Chapter 1526 — Alone He Probes the Ore Veins, Slaying Evil Spirits in the Cold Night

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 an abyss of unfathomable depth, within which divine light rolled and surged, sealing off the bottom. Wei Suifeng and Crown Prince Youming felt their hearts lurch, and at once they roused their heavenly palaces and descended cautiously. From the deepest part of the vein came the peculiar aura of the Great Dao belonging to a prehistoric mighty one — a Dao that did not belong to the present universe: ancient, uncanny. Plainly a battle had been fought here. The two of them had no choice but to proceed with care, lest some prehistoric monster escape and wound them. They passed through the dense afterwash of divine abilities, the divine light darting wildly about them, giving them a faint stinging sense upon their skin and their primordial spirits. Plainly, the prehistoric being trapped in the tree roots had seized the chance afforded by Shen Mu's plundering of the treasure — the breaking of the roots — to force his way out of them, and had then fought a savage battle with Shen Mu! "Second Brother grows less steady by the day!" Wei Suifeng frowned deeply. Below, the divine light still surged upward, so that the two could not see far. Yet as they went deeper, they glimpsed, vaguely, at the very bottom of the mining district, before roots vast as mountain ranges, a towering god-devil standing with hunched body and many heads and many arms. That god-devil gave off a heaven-flooding divine majesty; the majesty and the light wove behind him into strange floating ribbons, and within those ribbons Wei Suifeng and Crown Prince Youming beheld, hazy and indistinct, a divine city floating! The Jade Capital City! Both hearts jumped; they exchanged a glance, and Wei Suifeng said in a low voice, "It is the Ancestral Court's Jade Capital City! This mighty one of the past universe cultivated the Ancestral Court's Jade Capital City — not our heavenly palace system of cultivation, but the Jade Capital system." In recent days Crown Prince Youming had also heard Wei Suifeng and Shu Jun speak of the Jade Capital trap, and his heart held only a deep dread, and wonder at the vast divine powers and far-reaching designs of the master of the Miluo Palace. Yet now they saw that a mighty one of the past universe had actually cultivated the Jade Capital system, which left them both somewhat doubtful. "It seems the Ancestral Court's Jade Capital City is not merely a trap," said Crown Prince Youming, musing. "I fear the master of the Miluo Palace had a deeper purpose. Otherwise, no being of the past universe could possibly have cultivated the Jade Capital system." What that purpose was, however, was not for them to fathom. The two came cautiously to the valley floor of the mining district, each rousing a divine ability to guard the body. This was the subterranean space blasted out by the eruption of divine abilities; even the roots of the Great Black Wood bore wound after wound, which showed how dreadful the fighting here had been. Yet to their astonishment, the hunchbacked god-devil stood there motionless, frozen in the posture of a pouncing strike. Only then did the two notice that a great hole had been torn in the chest of this god-devil, mighty as a Heavenly Venerable, and that on the thick root behind him there appeared a huge imprint of cupped hands. The two came before that towering god-devil. Crown Prince Youming made the gesture of cupped hands and pushed forward, musing, "This is the Heavenly Venerable Mu's divine ability — 'Primordial One Qi, Roaming the Dao as One', I believe. The twenty-sixth heaven of his Dao-entering divine ability!" Wei Suifeng, meanwhile, went behind the hunchbacked god-devil and examined the traces left by the cupped-hand push upon the root. He saw threads and wisps of chaos qi drifting down from the wound in the root, and said, "It is that divine ability. But the force of it is too cruel — many times crueler than I imagined!" They flew up, one before and one behind, to examine the hunchbacked god-devil's body. They saw that the