The next day.
Yue Yang, following Old Mao, trailed behind the border army returning to the capital for its rotation, boarded a small airship, and ascended to a super-colossus of a thing: a flying vessel of deep purple, shaped like a war-shuttle, two kilometers from bow to stern, some five hundred meters at its widest and three hundred meters in height — a gigantic sky-going warship. This vast flying vessel, called the Gannet, was nothing the luxury airships Yue Yang had ridden before could be compared to. Even an airship of the very largest scale would have been no more than a mosquito before a soaring bird beside it, pitifully small.
This flying vessel, said to accommodate tens of thousands of border troops with ease, was precisely the sky-hanging mothership Old Mao had spoken of earlier.
It was a super-warship, offense and defense in one. Powered by Divine Stones. Never running dry.
And there was a record attached to it, too.
Since the two great gods Taiyan and Bingli had first developed and built the sky-hanging motherships, not one such vessel had ever been shot down on a battlefield.
Even the two gods Taiyan and Bingli themselves had fallen. And yet the sky-hanging motherships the two had created together had never once seen a single one lost in battle!
The sky-hanging mothership was also a symbol of a divine nation’s power. Take the strongest two of the eight great divine nations, the Eastern and the Western: both countries possessed more than fifty sky-hanging motherships apiece, and their largest — “Super Overlord” class motherships — were said to exceed ten kilometers in length, two kilometers at the widest, with hulls more than a kilometer at their tallest, containing over a hundred decks and cabins that could hold upward of five hundred thousand people. They could absolutely be called invincible super-overlords of the skies, before whom enemies scattered at the mere sight.
The Southeast Divine Nation’s overall national power fell far short of the Eastern and Western Divine Nations. Super Overlord-class motherships it certainly did not have; even counting the smallest classes, it possessed no more than ten.
The Gannet that Yue Yang boarded today already ranked among the top five of all the Southeast Divine Nation’s motherships. It had entered service only recently, less than two years ago — it could still be counted a new ship.
“Besides the border troops, why are there so many merchants and so much cargo?” Yue Yang noticed that behind them, close to ten thousand merchants were also boarding, with cargo streaming in in an unending flow and piling up beneath the ship like a mountain. Clearly this Gannet was not simply a troop transport — it seemed to be doing a bit of business along the way, earning a little freight money.
“There hasn’t been a great war in a long while. Relations among the eight divine nations are relatively stable. Small scuffles happen often enough, but no one would deploy a weapon like a sky-hanging mothership over them. Generally speaking, motherships are used to protect the nation and to overawe those greedy ‘star bandits,’ the Skyfall Bandits. If there’s no need to patrol the borders or push into the churning meteor belt to pursue the Skyfall Bandits, then a mothership will more often than not carry some freight along its route, easing a little of the severe economic pressure inside the divine nation. You’ve no idea how these great lumps burn through money — a bottomless pit, truly…” Because Old Mao regarded this newcomer Yue Yang with such particular esteem, he told him everything he knew and held nothing back.
“Country bumpkin.” Guoguo rolled his eyes in secret. Didn’t even know what a sky-hanging mothership was — a genuine hick!
“With so many people boarding, what happens if star bandits or spies slip aboard?” Yue Yang suddenly knitted his brows; a strange sensation had risen in his heart.
“Hahahaha, impossible!” Seeing that Yue Yang didn’t understand, Guoguo felt an inexplicable rush of satisfaction and burst out laughing. “Even if Skyfall Bandits really did sneak aboard, so what? Do they mean to hijack the ship? That’s nothing but walking into the net themselves! There are over three thousand elite guards aboard, plus tens of thousands of border troops. How many Skyfall Bandits would you have to smuggle on to seize this ship? Besides — grant them a thousand concessions and say the Skyfall Bandits did seize her. Could they fly her? Impossible! This isn’t some little sampan. You have to undergo the most professional training and study before you can master the skill of piloting her — and it isn’t a job for a dozen men, either. The standard crew complement of the command bridge alone exceeds two hundred, and that’s not counting maintenance and logistics! My dear young master, set your mind at ease. Since the sky-hanging mothership first came into the world, not one has ever been taken by force — never from without, and never from within; no one has ever succeeded! Sky-hanging motherships are absolutely not a toy those mud-legged Skyfall Bandits can play with. Those fellows only destroy and never build — heh, they don’t understand the first thing about technology!”
