Priest of Judgement and became the new one because she had taken the advantage of the serious injuries the former Great Divine Priest had gained from Wei Guangming's breaking out of his Cage Array.
In her present state, she could trap countless powerhouses to death in her Cage Array, but she was still not powerful enough to trap Second Brother of the Academy, which was to say she would definitely lose the fight.
But she was not afraid of losing.
And just like what Second Brother had perceived in the end, she had not thought of winning the fight in the first place.
It would be a shame for a Great Divine Priest of West-Hill to lose the fight while being watched by tens of thousands of believers.
But she didn't care.
It was impossible for her Cage Array to trap Second Brother forever, but at least she could trap him for a moment.
And a moment was all she wanted.
The precious moment was enough for the West-Hill Palace Coalition Army to do many things.
Like thousands of cavalries charging.
When the sound of Chinese zither and bamboo flute rang somewhere in the Verdant Canyon...
In the divine chariot, the Great Divine Priest of Revelation reached out his fingers and turned the West-Hill Scripture before him to some page.
