Shrouding the Heavens

Its sharp claws were like knives, coldly flickering. A strange sound wave came from its throat that caused Ye Fan’s ears to ring.

Ye Fan raised the stone blade and sent it slashing forward towards it, cutting across its path.

Its two sharp claws slammed into the stone blade, immediately causing a metallic ringing to fill the air and sparks to fly.

“Didn’t grandpa Zhang say that these stone clothes could avoid evil? How come I ended up disturbing a nameless lifeform as soon as I entered?” Ye Fan was extremely puzzled, but he wasn’t afraid. He felt that this creature shouldn’t be that difficult to handle.

It flapped its wings as it soared into the air, once more collecting its strength and charging down. This time a snow-bright light ray was spit out of its mouth, slashing down like a sharp blade.

Ye Fan put away the stone blade. This lifeform clearly had some innate techniques, and using the stone blade to attack it would just cause it to snap apart.

He raised his hand, releasing five sword rays that were as dazzling as lightning, lightning up the pitch-black ancient mine.

The creature spit out another light ray that managed to break a single sword ray, while the other four all slashed into its body.

Blood splashed as it was pierced through. It began to flap its wings to flee back to the depths of the ancient mine.

Ye Fan didn’t want it to flee, and with a light shout, an angry wave rushed out and shook it down to the ground.

He knew that this most likely was not a lifeform from the primordial era. Otherwise there was no way it could be so weak. It was a far cry from those legendary existences.

Ye Fan advanced and opened its wings to reveal its true form and carefully examine it.

This two meter-tall lifeform was covered in gray bestial fur. Its wings were made of flesh, making it appear like a human-shaped bat.

“This is..”

Ye Fan thought of an ancient record. There was a creature that lived at the lowest level of the earth, called the Demon Bat. It was very rare, practically impossible to find.

According to legend, once one reached spirituality and became a sovereign, it would begin to have many descendants. After dozens or hundreds of generations, the blood essence gradually became thin and if those descendants were unable to attain spirituality, they would become Demon Bats.

“According to that ancient text, places where Demon Bats exist are extremely ominous and evil places…” Ye Fan shuddered.

Who knew whether it was their nature that dictated it, but these rarely seen subterranean creatures only made their home on the fringes of extremely dangerous places.

“This doesn’t bode well…,” muttered Ye Fan. He believed that the purple mountain very likely held the legacy of an ancient Great Emperor. But now it seemed that his chances weren’t that good.

Ye Fan didn’t tarry in the end. He continued forward, traveling ten more kilometers in before meeting big trouble. There were over a hundred Demon Bats here. He didn’t think twice; when they dared to attack him, he had to use the golden tome to slash through them all.

In the end, a five meter-tall Demon Bat whose wingspan was over ten meters long appeared. Only after it was smashed apart by his fist did the ancient mine become calm once more.

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Everything was completely silent as he continued forward another ten kilometers. The ancient mine was completely pitch-black and extremely isolated. He muttered, “Have I entered the range of the danger land?”

He continued another three or four kilometers not slowly and not quickly. He saw quite a few stone inscriptions along the wall, all left behind by ancient people.

The drawings were very plain. They had to do with the mining of Sources from back then. Ye Fan didn’t think they were boring and actually began to carefully study them.

At the beginning they spoke of very trivial things. But in the final drawings were quite a few corpses. Those were all people that had died here.

“What did those ancient people from hundreds of thousands of years ago want to leave behind?”

Ye Fan was getting more and more startled. This was a kind of story. In the end, those people excavated all kinds of strange things and people started to die in greater numbers.

Later, a humanoid lifeform with a horn on its forehead appeared. When it was excavated from the mine’s vein, almost everyone was completely annihilated.

This horned lifeform was six arms long and had a pair of wings. It seemed to despise all beneath the heavens. In the drawing, it roared to the heavens, causing heaven and earth to crack, the mine shaft to collapse and underground magma to surge out.

