荒墟牧神 - 第1495章 獻祭之物 - 雲海書庫

That gaunt, towering stranger was straining to squeeze his way over. His power was too immense, and forcing his way in was no easy matter. The conversion of mass and energy obeyed certain laws, and a being like him — one who had already attained the Dao — was all but pure rule of the Great Dao; to squeeze out of the previous universe into this one demanded the displacement of an amount of mass and energy too appalling to reckon. This was akin to the Bridge of Spirit-Energy Transposition, yet not the same, and far more intricate. The Bridge of Spirit-Energy Transposition pierced a breach in the wall between two worlds, forming a span across which spirit energy flowed in exchange, so that when a living being crossed over, its own energy set the spirit energy of both worlds moving to and fro and kept the two in balance. To cross from a past universe into the present one, however, likewise required keeping the balance of mass and energy — and the greater trouble was that the old universe and the new could not be joined by a bridge like the Bridge of Spirit-Energy Transposition, one capable of actively transporting mass and energy on its own. That was why they had needed to array an enormous sacrificial formation in the Ancestral Court, and make the Ancestral Court itself into an altar. The total mass and energy of the universe never changed; and with the total unchanged, for a man of the past to enter the present universe, a portion of the present universe's mass and energy had to be cast off into the past universe to preserve the balance. Over the years, though heaven knows how many living beings had been offered up in sacrifice, every Dao-attainer of every past universe tried to transfer into the present universe before his own perished, and so matters had come to this pass: everyone wanted to squeeze in, and none of them could. The gaunt stranger was no different. Half his body had already come through, and now a portion of the Ancestral Court's matter and energy had to be sacrificed into the past universe, to speed his escape from the perishing universe he had left behind. Black Mountain shook violently; its rock crumbled and flaked away without cease, drifting up into the air. Like a flood tide those stones streamed behind the gaunt stranger, vanishing one after another into that enormous eye. Around Shen Mu the earth too kept splitting apart, patch after patch of ground breaking down and floating toward the monstrous eye. That eye grew ever more enormous, standing upright behind the stranger like a fire that would annihilate the world; its flames lit the hundred thousand great mountains, and set the shadows of those ranges swaying and flickering. It was like an immense furnace, and like an immense mouth, greedily devouring all things of the Ancestral Court, grinding heaven and earth and every creature to fragments, melting them down, and sending them as purest energy into the ruined universe behind it, in exchange for the gaunt stranger's life. Shen Mu checked his advance, swung up Taiyi's staff, and went to meet the gaunt stranger. The stranger's vertical eye, set in his forehead, bristled with arrows; Shen Mu's earlier blow had driven shaft after shaft bodily into that eye, and yet even the bursting power of a divine bow and divine arrows had failed to wound him gravely. The stranger was thin and tall, of some uncanny race beyond knowing; he lifted a hand to the arrows in his vertical eye and tried to pluck them out, while his other palm reached for Shen Mu. He had but one eye, the one at the center of his brow, and that eye occupied his whole forehead; with so many arrows struck into it, his sight was spoiled. He had first to draw them out before he could deal with Shen Mu. Shen Mu swung up his staff, and its power rippled far weaker than before — which was why the stranger reached for him — yet it was this blow, seemingly so devoid of force, that cost him so dearly. His palm was slender and long, each finger many times t