The Heavenly Court was a colossal machine, a vast institution responsible for keeping an entire realm in motion. The work it handled was so intricate, so layered, that most people could not even begin to imagine it.
A story from the Journey to the West illustrated the point perfectly.
The Dragon King of the Jing River once made a wager with Yuan Shoucheng over sothing as simple, and as deadly, as the timing of rain.
Yuan Shoucheng said that clouds would gather tomorrow at the hour of the Dragon, rain would fall at the hour of the Snake, and by the hour of the Goat the rainfall would be complete, totaling three chi, three cun, and forty-eight dian of water.
The Dragon King refused to believe it. After all, he was a dragon deity in charge of summoning wind and rain. Who better than him could know when and how much rain would fall?
But Yuan Shoucheng was no ordinary man. Though he had never entered the immortal ranks, his mastery of divination and calculation had already reached an almost unfathomable level.
He did not need any backing or hidden influence. A simple calculation of the heavenly balance in that region was enough for him to determine the exact amount of rain the dragon god should bring.
It was no different from plugging two known values into a formula to solve for the third.
The answer was sitting there in plain sight. Unless the Heavenly Court intended to create a colossal disaster, it simply could not act otherwise.
And of course, the Heavenly Court had no desire to trigger such chaos.
So everything unfolded exactly as Yuan Shoucheng had predicted, and the one left to suffer was the old Dragon King of the Jing River.
If he followed the imperial decree of the Heavenly Court, he would lose the wager for certain.
That outco would strip him of all dignity in front of his water kin, and that was sothing he could not accept. So, whether from bad advice or sheer desperation, he tampered with the rain when it ca ti to summon it.
He delayed the downpour by an hour.
He also reduced the total rainfall by forty units.
Taken lightly, that was defiance of the heavenly order and a cri of deceiving the throne.
Taken seriously, it was a violation of the natural cycle itself, a rebellion against the grand workings of heaven and earth. Punishnt by extermination would not have been an exaggeration.
So the Dragon King of the Jing River was inevitably dragged to the Execution Dragon Platform.
The reason this story was brought up was simple.
It proved one thing: the Heavenly Court's operation was strict beyond imagination, and its demands on the gods were no less precise than the parts of a finely engineered machine.
One person alone could never control the whole system, even if that person was the Heavenly Emperor himself.
The Heavenly Emperor stood above all, and if he wished, he could strip any immortal of their divine office. But if the Heavenly Court was to function properly, it still had to rely on each god and immortal fulfilling their own role.
And the one who governed that order, the one who kept the divine offices in line, was the Judicial Heavenly God.
That was why the position was so important in the new Heavenly Court.
At this mont, the Asgardian gods were unquestionably rebels in the eyes of the Heavenly Court.
The old Heavenly Court simply had not possessed the strength to do anything about them.
But things were different now.
The power of the Judicial Heavenly God was devastatingly effective against these so-called rebels, almost like the demonic-banishing power of the True Warrior, the Great Emperor Zhenwu, had once been against demons and monsters.
And Yang Jian was only growing more ferocious as the battle went on. Even King Odin was being driven backward under his relentless assault.
Seeing that, the God of War Tyr imdiately joined the fight to assist Odin.
Tyr was one of the fiercest warriors in Asgard. Among the gods, only he had ever dared place his hand in the mouth of the wolf god Fenris, and he had paid for that courage by losing his left hand.
He was Thor's half-brother, and even with only one hand remaining, he still possessed terrifying combat power.
Yang Jian had not expected the Norse pantheon to have another monster like this, one who could stand almost on the sa level as Odin.
In fact, once Tyr took over part of the pressure, Odin was even able to withdraw slightly and catch his breath.
At the sa ti, Balder, the god of light, who had been holding back the heavenly soldiers on another front, charged in as well. He was Tyr's full brother.
His main weapons were two longswords.
They could unleash imasurable heat and light. While in Asgard, no weapon could kill him, except mistletoe.
That was the reason he had been able to hold off so many heavenly soldiers by himself.
But now, seeing Yang Jian's overwhelming divine might and unstoppable montum, the brothers all reached the sa conclusion.
Take down Yang Jian first.
Tyr and Balder joined forces and threw themselves into a brutal battle against Yang Jian, while Thor and their other brother Vidar, a giant over three ters tall, intercepted the heavenly soldiers and kept them from interfering.
"Well, look at that," Drex Valen said with a spectator's calm, almost amused tone. "They're still one speed god short of a full set. Heimdall makes five. Then there's the stepbrother Loki and their sister Hela."
"Xingtian," Drex Valen said, his voice turning colder. "Do not let the other pantheons look down on our Heavenly Court and think Yang Jian is the only one worth fearing."
The power of the Black Hole Dinsion had already spread into the dinsional space of Asgard. Drex Valen had long since relaxed.
This prize was already in his pocket. It was not going anywhere.
At this point, he was simply watching the show.
Ragnarok was about to begin in Asgard.
"As you command, Your Majesty."
A towering brute stepped forward.
He carried a massive battle-axe in one hand and a huge shield in the other. It was none other than Xingtian, the "God of War" Drex Valen had shaped from myth and legend.
One hand bore Xingtian's shield. The other wielded Ganqi as he danced into battle.
A colossal ancient giant.
The mont Xingtian appeared, the faces of the Asgardians changed.
After all, giants were their age-old enemies, the kind of foe that instinctively dragged out every old wound and blood feud.
And this was no ordinary giant. This one still had his head. He looked vicious enough to carve fear into bone.
The instant Xingtian, now bearing the title of God of War, entered the battlefield, the pressure on Asgard's brothers beca crushing.
This giant was absolutely the most terrifying giant they had ever faced.
If the giants of the past had possessed even half of his ability, they would already be dead.
Protected by the divine power of war, Xingtian's body was unbreakable. He completely ignored their attacks. But every ti his Ganqi axe swung, Tyr and the others did not dare et it head-on.
Tyr had already tried once.
The result had been terrifying. The Ganqi axe, empowered by the divine force of war, was utterly unbreakable and had nearly cleaved him and his weapon in two.
"What exactly is this giant?" Tyr asked through gritted teeth.
He was being forced back step by step, barely hanging on only because Balder was recklessly absorbing most of Xingtian's attacks.
Tyr had originally assud this giant was simply relying on brute force, smashing everything with raw strength.
He never imagined the other side's martial skill would be so absurdly refined that it had dismantled him, a god of war, in just a few moves.
"Hmph." Xingtian's voice rang out like iron striking stone. "You foreign false gods. I am Xingtian, God of War of the Heavenly Court."
"The Heavenly Court has its own God of War?" Tyr blurted out in shock.
He was a God of War too.
So the difference between them was that enormous?
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