“Better to be careful all the same.” Yue Yang had noticed that the down-at-heel bearded man who’d sat drinking in the corner yesterday had also come aboard, and couldn’t help offering the warning again.
“Heh!” Guoguo said nothing more, but his face wore a look of contempt that said you really are borrowing trouble from an empty sky.
“Prudence is always a good thing.” Old Mao didn’t contradict him, but didn’t take it to heart either.
After a round of identity verification on the landing craft, and a short wait, border-army personnel came to guide them, and they formally boarded this Gannet — so vast that one could scarcely take in bow and stern at a single glance.
As he set foot on the sky-hanging mothership, Yue Yang glanced back once more, and noticed that the merchants boarded at a slightly different position. He guessed it was much like the airplanes of his life before the crossing: first class, business class, economy class, and so forth.
Following Old Mao, he entered the giant vessel, then rode an internal rail “glide-shuttle” — something like an elevator and something like a roller coaster — sliding forward through a dazzling blur, and arrived at last at the mothership’s upper deck. It wasn’t the Gemstone Cabin, reserved for royalty and those of divine-general rank and above, but with Old Mao’s status they were seated in the Pearl Cabin, second only to the most luxurious Gemstone Cabin.
The Pearl Cabin’s interior design rivaled a presidential suite; it had everything one could want. Treading on flooring laid entirely with white bear pelts, Yue Yang reflected that the people of this Southeast Divine Nation truly did understand luxury and indulgence. An ordinary luxury cruise liner would be one thing — but to fit out a warship like this, he honestly didn’t know how to judge it!
Old Mao was invited off to a banquet by a border-army commander of his acquaintance. He gave Guoguo a few instructions — take good care of the newcomer Yue Yang — and went out.
Guoguo was unlike the other few relatively honest servants: from the bottom of his heart, he had no wish to attend to Yue Yang. But with his master at hand, he’d had to grit his teeth and serve. The moment Old Mao was gone, he couldn’t sit still.
“Are you coming to the Gladiators’ Plaza or not? There may well be a revelry going on there. If you’ve never seen one, I could take you along to broaden your horizons.” Guoguo looked at Yue Yang with an air of boundless superiority, all but saying: Hurry up and prostrate yourself before me, you hick!
“Thanks, but I don’t care to go.” Yue Yang smiled. Guoguo wanted to use this revelry as a pretext to toy with him and make sport of him — how could he possibly not see through such petty scheming? A small man’s small tricks; he couldn’t be bothered. Rather than waste time on a small man like this, better to use the time to study this sky-hanging mothership more closely — that at least was practical.
“Tch!” Guoguo’s face took on a provocative hicks are always timid cowards expression — which Yue Yang ignored entirely, so that it went to waste.
Having sent that intensely jealous Guoguo packing, Yue Yang returned to his room and bolted the door.
Then he tried raising his Creation Domain and, with his Heaven’s Eye of Wisdom at its most powerful, carefully observed and sensed the environment around him.
The more carefully he observed and sensed, the more novel it all seemed. This sky-hanging mothership Gannet was made from a very special material. The vast hull was seamlessly of a single piece; apart from the tiniest trace of impurities, it was cast almost purely from one substance. Not metal, not iron, not stone — nor could he tell how so vast a shell had ever been artificially cast at all. What Yue Yang found strangest of all was that this shipbuilding material contained within it a faint power of Law. On the surface it was hard to detect, but in fact any living being who set foot within this sky-hanging mothership would have their strength weakened a hundredfold.
Because of the presence of this power of Law, the already indestructible sky-hanging mothership became a thing no force could damage at all.
To destroy a giant vessel like this, you would have to be a god.
At this thought, Yue Yang’s brow furrowed slightly.
If there were a great deal of matter containing the power of Law within Earth Valley and the Mountain Beyond the Mountain, then wouldn’t they be impregnable as an iron cask? And yet the true meaning of clearing Earth Valley and the Mountain Beyond the Mountain was destruction. What relationship did the two things have? And where had this indestructible matter even come from?
Perhaps this Law-bearing matter was connected to the ancient relic that the mysterious consciousness had told him to obtain!
