Volume I Chapter 91: Bandits of the Celestial Stables

Chapter Ninety-One: Outlaws of the Celestial Stables

The Celestial Stables had existed for countless millennia. Some of them had long since been depleted of their divine energy, leaving behind only feeble celestial steeds struggling to survive and reproduce, barely eking out an existence, abandoned and unnoticed.

No one could say for certain when it began, but this place gradually became a sanctuary for criminals and wanderers. Drifters and renegade immortals, those outcasts unloved and unwanted across the countless worlds governed by the Three Divisions, Four Symbols, and Twenty-Eight Mansions, all found their way here. Over time, their numbers swelled, and a community was formed.

Did the Celestial Army ever attempt a crackdown? Of course they did.

But whenever they came in small numbers, a battle would break out at once. And if they arrived in overwhelming force, the outlaws would simply flee toward the Ninth Mansion of the Legs, where the fabled Shoe of Andromeda lay.

Curse the lot of them—within that shoe was a boundless nebula filled with a dizzying multitude of stars and planets. Once you slipped inside, they’d be hard-pressed to find even a single hair of yours. A crackdown? The army might as well turn their attention elsewhere.

Thus, in the eyes of the celestial lords, this was nothing but a forsaken world. But to those gathered here, it was a homeland for wanderers, a paradise for the condemned.

At this moment, atop a natural rocky dais, stood a burly figure draped in a somewhat tattered cinnabar robe, celestial gold armor visible beneath. Leaning on a heavy black-iron halberd, the man’s voice thundered across the crowd as he delivered his pre-battle address.

This was Chu Tiange, the preeminent warrior of the Wild Star of the Celestial Stables, known to all as the Star Lord.

“Old and young, brothers and sisters, our spies report that the damned Celestial Court has dispatched another army to pacify us. They say the leaders are the Celestial Spear and the Dark Halberd—two of the Court’s most notorious fiends. Are we afraid?”

“Afraid of what? Let them come—one and we’ll kill one, two and we’ll slay a pair! Let’s see how cocky they are when they dare to rampage here. We’ll make sure they never return—”

“Exactly! So what if they’re fierce? If you don’t have the guts, don’t bother bragging. My weapon’s been thirsty for blood for ages, just waiting for their arrival—”

“Let them come! I, Granny Fox, will carve up a swath of them myself. Any man who can stand tall before me deserves to be called a hero. If I don’t drive them so mad they forget their own ancestors, I’d be unworthy of being called the seventh beauty of the Three Divisions—heehee…”

…

Amid the raucous uproar, a blaze of crimson suddenly lit the sky—a man descended from above, clutching a dog in his arms.

What was this supposed to mean?

Had the Celestial Court sent only this man and his dog to suppress them?

That couldn’t be. Both the man and the dog looked barely alive. Perhaps they were fugitives seeking refuge here?

If so, they must be saved. Everyone here had a bloody and tearful past—who among them had not been hunted?

A flurry of flying spells and treasures soared into the sky to catch the falling pair, who landed safely upon brocade cloths and clouds.

The crowd gathered round. Though the man and dog had blazed through the atmosphere and been cloaked in fire, neither bore any burns. They merely lay unconscious, their bodies battered and torn not by fire, but by some immense energy or explosion.

Chu Tiange swept them with his spiritual sense. “They’re still alive. Granny Fox, you and your sisters take them into the cave and see to them. We’ll deal with them after the battle. If the fight goes ill, you know what to do—grab them and make for the Shoe of Andromeda, understand?”

Granny Fox shot Chu Tiange a sidelong glance, purring her assent—a sultriness that could charm the very life from a man.

He ignored her antics, roaring, “Those with guts, those with steel, follow me to the heavens—let’s catch those bastards off guard!”

Had Tu Zhe and the dog perished?

If they had, what tale would there be left to tell? Who would keep reading?

Yet death was but a hair’s breadth away.

The dog was lacerated by shards of space, leaving gaping wounds, though not fatally so. Its miraculous pelt had absorbed most of the energy, but its organs had been shaken out of place.

As for Tu Zhe, he had prepared himself. When the spatial passage exploded, his body hardened like steel. He suffered only superficial pain, not real injury. The true danger was the detonation of that imperial-grade Divine Crystal.

The force of thirty pocket worlds exploding at once struck his back as though thirty emperors had attacked him together. Though his body had evolved into something extraordinary—having survived the direst perils under the monster king Lai Zha—he was no true immortal of indestructible flesh. The muscles of his back were blasted into a mangled mess, his treasured garments torn, leaving a gaping wound.

Granny Fox had once been a rogue cultivator from the Northern Pole Division. Gifted and quick-witted, her talents had shown from a young age. At six, she apprenticed herself to the renowned itinerant immortal, the Celestial Fox Hermit, learning the complete “Hundred Charms of the Celestial Fox”—a technique not unlike Trishina’s, though each practitioner’s arts were uniquely ingenious. In essence, they were fundamentally different.

As she grew, her cultivation and beauty blossomed, so much so that a local prince became enamored. When she rejected his advances, he tried to take her by force, underestimating her powers. His men bound her and threw her onto his bed, thinking brute force would win her in the end.

But things went awry. She revealed her formidable powers, breaking their bones and suffering a beating herself. The prince, unable to swallow his humiliation, led a group of experts to attack her. They wounded Granny Fox and killed the Celestial Fox Hermit, who tried to cover her escape.

Granny Fox fled to the region between the Legs Mansions, where Chu Tiange rescued her. She remained on the Wild Star of the Celestial Stables, becoming one of the three Star Ladies beneath Chu Tiange.

Of course, these outlaws declared themselves Star Lords and Ladies, but to the Celestial Court they were nothing more than the most wanted criminals.

Now, Granny Fox and her sisters bustled to carry Tu Zhe and the dog into the mountain cave.

The cave was the outlaws’ sanctuary, a natural labyrinth of winding tunnels, stalactites hanging from the ceiling, springs tinkling in the dark, shafts of colored light shifting across the strange and wondrous scenery.

This wild star was among the largest in the Northern Pole Star Region—by Earth’s measure, tens of thousands of times larger. Why else would it have been chosen to pasture celestial steeds? If it were small, how could the horses run free?

Thus, the scale of the underground caverns was staggering—spanning the entire crust of the planet. Some vast chambers were as broad as plains, with simple stone houses forming scattered villages that could aid each other, though they were far from concentrated.