Chapter 368 — Deep in the Dark Underground
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 2 of 4
And if the ant harbored ill intent, a flick of the finger would kill it. Moreover, judging by the looks and conduct of Shen Mu and Long Jiaonan, Shen Mu was plainly the more dependable of the two; there was in this little human a natural simplicity and plainness that made him clearly more worthy of trust than Long Jiaonan. Lord Dragon-Keeper led them upstream along the lava river.
The farther they went, the farther they were from the surface.
This lava river had always been buried deep beneath the earth, stretching for thousands of li, and its upper reaches were its source—tens of li down into the ground.
They walked a long while, and felt the heat around them mounting. Shen Mu gazed along the river and saw that the dragon scales on both banks grew ever more numerous—and beyond the scales, there was flesh and blood! He saw flesh and blood sprouting from the scales, and long blood vessels besides.
For this colossal dragon vein beneath the earth, such vessels must be mere capillaries; but to Shen Mu they were already channels thicker than a water bucket.
Vessel after vessel ran in every direction, reaching out along the river to the four quarters. "There is blood flowing in these vessels!
" He made another discovery: the blood flowing in these vessels was the blood of a true dragon, and its passage gave off a sound like quicksilver rushing swiftly along. "This dragon vein has grown a heart," Lord Dragon-Keeper said suddenly. Shen Mu heard a heartbeat, faint and barely there; it grew louder and louder, until at last, in the middle of a lake of lava, they saw that heart.
A heart the size of a small hill hung in the air above the lava lake, suspended by many thick vessels, while many more vessels took root within the lake itself. With each throb of the dragon heart, the lava in the lake came rushing upward in reverse, flowing over the whole of the heart as though washing it clean.
The dragon heart beat once, then paused; in the pause the lava fell splashing back into the lake, and when the heart beat again the lava surged and flowed upward once more. And around this lava lake, great slabs of diamond hung from the walls, like stalactites, like columnar crystals by the dozen. Besides the diamond there was gold sand—sheets upon sheets of gold spread across the ground, sand and stone of pure gold!
Beyond the golden sand and stone lay enormous gold nuggets, strewn everywhere!
Shen Mu and Long Jiaonan were dazzled, their heads swimming.
Though Jingping was a land of mines, it had never known deposits so rich; with Jingping's strength, no mining shaft could ever have been dug so deep. The two stared blankly.
Though Dafeng coin was the currency in circulation in Jingping, gold still served well enough, and diamond was a supremely hard material for refining treasures—many eminent monks of the Buddhist order used diamond in their treasure-forging—and diamonds as large as these would surely fetch a towering price!
"If only I could. .
. what a pity," Long Jiaonan thought.
"I'm rich! " Shen Mu's heart bloomed with joy: "Once I've done away with Lord Dragon-Keeper, every treasure here will be mine!
" "Anywhere else, I would certainly have taken this fire dragon vein for Jingping's principal dragon vein. What a pity—this is merely a blind devised by those old things of the Wasteland!
" Lord Dragon-Keeper paid no heed to the gold and diamond strewn across the ground, and said with a cold laugh: "They may fool others, but they cannot fool me, Lord Dragon-Keeper! Where the Wasteland is involved, the dragon vein of the True Dragon Sovereign could never be so feeble. " He took out the golden vat, examined it a while, and said: "There is another dragon vein close by!
" Holding the vat before him, he darted swiftly about, came to a lava waterfall, and laughed: "Here it is!
" Lord Dragon-Keeper raised a hand and lifted up the lava waterfall, and there, on the far side of the falls, another long river of lava appeared.