Chapter 488 — The Gate of Beiluo
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 2 of 4
Ahead, the desert stretched to the horizon. Shen Mu raced through it with the chest in tow, then suddenly halted. Before a dune lay a towering skeleton, half drowned in yellow sand.
He walked up to it and at once felt a divine majesty; he stopped short, and the chest behind him stopped hastily too. The Dragon Qilin, dozing atop it, was startled awake, raised its head, and cried, "Has Xing An caught up?"
"No!"
Shen Mu studied the divine bones buried in the sand. The ribs were immense, arching high, and beneath them the rib cage—a cavity in which scores of men could have stood.
He advanced warily, step by step; the chest tiptoed after him on little shuffling steps. Shen Mu reached out a hand, then abruptly thought better of it and fetched Ban Gongcuo's great cauldron, edging toward the divine bones with that instead.
Suddenly—clang! A huge report. Shen Mu grunted, the web of his thumb split open, his palm streaming blood, and one leg of Ban Gongcuo's great cauldron had been sheared clean off.
That cauldron had been forged by Ban Gongcuo in a former life, when he was a near-god powerhouse; its might was of a rank to be a sect's treasure. Even when Shen Mu had contended with him using his sword pellet, he had never managed to damage it—proof of how strong its defense was.
Yet before these divine bones the cauldron was like mud, a leg severed with ease.
Shen Mu bore the pain, sealed the wound, and picked up the fallen leg. The break was smooth, as if cut by an invisible blade; and touching it, he felt a fierce heat.
"This is… the yang force of the yin and yang forces—refined by the owner of these remains into a guardian divine essence."
Shen Mu put away the cauldron and the broken leg. The Dragon Qilin stared warily ahead and said in terror, "Hierarch, what was it that cut that pot apart?"
"The divine treasury of this god."
Shen Mu scooped up a handful of yellow sand and blew it gently; the sand flew forward and at once revealed what the eye could not see in that space. Within the vast divine bones sprawled in the sand there were, incredibly, seven complete divine treasuries!
They had been invisible to the naked eye; now, invaded by the fine dust, they gave off divine lights of every hue, illuminating the treasuries deep in that space with dazzling brilliance.
The god's corpse was colossal enough, yet the treasuries were not large. The Spirit Fetus treasury at the brow of the divine bones was only a square inch across; the Five Luminaries treasury at the heart and lungs was somewhat larger; the Six Harmonies treasury sat at the cinnabar field, and the Seven Stars treasury between the crown of the head and the heart.
The Heaven-Man treasury lay in the spine, the Life-Death treasury below the waist, and the Spirit Bridge treasury flew out from the Spirit Fetus treasury, becoming a soaring bridge that pierced beyond the crown of the head!
None of these treasuries looked large, yet—strangely—a gaze into their interiors seemed to hold hundreds of millions of miles of time and space, vast and magnificent, and one could even see withered, blighted suns and moons, ragged rivers of stars and constellations!
And at the center of the Spirit Fetus treasury was the spirit fetus of this god. That spirit fetus ought to have been part of the primordial spirit; now the soul of these bones was long gone, yet the spirit fetus had not wholly withered.
"He died of a wound to his primordial spirit."
Rings of formation patterns whirled in Shen Mu's eyes as he peered at the spirit fetus within the Spirit Fetus treasury. This god's spirit fetus had been run through from behind by a sword that emerged at his chest; the sword had even left a phantom image behind—such was the terror of that blow.
Shattered suns and moons revolved around the spirit fetus, and from them hung streams of light a myriad feet long—the yin and yang forces. The one that had sheared off the cauldron's leg was a stream of pure yang.