荒墟牧神 - 第46章 一聲驚起真龍 - 星閱書城

ver's waters. The ground beneath their feet was paved with white marble, and a road stretched onward, flanked by a forest of dragon pillars; after a hundred-odd zhang, whole clusters of palaces came into view. The dragon pillars ringed these palace clusters about; it must have been they that held up the river, keeping the flood from soaking in. Yet many of the palaces had collapsed. Some great upheaval must have swept this place, leaving it in ruins. Snow Fox hopped and skipped to the ruins of one palace. On a half-collapsed wall Shen Mu made out a weathered mural: a dragon-headed elder feasting his guests, and the guests of this dragon-headed elder were all manner of strange creatures—old men with turtle shells, women with serpent tails, monks, and humans too. Crash. A pillar came toppling down, all but crushing Shen Mu and the little fox. Snow Fox picked her way into the half-collapsed great hall. "This is where I found those ancient books." Shen Mu came closer. In this ruined hall was a hidden stone chamber built into the wall; its stone door had fallen away, and that was how Snow Fox had come upon it. The chamber stood empty now; she must have carried off everything inside. "Go any farther and you'll meet with terrible danger!" Snow Fox pointed to a towering gateway ahead, quivering with dread. "It's frightful beyond words!" Shen Mu looked at the gateway. Beyond it, dim and indistinct, stood what seemed to be a palace, still whole, uncollapsed—but eerily it was veiled in a layer of watery mist that hid whatever lay within; the palace seemed to float in that mist, now glimpsed, now lost. "There's a dreadful thing in there..." Snow Fox's voice shook. "When you get close to the gateway you can feel its aura, and then you go all soft and can't even crawl..." Shen Mu walked forward, Snow Fox screwing up her courage to follow at his heels. The moment they reached the gateway, Shen Mu felt a baleful aura of overwhelming force rush at his face, startling, bone-chilling—as if in broad daylight half the sky had suddenly filled with black clouds pressing down before him, and within those ink-dark clouds an immense and terrible beast was fixing its gaze on him! A beast at once sacred and solemn, awesomely inviolable, and at the same time savage and ferocious—this was the great terror of which Snow Fox had spoken! Shen Mu drew a long breath, steadied his stance, and his mind righted itself once more. "Heaven-Soaring Divine Eye—open!" In his pupils the patterns of vital energy interwove, forming another layer of pupil-patterns as he peered into the mist beyond the gateway. Beside him, the white fox had already gone soft and boneless, sprawled belly-down on the ground, laboriously turning herself about and crawling sluggishly back the way they had come. Shen Mu picked her up, and the white fox hung limp in his grip. "Don't grab me, I'm dying, my heart's going like a drum..." "You're not dead. The thing in this dragon palace is the one that's dead." Shen Mu chuckled. "Guess what I saw?" Snow Fox did not answer; her four limbs paddled slowly through the air, her tail swaying back and forth, as though she were trying to crawl away, unwilling to linger in this place a single moment. Shen Mu laughed. "I saw the Dragon Emperor of the Surging River!" "Ah—" The little white fox gave a faint moan and fainted dead away, all four legs sticking straight out. Shen Mu waited a moment, and the little white fox quietly opened one eye and stole a couple of glances about. Shen Mu tried her: "Dragon Emperor of the Surging River." Snow Fox's four legs stretched out straighter still, and her eyes closed again. "The Dragon Emperor of the Surging River is dead." Shen Mu did not know whether to laugh or cry. "Nothing left of him but bones. This Dragon King has been dead who knows how many years—I saw his dragon skeleton there in the mist." Snow Fox hastily opened her eyes. "Dead?" Shen Mu nodded. "So you can stop worrying this time. Come in with me?" Snow Fox s