荒墟牧神 - 第1498章 孤身探礦脈，寒夜誅邪祟 - 錦書坊

By the time the company reached the ore veins on the outer skirts of Black Mountain, the light was already failing. There were several thousand ore veins ringing the outer reaches of Black Mountain, and every one of them meant a divine weapon belonging to some mighty one of the past universe — and, at the same time, meant that a mighty one of the past universe was waiting to descend! The Great Black Wood stretched vast and boundless, and the thousands of ore veins, running in every direction, had encircled the whole outer rim of that Hundred Thousand Great Mountains; the sight was magnificent beyond measure, and utterly inconceivable. The divine bow Shen Mu had obtained came from one of those veins. That vein had held not only the divine bow but also the countless strange treasures born of the imprint of the Great Dao the bow radiated, fused with the roots and stems of the Great Black Wood. These strange treasures were formidable in their own right; the moment they came into the world they possessed a fearsome power, a shade better than the weapons of ordinary celestial gods. Tempered and refined, they could be forged into first-rate divine armaments. When the Jingping folk migrated here and opened the veins, it was these treasures within the veins they were mining. But every vein held a divine weapon of some mighty one of the past universe, and such weapons were exceedingly powerful — more powerful, even, than the treasures of a Heavenly Venerable! More terrible still, these divine weapons were often gripped in the hands of their masters! Those mighty ones who sought to cross over had fused their bodies with the roots of the Great Black Wood, buried deep beneath the earth, waiting for a moment — a moment that would let them cross through completely. These mighty ones awaiting their descent were not so powerful as the gaunt stranger, but neither were they inferior to the Ten Heavenly Venerables; some might even be stronger. The gaunt stranger was one who had attained the Dao, like Taiyi; the mighty ones in the veins, by contrast, likely lacked only the opportunity to attain it. Opening the veins of Black Mountain had been Shen Mu's idea. In those years, when the divine bow was dug out, it drew in the bow's master to invade; only by gathering the strength of every soul on Black Mountain had they sealed him and turned him to stone. Afterward, Shen Mu, having taken counsel with Taiyi, resolved to refine a divine weapon made expressly for severing the hands of these stowaways and seizing their treasures. But then one matter after another came crowding in, leaving him no leisure to refine such a weapon; and so Shen Mu gave the order that the Jingping folk should go on mining the outer veins — only this time they were to take the subsidiary treasures and leave untouched the divine weapons of the past universe's mighty ones. Over the years the Jingping miners had worked many veins, but whenever they struck the core they simply halted and moved on to another. The divine weapons and keen blades accumulated by Black Mountain were likewise sent to Jingping, swelling Jingping's strength. And now Shen Mu was going alone to those veins — surely not merely to mine them! The sun went down, and the strange portents beyond the Ancestral Court appeared once more; and at this hour the company had still not reached the outer reaches of Black Mountain. Suddenly, violent power erupted from one of the veins, and divine light came surging up into the sky. Within that light stood, dimly, a colossal god-devil, planted amid one heavenly palace after another, and then it came crashing down upon the mining district! The earth shook; several violent tremors followed one upon another, and the faces of the company shifted. Wei Suifeng and Crown Prince Youming, the two great masters, at once took the lead and sped toward the place. The two of them were beings of the Imperial Throne realm. Arriving there, they saw that the whole vein had burst open, revealing a