Chapter 1954: Struggles from Two Thousand Years Ago

At the same time, a large number of other skeletons appeared here, some resembling human forms but much larger in size, with two sharp horns growing on their foreheads like those of an ox; others had human bodies with fish tails and six arms—He Lingchuan recognized them at once as yin hui.

There were even several giant scorpions here, each over a zhang in length, of course also dead objects. Weng Xing curiously poked one, and as a result the scorpion lost a leg with a crack, startling everyone.

The monsters' skeletons numbered a hundred times that of the jiao corpses.

"Battlefield." These monsters were not allies; traces of combat were scattered all over the ground. Beautiful coral and huge reefs had been shattered into debris littering the floor. Luo Xie murmured, "What were they fighting over?"

"Need to say?" Weng Xing pointed his chin at the faintly visible xuanzhu ore on the wall, "This stuff."

Although he was not a professional miner, he could tell this xuanzhu vein was truly magnificent, and he did not know how rich its reserves were. In ancient times when spiritual energy was scarce, it lay buried deep underwater; now that spiritual energy is beginning to recover, it has started to grow ore sprouts, otherwise those above would never know such a rich vein lay hidden below!

Fighting over the xuanzhu rich vein makes perfect sense!

The old miner kept pointing inward:

"And there's even bigger stuff inside!"

Going further in, one reaches the most spacious part of this underground palace, where the ceiling reaches seventeen or eighteen zhang high, roughly a water-eroded cavern.

The stone walls here are the xuanzhu vein; when illuminated by fluorescent spores, they glow brilliantly like the Milky Way in the heavens.

There are also two skeletons on the stone wall, both just as the old miner said, "even bigger."

Weng Xing sucked in a breath of cold air and instinctively stepped back two paces. Fang Chanran also exclaimed in shock, "This isn't a jiao, this is a dragon!"

The few jiao skeletons we saw earlier already shocked us, but the first one we laid eyes on upon entering—this is truly a prehistoric giant!

"When we first came in here a few days ago, with the lights on we saw them—ah, scared to death!" The old miner recalled what he'd seen the day before, still feeling uneasy, "One of my old buddies backed up seven or eight steps, fell flat on his back! Even sleeping at night, he wet his pants."

Unlike the earlier skeletons, this one had scales and armor intact, with hair and mane still present; at first glance it looked like a living creature!

Its length is nearly ten zhang, its chest diameter so thick an elephant could fit inside, its posture like an enlarged version of those jiao skeletons outside, but the horns on its head resemble tree branches or deer antlers, three-pronged and branching, looking like a tree from afar, very impressive.

This colossal being, motionless, still exudes an invisible pressure that hits one face-on. No wonder the miners who first saw it kept stumbling backward—who would have thought that beneath a mine shaft dug for hundreds of years lay such monsters!

"Qinglong!" Fang Chanran's eyes lit up, "In my lifetime, I actually get to see a true Qinglong!"

But this enormous Qinglong, like an old snake coiled around a pillar, tightly wraps itself around some object—or rather, some prey. To us, it is also an awe-inspiring giant, its body covered in blue-gray and dark-purple scales, about four zhang tall, with a green face and fangs, muscles bulging all over, and a necklace around its neck. Looking closely, the necklace is made of strung skulls, varied in appearance, with humans occupying only two positions.

The Qinglong binds it, starting to swallow from its feet, and has already swallowed up to its abdomen, yet this thing still holds a weapon and thrusts it into the dragon's eye.

One eye in, one eye out—it landed a solid through-and-through strike!

Probably the Qinglong, in pain, bit down even harder, and alive it swallowed half the giant, but in the end it too breathed its last.

Mutual destruction.

They died in a most entangled manner.

He Lingchuan saw the giant's weapon and knew how those few jiao skeletons ahead had died:

This was probably originally a trident, its shaft already broken, the top prong snapped in half, leaving only two and a half prongs. The remaining two sharp prongs are both round, the main prong thrust into the dragon's eye, the secondary prong into the dragon's ear—both vital spots.

After the prong pierced the dragon's eye, it went on to stab into the xuanzhu vein on the stone wall.

The Qinglong, momentarily careless, did not expect its prey, half-swallowed, to still be able to launch a dying counterattack, and this blow was truly unmatched in strength.

Thus, the trident nearly fixed this pair of mutual destroyers in place, pinning them to the wall two zhang above the ground.

The people stood on the ground looking up, seemingly still able to feel their anger and reluctance.

"This is the Chao Hai Yaksha King!" Fang Chanran suddenly said, "I remember seeing it in the manuscript of the 'Hai Hun Tu Pu'—in ancient times, the central and western parts of the Shan Jin Plain once had a small ocean called Chao Hai, where the Yaksha clan had long reigned supreme."

No mistake, no omission, not a single character missed!

The sea is the sea, however you put it, it's much larger than a lake, and marine life in the sea is abundant.

Weng Xing listened, bewildered: "We're not in Chao Hai territory here, are it? It ruled the sea, so why come here to fight the Qinglong?"

"The legend of the Chao Hai Yaksha King goes like this. The Yaksha King, like many other yaksha immortals and yaksha kings, once led his clan to participate in the Immortal-Demon War, fighting alongside immortals to drive back the heavenly demons. But this war caused great destruction to the human world, and also made the volcanic cluster surrounding Chao Hai increasingly unstable—from initial intermittent eruptions to later eruptions lasting one or two months, threatening the sea-dwelling beings. Thus the Chao Hai Yaksha King sought from the dragon clan a supreme treasure, namely the 'Zhen Yue' refined by the dragon god using extraterrestrial meteoric essence and the heart of the human world's mountain ranges."

"Didn't succeed?" He Lingchuan recalled what Naluo Tian had said, that the dragon god does not even suppress the volcanoes beside himself, the reason being that it's fundamentally impossible to suppress them, as subterranean fire will always find a weak spot to erupt.

The dragon god himself is helpless, so the Yaksha King's effort is probably in vain.

"This is the dragon god's relic, the clan's supreme treasure, said to also absorb xuanzhu and spiritual energy—how could the dragon clan give it up? This matter caused a huge uproar, with both sides fighting to a standstill several times. These battles are recorded in the ancient texts of many xian sects. I've also read in books a hypothesis: perhaps the Chao Hai Yaksha had its eyes on the dragon clan's territory, wanting to take it for itself. After all, the dragon clan's habitats are true blessed lands of caves and heavens; for the Chao Hai Yaksha facing annihilation, relocating might be a better choice."

He Lingchuan pointed to the two corpses above and asked Fang Chanran, "You see this battle—roughly how long ago did it happen?"

"Just looking at the two of them doesn't allow a conclusion. But judging from the remains outside, it's probably over two thousand years ago, within six or seven hundred years after the Immortal-Demon War ended."

He Lingchuan stroked his chin: "Two thousand three or four hundred years ago was still early medieval times, when immortals and immortal sects still existed in the world. I recall that back then there was an ancient immortal sect, the Danxia Palace, right nearby, which after the Immortal-Demon War directly took control of central Shan Jin. The Chao Hai Yaksha and the Qinglong clan fought to the death at its feet—did it not mediate at all?"