Could this be a lifeform from a Divine Source? Its roar could shake heaven and earth. Such a mighty existence truly caused people’s hearts to turn cold. No wonder so many people had died.

The later carvings were even more shocking. This horned lifeform actually kneeled onto the ground and kowtowed towards a huge Source.

“Such a powerful lifeform actually acted so subserviently and kowtowed towards it?!”

He impatiently scrolled to the next carvings, to see just what kind of existence from those peerless Divine Sources had such might.

The next image revealed that the Divine Source’s lifeform had to yet to appear and was still trapped in mist.

Although it hadn’t appeared in the world, it was surrounded by endless corpses. A land full of death stretched far out in every direction.

“Just what rushed out of that Source?” Ye Fan couldn’t help being shocked.

Before it even stepped back into the world, it was already able to perform such a massacre. According to the carvings, the amount of dead was uncountable.

In the next few drawings, that Divine Source still just lay there without a lifeform coming out of it. But the amount of corpses around it became ever greater, forming mountains. Many of those were cultivators.

Blood ran and condensed into rivers, winding out in to the distance. It was practically a scene of hell.

As for that horned, winged creature, it continued to devoutly kneel to the side of the Divine Source.

“How many people died from this bitter event? The carvings show that the land clearly was shattered and the mine collapsed. How could it still be existing now?”

Ye Fan had originally come for the Heavenly Source Book, but now he had become completely captivated by the ancient mine’s profound carvings.

In the next few carvings, that peerless Divine Source was still extremely hazy and no life form could be seen. But as ever, the human corpses continued to increase.

As for that kneeling lifeform in front of the Divine Source, it never took action, instead simply kowtowing.

“The lifeform within that Divine Source was most likely a terrifying existence even back in the primordial era…”

Ye Fan couldn’t help being stunned. He continued reading. That lifeform still didn’t come out of the Divine Source, but the surroundings corpses of cultivators continued to increase as blood dyed the land red.

At the very end, an expert of the human race completely enveloped by light descended from the sky. Only then did things begin to change.

That person’s face could not be seen clearly. In fact, it could not even be seen whether it was a man or woman, as that person was completely enveloped by multicolored lights. But on top that person’s head was written “Emperor”.

“The ancient Great Emperor!” Ye Fan’s heart shook, and he quickly continued reading.

He was definitely deserving of his name as a Great Emperor, lord of everything below the heavens. With just a single wave of his hand, that horned creature that was devoutly kowtowing to the Divine Source’s lifeform was completely crushed deep into the land.

That kind of power was definitely indisputable. Those ancient people had actually drawn a bit of spirituality around the carving in order to display how supreme that Great Emperor had been.

The clouds evaporated; the stars and moon trembled; this was the might of a noble Great Emperor!

With just a raise of his hand he was able to suppress that ancient creature.

As for the next carving, it revealed the Great Emperor attacking the Divine Source. But unfortunately at this point the ancient mine’s wall was shattered and the carvings were cut off, so the result could not be seen.

After skipping past the broken section, Ye Fan continued where the carvings once more began and felt as if he had returned back hundreds of thousands of years ago. It was like he could feel that Great Emperor’s supreme aura.

That existence within the Divine Source was definitely extremely terrifying and powerful. It had caused the Great Emperor to take out his weapon, a large bell as tall as heaven and earth. It descended down, completely covering the Divine Source.

“Peak Dao weapon!”

The might from a Great Emperor’s weapon was as terrifying as expected. This kind of might was something he had never seen before.

It was like there was a channel back to that era and the might of that ancient Great Emperor wanted to slash out of the wall!

Waves rippled throughout Ye Fan’s heart. The ancient Great Emperor’s supreme divine might was something he desired greatly.

In the next carving, the Divine Source split open and whatever lifeform was inside walked out. But all that appeared in the carvings was a small hand. The rest of the stone carving was once more broken and couldn’t clearly be seen.

