Chapter 1312 — Great Calamity Lurks in the Ancestral Veins
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 1 of 3
Shen Mu bowed and gave thanks.
He had come full of anger; now his anger had wholly dissolved.
"Brother Taiyi, the mighty ones of the last cosmic year are hardly so difficult to deal with.
Do you truly need to be this cautious and wary? " He gave voice to the doubt in his heart: "Judging by that one's arts, subtle as they were, he still falls a little short of the Ten Heavenly Venerables.
" "That is because he has not recovered to his peak. At his peak, his strength was in no way inferior to the Ten Heavenly Venerables.
" The youth Taiyi said, "And he was not the strongest being of the last cosmic year. In that year there were those stronger than he. Such beings brand their cultivation into the Ultimate Void—undying, indestructible, ended only when their universe is destroyed. Those beings are more redoubtable even than the Ten Heavenly Venerables of today.
" Shen Mu felt a chill of dread creep over him.
"Do you know what lies beneath this tree root?
" The youth Taiyi smiled. "You have seen but a single vein.
These Hundred Thousand Black Mountains hold sixteen rings of growth, and only the outermost ring bears veins—and such veins number in the thousands. " He stopped Shen Mu short, reached one finger into the bucket, and balanced on its tip a single crystal-clear drop of water. "You possess the strongest of Holy Eyes; it is only that you cannot yet draw out the power of Taichu, of Taiji, and of Tubo hidden within it. This one drop will let you see what lies beneath the ground.
" He let the drop fall into the vertical eye at the center of Shen Mu's brow, and Shen Mu felt a bright clarity in that eye; the great daos hidden within the Egg of Taichu and the Taiji Primordial Stone at once became incomparably distinct, incomparably joyous! Even upon the Shenzi Continent, strand after strand of the Youdu great dao now surfaced, spreading out to every side like the retina of a pupil.
He looked down into the earth, and at once beheld, in the depths beneath the outermost ring of the Hundred Thousand Black Mountains, veins of immense girth clinging to the roots of the World Tree; some lay close to the surface, others were buried deep below. Those veins ran everywhere like the roots of the World Tree, and the deeper they went, the more ancient they grew.
Within the veins, lights of every hue flowed and surged, some of them near blinding. Shen Mu's voice was hoarse: "What is inside the veins? " "Have you not already seen?
" The youth Taiyi said unhurriedly, "The outer veins are the mighty ones of the last cosmic year.
They wished to come here, and so infiltrated their weapons, or their daos, ahead of them; in time, vein after vein took shape beneath the Great Black Wood.
What you met last night was a small figure only—the truly great ones are still to come.
Look to the other rings of the World Tree.
" Shen Mu looked as he was told at the second ring of the Hundred Thousand Black Mountains, and saw that the ground beneath those mountains too held veins running in every direction—but most of those veins were already empty. They had become mine shaft after mine shaft; though fewer than in the outermost ring, they still numbered one or two thousand. He looked then at the third ring: there too were shafts left where veins had been hollowed out, and far fewer of them. The further in toward the heart of the World Tree, the fewer the shafts; the innermost ring had none at all, and the ring just outside it had but one. This showed that in the first universe a mighty one had come through the World Tree into the next, raising this tide of stowaways, which the mighty of one cosmic year after another in turn imitated.
In the end, by this universe, thousands of veins had taken shape—a magnificent spectacle of thousands of undying, indestructible mighty ones stealing across. "They are borers.