Night fell!
The snow had not stopped.
But music rose from the zither in Moon Demon's hands!
Moon-Sacrifice Song!
As the Moon-Sacrifice Song sounded, a fissure suddenly opened in the dark clouds overhead.
Within that fissure, high in the heavens, hung a curved sliver of moon.
It was the twenty-fifth day of the twelfth lunar month. The moon was no longer full, only a waning crescent.
That waning crescent was also her eye.
She stirred the moon with music and used it as her eye; wherever moonlight reached, her vision followed.
She wanted to see how that boast he had made with such a straight face during the day would end.
The moon-eye's image fell into a cup of tea before her.
The scene at Heaven-Splitting Ravine appeared clearly within the teacup.
Heaven-Splitting Ravine was the nearest encampment of the three great Heavenly Demon Battle Squads.
Nothing was amiss!
The enormous palace rotated leisurely in the sky. Below it, military banners stretched for a hundred miles across the surrounding countryside, and countless Heavenly Demons wheeled back and forth. These were demon eagles with four or five wings. The demon eagle division was the Demon Emperor's own direct lineage, so every Heavenly Demon army used demon eagles for its patrols.
They watched over the other Heavenly Demons below: the tiger demon legions with human heads and tiger bodies, their momentum surging like a rainbow; the giant python legions in the valleys, with human heads and snake bodies; the towering demon ape legions among the wooded hills; and the demon bee legions, whose three-foot forehead spikes gleamed coldly beneath the moonlight.
Only demons whose combat strength soared to extraordinary heights qualified as Heavenly Demons.
These creatures possessed boundless energy. Even when there was no fighting, they could not sit still.
Han Yan