Chapter 455 — The Array Master of the Western Frontier

The dragon-qilin, frantic with alarm, craned its neck this way and that, dreading that these towers, houses, and palaces might come alive once more.

All was silence in Yun City; not another soul was to be seen anywhere in the city. On the geographical charts of the Western Land, Yun City was marked as a great city of more than a hundred thousand souls, yet now its inhabitants had vanished utterly.

Whoever could make a whole city abandon its homeland must wield a power beyond imagining.

Yun City stood hollow and bare, with only Shen Mu and his companions within it; the city that had been so vividly alive a moment ago seemed now to have died all at once.

The deeper the quiet, the more dreadful it became.

Suddenly the entire city began to quake violently; the earth beneath their feet heaved and churned, and one tower, one house, one palace after another sank away, until in an instant Yun City had become a blank expanse of bare ground. The dragon-qilin hastily trod upon its fiery clouds and soared into the air; Shen Mu leaped onto its back, while Xiong Qi'er clutched tight to the dragon-qilin's mane and stared down in terror.

The empty city below abruptly split apart, and blocks of square-cut stone rose from the depths. Layer upon layer these blocks stacked themselves, forming square stone pillars, and the pillars rose with astonishing speed; in less than a breath, a forest of square columns had sprung up all around Shen Mu and his companions.

Standing amid that forest, they seemed utterly insignificant. These pillars were in fact moving at flying speed, concealing within them the transformations of an array. Each time a pillar moved, it would suddenly grow taller or shrink shorter, as blocks of perfectly square stone shifted sideways or upward of their own accord, sliding into other pillars.

Some pillars lay horizontal, spanning the gaps between others like so many crossbeams, yet the length of these beams shifted ceaselessly too, now long, now short.

Ahead there would be an open path, and the next instant the stone pillars would crash together, becoming a wall of immense, crushing thickness. Yun City seemed to have come back to life—only now it was utterly unlike the city that had raced about devouring all things; now Yun City was a three-dimensional space in ceaseless transformation.

A moment before, Yun City had been merely a monstrous thing that swallowed everything, fearsome in appearance but clumsy and unwieldy, its menace not great. Now Yun City had become three-dimensional, operating in the form of an array, and its threat had risen enormously. And on all six faces of those square stones, each face was stamped with a different rune pattern; as the stones moved and reassembled, the rune face of one stone would inevitably join perfectly with the rune face of the stone beside it.

This was the strangest thing of all: the reassembling of the stones was only the surface, and the true killing intent lay hidden in the rune structures that ceaselessly split and recombined. Different combinations of rune patterns made different arrays.

This city held countless stones, and the rune patterns on them differed one from another, their possible combinations endless—and so the transformations of the array were endless as well. Shen Mu saw at once that if they stood here without moving, they would not trigger any of the array's power; but if they moved, the array's power would be unleashed.

"The divine arts of the Western Land are magnificent beyond measure! " Shen Mu sighed in heartfelt admiration.

The divine arts of the Western Land did not prize raw might as those of Jingping Kingdom did, yet this fantastical, heaven-daring ingenuity filled him with deep admiration.

He had studied the Myriad Gods' Natural Art, but in this branch he had never labored to master it; what Yun City displayed to him was the wisdom of countless practitioners of the Western Land. The space of Yun City grew smaller and smaller, squeezing inward without cease.

By the end of its movement, this city would likely become a vast cube of tier upon tier of array structures, perfectly square; and if Shen Mu, Xiong Qi'er, and the dragon-qilin could not break out, they would surely be crushed into a smear of mud. The dragon-qilin too perceived the terror of Yun City as it now was, and at once began to reckon where a way of life might lie.

If this was an array, then there must be a process of activation—and that process was where life lay.

And since Yun City's array transformations came about through the movement of its stones, the process of the stones' movement was where life lay. Yet to unravel an array was monstrously difficult.

Those paths that seemed to lead out of the cube were precisely the roads of death; to flee by them would mean annihilation with no grave to lie in.

"The cube-prison of Yun City conceals within it calculations of the utmost complexity! " The dragon-qilin looked east and west, its eyeballs spinning like a revolving lantern as it spent its mind reckoning the movements of every cube within the vast cube, until it was foaming at the mouth. It said swiftly, "Give me time, and I could reckon out a way of life!

But I fear I shall be crushed to bits before I reckon where that way lies! Sect Master, your attainments in the arts of calculation surpass mine—can you reckon out that path?

" Shen Mu's eyes flickered, and he said with delight, "I have suddenly thought of a way to deal with Xing An!

If Xing An's four limbs could be made to grow spirits of their own, would they not slip entirely beyond his control? Killing him would be far simpler then!

" The dragon-qilin was beside itself with fury: "Sect Master, we are about to die, and you have the leisure for such thoughts?

" Shen Mu laughed. "The one who controls this Yun City has attainments in the arts of calculation of the highest order, not beneath my own. In a fair contest, I could still overcome him. But this man struck at me by stealth, moving first and seizing the initiative, and so breaking his array is extremely difficult.

By the time I solve his calculation puzzle, we shall have been crushed to death. " The dragon-qilin despaired.

Suddenly Shen Mu called out at length, "Brother Yu, it has been a long while.

Have you no wish to chat with me before I die? " "No chatting. I fear dying of too much talk.

" Yu Bochuan's voice came from no one knew where, and he laughed with great cheer: "For a personage like Sect Master Shen, the sooner you die the better.

I would not rest easy if you died a moment later.

Only a dead Sect Master Shen is a reassuring Sect Master Shen!

" Shen Mu's face was black as iron. "But Brother Shen may set his mind at ease: when I stand before Brother Shen's corpse, I will sit down properly and pour out my whole journey of the heart to you.

" Yu Bochuan laughed even more merrily: "This humble one has a rather poor habit—when contending with an opponent in a struggle of life and death, I like to do my utmost to finish him off.

Only after the opponent is dead do I grow talkative, conversing at length with his corpse and explaining just why he lost to me.

I will not make an exception for Sect Master Shen. " Shen Mu said with feeling, "A truly fine habit. Trapped here as I am, I am already doomed to die by your hand, and still you are so cautious—you are indeed a worthy opponent.

As the saying goes, when the chess player meets his match and the general meets his talent, I should like to paint a picture for you, as a settlement of the mutual admiration between us. " The stone walls around them shifted in ever denser, ever more staggered array. The cube-prison that Yun City had become transformed too swiftly; every step within it held profound mathematical structures.