Ye Fan quickly advanced, but he found that even as he continued further the stone wall was still shattered and none of the carvings could be seen.

After all, hundreds of thousands of years had already passed. If it weren’t for the stones within the mining shaft being special, then there was no way these carvings would have survived to this time. For them to be damaged was normal.

Only after he walked hundreds of meters further did the carvings once more appear. Unfortunately that battle had long since ended. That Great Emperor’s Peak Dao weapon, the bell, had suppressed the primordial era’s lifeform in the Divine Source.

In the end, he still hadn’t managed to see that terrifying creature’s appearance.

“That slender jade-like hand looked like a woman. It was truly powerful…” The primordial era’s races truly were impossible to measure. They actually could survive within Divine Sources all the way to this era.

However, he was even more amazed by that Great Emperor. To be able to suppress such a powerful entity, he truly was deserving of being a peerless champion who could look down on this endless land.

It was unfortunate he couldn’t see that battle. The carvings from that broken segment of wall definitely had recorded a marvelous and intense battle.

Advancing another dozen meters, he finally reached the end of the carvings.

That Great Emperor from before the Ancient Desolation returned the land to its original state, then used the bell to suppress the Divine Source and flew off towards a large distant mountain.

“The purple mountain!” Ye Fan immediately recognized the mountain. It was precisely the ‘bright pearls’ guarded by the nine dragons.

After finishing seeing all of this, he didn’t continue forward immediately. He stood there speechlessly for a long time as he contemplated all this.

These were carvings left behind by ancient people from hundreds of thousands of years ago. They recorded many things that had happened back then, including all the various things that had occurred while mining.

This mine vein was below a mountain range, a mountain range that was a so-called dragon vein.

There were nine dragon veins in this region. They were guarding a ”pearl”; that had to be the Divine Source. Did that signify there was a terrifying entity in every dragon vein? Could it be that every time a similar situation had occurred, the Great Emperor had suppressed them here?

Back in the Flickering Light Sacred Land’s mining area, when that pyramid had released its light and caused a green world of vitality to appear, Ye Fan had personally seen the formation of Sources.

Lifeforms were sealed within Sources and merged into them. Liquid Source would drip and drop, eventually covering parts of or entire organisms.

Here, powerful lifeforms from the primordial era had been sealed within Sources. Or had they simply chosen to slumber within Divine Sources within these dragon veins?

According to common sense, once Divine Sources took solid shape there wasn’t any lifeform capable of entering inside. As for these mining veins, they had already taken shape. Forcefully trying to enter would just cause the Divine Sources to shatter. So that shouldn’t be possible.

This was a primeval Source vein and wasn’t arranged by humanity. But Ye Fan felt that it wasn’t that simple.

If the powerful lifeforms from the primordial era had voluntarily allowed themselves to be sealed within Divine Sources, then that would open up a whole new realm of possibilities…

There were nine dragon veins here, which meant there were at least nine Divine Sources. If they had all sealed terrifying creatures, could it be they all were related to each other?

In that distant past, could it have been that those beings had all known each other and made the same choice?

Fifth Grandpa Zhang’s ancestral patriarch, the Heavenly Source Master, had once said that the Great Power of this land could not be moved except by a Great Emperor. For those ancient creatures to choose this place and dare try using this Great Power…

Taking that a step further, if those powerful lifeforms from the primordial era had truly taken residence here, then what did that imply about the purple mountain?

If the nine dragon veins all had a terrifying lifeform, just what were they guarding?

If the Great Power of this land could only be used by Great Emperors, and the human race’s Great Emperor had come after those primordial beings, then that meant the Great Power of this land had already had a master from another race.

Then according to that, the ancient Great Emperor had already come too late!

“Everything is related to that purple mountain…”

Ye Fan knew that the root of all these issues was within the purple mountain.