Destruction was Earth Valley’s true purpose. The existence of this substance ran entirely counter to the will of the ancients. This might even be the reason Taiyan and Bingli had fallen…
Yue Yang thought it over for a long while, and felt he’d grasped a direction — though on the whole it remained relatively hazy, and he could only wait for time to fill it in. While no one was there to disturb him, Yue Yang, from within his Creation Domain, attempted to cut the hull with the Wheel of Apocalypse, which destroyed all things — and discovered, to his astonishment, that the Wheel of Apocalypse, capable of rending even a divine body, could carve no more than a faint hairline fissure into the hull.
From this result, Yue Yang arrived at a judgment.
Within the hull, the power of Law radiated outward, invisibly cutting a person’s strength a hundredfold. But the hull’s own defense weakened an attack by something close to ten-thousandfold.
No wonder Old Mao and Guoguo rested so easy. So this Gannet truly was an indestructible existence.
Only with considerable difficulty did Yue Yang manage to cut loose a small fragment of the hull. He carried it back to the Grimoire World.
Princess Qianqian, Fengxian, and the others looked at it and were all alarmed — this substance was far too solid; nothing short of divine power could break it!
“That it can be used to cast giant vessels proves there’s a great deal of this substance in Earth Valley and the Mountain Beyond the Mountain.” Princess Qianqian brought the Tiger Prison Divine Sword down with all her strength, and managed only to hack a jagged notch into the small piece of hull. She knit her sword-like brows and shook her head, puzzled. “A substance this hard, with the power of Law within it, unbreakable by any external force — how did they use it to cast giant vessels?”
“Even a god couldn’t easily cast a super-vessel two kilometers long. It isn’t a question of creative power — it’s that this strange stone with the power of Law inside it simply cannot be commanded at all.” Fengxian felt certain there was some hidden circumstance behind it.
“Could it be connected to that ancient relic?” Yue Yu’s guess ran in the same direction as Yue Yang’s.
“We can’t be certain yet, but it’s likely connected to that ancient relic — and it may even have some bearing on the fall of Taiyan and Bingli.” Luohua pondered a moment, then rendered her judgment: “Before the two true gods Taiyan and Bingli fell, something must have happened — and only then did the present eight great divine nations come to be. And Earth Valley’s true meaning, destruction, may have been thrown off course by this substance. That’s why that mysterious forebear’s consciousness wants you to retrieve the ancient relic, and turn back the direction in which Earth Valley and the Mountain Beyond the Mountain have deviated… Compared to Human Valley’s evil god, the situation here in Earth Valley and the Mountain Beyond the Mountain seems more perilous still. Otherwise that forebear would never have been in such a hurry to send you here!”
“One evil god is headache enough. Is he asking me to fight eight?” Yue Yang broke into a bit of a sweat.
“That’s different. In Human Valley you had strength you couldn’t use.” The Southern Wilderness Demon King laughed. “In Earth Valley, martial force isn’t forbidden — it’s merely weakened a hundredfold!”
“A hundredfold isn’t enough?” Yue Yang was sweating waterfalls. Never mind combat between experts of this caliber — a mere ten percent reduction would get you flogged. Now it was a straight hundredfold cut, and one against eight; it would be a miracle if he weren’t mobbed. And worst of all, his opponents weren’t men but gods! Empress Vivienne had said false gods fell far short of true gods — but they were powerhouses of the divine realm all the same!
“Little Third, be careful. If it truly comes to it, we’ll help you.” The one who doted on Yue Yang most was still his sister, Yue Yu.
“Big Brother, do your best!” And the one who trusted him most would always be Yue Bing, that little lass who worshipped her brother.
In her heart, her big brother was forever undefeated. Invincible as a god of war!
Yue Yang stroked the soft, smooth hair at her forehead, nodded, and gave her a definite answer. Not only for himself, but for everyone — for Bing’er, and for the fourth mother and the little girl waiting far away in the Sky Tower for his return; for His Majesty and the Night Empress, who placed such high hopes in him, and for the Supreme, now assaulting the millionth step of the Sky Stairway. This battle, hard as it was, still had to be fought. This gate, hard as it was to pass, still had to be passed!
(End of Chapter 1137)