荒墟牧神 - 第731章 太古神闕 - 簡牘書房

Old Ox stood upon the river's waters, staring blankly at the painted barges and tower ships that wove past like shuttles on a loom. The desolate Wasteland—the Wasteland that had always been cloaked in night—had now turned to broad daylight, and the Yong River had grown wider than before by countless times over. One after another, barges and tower ships carved with dragons and painted with phoenixes sailed past them. Green waves rippled and surged; this great river was actually flowing through the sky! Old Ox looked down, but saw no land of the Wasteland—only stars hanging in the starry sky.

Some stars were near, some far; the near ones loomed large, as if within reach, while the distant ones resembled moons, yet upon them one could still make out mountains, rivers, and buildings.

And along both banks of the Yong River, celestial palaces rose one after another, their halls and gates deep and layered. Each palace was more like a continent floating along the shores of the Heavenly River, and together they formed a Heavenly Court of vast and magnificent scale!

Old Ox shook his head, somewhat dazed. He had only been carrying Shen Mu through this place—why had he encountered such a bizarre turn of events? And just now, a woman on that painted barge had said this was the Heavenly River.

The Heavenly River? Was this not the Yong River? Where had the Wasteland gone?

And Jingping?

Not a speck of land remained—where had the world he had come from gone?

Old Ox lashed his tail uneasily, smacking his rump with sharp cracks, watching his surroundings with caution. The source of the Yong River, the region of the cliff, had always been a place seldom trodden by human feet.

It lay in the heart of the Wasteland, but there was a terrifying fault there.

Because of this fault, the Eastern Wasteland lay several thousand zhang lower than the Western Wasteland.

Originally, this barrier had hindered communication between east and west, until Shen Mu requested the Imperial Teacher of Jingping and the power-wielders of the Western Lands to pave roads and build two flying bridges, finally connecting the Eastern and Western Wastelands.

The Yong River originated precisely from this cliff, its waters flowing out from the precipice and rushing eastward.

Shen Mu had once observed it carefully and suspected that five worlds overlapped at the source of the Yong River, and that its waters might come from those other five worlds. Of course, that had only been a guess from his youth.

When he discovered the Tianyin Realm and the countless heavens densely clustered around it, he knew his guess had been utterly wrong.

He had guessed too few; the actual number was far too many. After all, Old Ox had followed the Old Farmer for tens of thousands of years and had lived through the Kaihuang Era. His understanding of the Yong River surpassed even Shen Mu's.

Shen Mu had merely speculated that the Yong River's waters came from other worlds, but Old Ox knew that the Yong River was one of the most bizarre places in the entire Kaihuang Era!

Long ago, when this place was still a relic of the Shanghuang Era, the young Kaihuang had led a group of youths here, enduring great hardships, building from the ruins, establishing a mighty foundation and founding an era that shone for twenty thousand years. But even then, the source of the Yong River had already been a place of notorious strangeness.

Kaihuang, the Woodcutter, and other beings had all explored this place, and many inconceivable things had occurred.

Mist often rose from the river. When it surged forth, it revealed inconceivable people and events, and even other worlds.

Once, someone accidentally wandered into the mist, and when they emerged, they found that a thousand or a hundred years had passed in the world.

Others had encountered lost travelers in the mist, who claimed to be people of the Shanghuang Era who had met the mist and lost their way. When the mist dispersed, the travelers vanished.