Chapter 368 — Deep in the Dark Underground

"Lord Dragon-Keeper's art for reckoning dragon veins is truly masterly.

" Shen Mu watched the dragon-shaped qi swimming in the golden vat. Lord Dragon-Keeper's method of calculation seemed able to divine out treasure mountains and treasure grounds; the Taibai Sword Sect, for instance, had built itself upon a dragon's eye, and appeared to sit upon a land of treasure—yet judged by the patterns in the Lord's vat, this was no treasure ground at all, but a baleful place where a host of dragons seized fortune and fed it back to the True Dragon Sovereign! A sect that settled here would for the most part have its fortune stolen away, dwindling and withering day by day. "No wonder the Taibai Sword Sect has fallen to such a state," he thought.

Lord Dragon-Keeper put away the golden vat.

Shen Mu hurried to return the Dragon-Keeping Sutra to him, but the Lord shook his head: "Keep it for now and study it.

As a boy who tends dragons, you must at the very least know the habits of every kind of dragon. The methods of dragon-rearing are in there; ponder them well. I give you two days—how much you comprehend will depend on your own understanding. After two days I will take it back.

" Long Jiaonan's face went green on the spot.

Lord Dragon-Keeper had no idea of Shen Mu's terrifying comprehension—but she knew it all too well! On a barren island in the East Sea, the Dao Lord had brought Shen Mu the fourteen chapters of the Daoist Sword and let him study them for ten days; in comprehending the Dao Sword, Shen Mu was no inferior to Lin Xuan the Daoist Heir!

The Dragon-Keeping Sutra, though the cultivation art of a god, could not be harder to fathom than the Dao Sword—only easier. The Dao Sword involved the arts of calculation, and the deeper one's mastery of calculation, the more effortlessly one grasped it. But how difficult were the arts of calculation?

The Dragon-Keeping Sutra was more concerned with rearing dragons, commanding dragons, living in symbiosis with dragons; among its arts, the Dragon-Taming Formula was the secret lore unique to the Dragon-Taming Sect, concealing within it the art of shedding one's skin and being reborn. Though the Dragon-Taming Sect was founded by Lord Dragon-Keeper himself, he had not passed down the complete Dragon-Keeping Sutra; what the sect master of the Dragon-Taming Sect obtained was only a broken remnant of the text.

Even so, with only that remnant the Dragon-Taming Sect counted as a formidable sect indeed—to be sure, it could not match the Three Great Holy Lands, but in the martial world it bore a resounding name; otherwise Emperor Yanfeng would never have let the Dragon-Taming Sect command an army of its own. Jingping had once had its Dragon Army, and the Dragon-Taming Sect had been its core.

A sect founded by Lord Dragon-Keeper himself had never possessed the complete Dragon-Keeping Sutra—yet Shen Mu, that scoundrel, had gotten his hands on it, which drove Long Jiaonan wild with hatred. Yet Lord Dragon-Keeper, precisely because of the lad's honest, simple looks, trusted him, and trusted her the less—which left Long Jiaonan feeling utterly powerless. Lord Dragon-Keeper did not know her thoughts.

In the eyes of a god like him, keeping Shen Mu and Long Jiaonan at his side was a trifling matter, much like carrying two ants along; naturally there was no need to wonder what the ants might be thinking.

Had Shen Mu not still been of use, his attitude toward him would have been no better than toward Long Jiaonan. Such was the height from which he stood.

He was a god; nothing could threaten him, and ants like Shen Mu certainly could not. There was no need to take them to heart—only to make them work for him; now and then one might toss the little ant a small benefit, so that it would serve all the more willingly.

And if the ant harbored ill intent, a flick of the finger would kill it. Moreover, judging by the looks and conduct of Shen Mu and Long Jiaonan, Shen Mu was plainly the more dependable of the two; there was in this little human a natural simplicity and plainness that made him clearly more worthy of trust than Long Jiaonan. Lord Dragon-Keeper led them upstream along the lava river.

The farther they went, the farther they were from the surface.

This lava river had always been buried deep beneath the earth, stretching for thousands of li, and its upper reaches were its source—tens of li down into the ground.

They walked a long while, and felt the heat around them mounting. Shen Mu gazed along the river and saw that the dragon scales on both banks grew ever more numerous—and beyond the scales, there was flesh and blood! He saw flesh and blood sprouting from the scales, and long blood vessels besides.

For this colossal dragon vein beneath the earth, such vessels must be mere capillaries; but to Shen Mu they were already channels thicker than a water bucket.

Vessel after vessel ran in every direction, reaching out along the river to the four quarters. "There is blood flowing in these vessels!

" He made another discovery: the blood flowing in these vessels was the blood of a true dragon, and its passage gave off a sound like quicksilver rushing swiftly along. "This dragon vein has grown a heart," Lord Dragon-Keeper said suddenly. Shen Mu heard a heartbeat, faint and barely there; it grew louder and louder, until at last, in the middle of a lake of lava, they saw that heart.

A heart the size of a small hill hung in the air above the lava lake, suspended by many thick vessels, while many more vessels took root within the lake itself. With each throb of the dragon heart, the lava in the lake came rushing upward in reverse, flowing over the whole of the heart as though washing it clean.

The dragon heart beat once, then paused; in the pause the lava fell splashing back into the lake, and when the heart beat again the lava surged and flowed upward once more. And around this lava lake, great slabs of diamond hung from the walls, like stalactites, like columnar crystals by the dozen. Besides the diamond there was gold sand—sheets upon sheets of gold spread across the ground, sand and stone of pure gold!

Beyond the golden sand and stone lay enormous gold nuggets, strewn everywhere!

Shen Mu and Long Jiaonan were dazzled, their heads swimming.

Though Jingping was a land of mines, it had never known deposits so rich; with Jingping's strength, no mining shaft could ever have been dug so deep. The two stared blankly.

Though Dafeng coin was the currency in circulation in Jingping, gold still served well enough, and diamond was a supremely hard material for refining treasures—many eminent monks of the Buddhist order used diamond in their treasure-forging—and diamonds as large as these would surely fetch a towering price!

"If only I could. .

. what a pity," Long Jiaonan thought.

"I'm rich! " Shen Mu's heart bloomed with joy: "Once I've done away with Lord Dragon-Keeper, every treasure here will be mine!

" "Anywhere else, I would certainly have taken this fire dragon vein for Jingping's principal dragon vein. What a pity—this is merely a blind devised by those old things of the Wasteland!

" Lord Dragon-Keeper paid no heed to the gold and diamond strewn across the ground, and said with a cold laugh: "They may fool others, but they cannot fool me, Lord Dragon-Keeper! Where the Wasteland is involved, the dragon vein of the True Dragon Sovereign could never be so feeble. " He took out the golden vat, examined it a while, and said: "There is another dragon vein close by!

" Holding the vat before him, he darted swiftly about, came to a lava waterfall, and laughed: "Here it is!

" Lord Dragon-Keeper raised a hand and lifted up the lava waterfall, and there, on the far side of the falls, another long river of lava appeared.

"Well now—one must cross several long rivers of lava dragon veins before the True Dragon Sovereign's dragon vein can be found! " Lord Dragon-Keeper's spirits rose.