Chapter 205 - 198: The Formation Traps the Four Gates of the Heavenly Court
The siege of White Elephant City was nearing its end, and the Tang army launched the final assault.
Inside White Elephant City, the defending soldiers, running short on food, resorted to slaughtering their warhorses for meat, digging up grass roots, and eating tree bark. What little they could eat, they had eaten. Already exhausted and lacking energy, how could they still have the strength to defend the city? Xue Rengui sent troops to feint attacks every other day, causing the city’s leaders to live in constant fear, yet mockingly said the Tang army’s bark was worse than its bite.
Eventually, Xue Rengui switched from feinting to launching real attacks, and swiftly breached the northern city gate. The defense forces lacked the will to recapture it and instead retreated into the inner city. The Tang army took over the outer city like a hot knife through butter, immediately commenced the attack on the inner city, giving the enemy no respite.
In that moment, the city resounded with cries that rent the sky, arrows flew like locusts, human lives were as cheap as grass, blood flowed like rivers, and corpses piled up like mountains.
White Elephant City had fallen.
The last stronghold of Tianzhu had also fallen, and the King of Tianzhu set himself ablaze within the Imperial Palace. Fortunately, with the abundance of Tang soldiers, they quickly extinguished the flames, preventing greater loss. Many soldiers couldn’t help but weep after breaking through White Elephant City, as these years of conquest had indeed been far too long.
Xue Rengui ordered the soldiers to collect Buddhist icons from the homes of the civilians but forbade them from extorting property, on pain of death. Soon, they had gathered tens of thousands of Buddhist statues which they placed in the square and set ablaze. Afterwards, the soldiers distributed statues of the Three Pure Ones Revered Taoist for the civilians to worship.
Now that Tianzhu had fallen and Buddha had been defeated, it became apparent that the Taoist Sect was more formidable than the Buddhist Sect. After coming to this realization, the civilians no longer resisted and began to convert to the worship of the Three Pure Ones.
Upon receiving the news, Li Zhi immediately dispatched officials to manage the area and then prepared for the ceremony at Mount Tai. After all, having achieved such a monumental expansion of territory, it was indeed astonishing that the vast lands of Tianzhu were now part of Great Tang’s domain.
While Great Tang was busily making preparations, Wukong did not rest either. The five leaders of the great clans trained day and night in the Five Elements Formation, so as to master it quickly and then proceed to Mount Buzhou to retrieve the Eastern Emperor Bell.
In the world of cultivation, where years pass like days, a year had flown by in the blink of an eye. At last, the five had practiced the formation to perfection, without any hesitation or difficulty.