The Needle Stone Forest was not as barren as it appeared.
On the contrary, it was teeming with life.
These towering stone pillars had not stood so high since ancient times. They had grown from tiny stone shoots into their current size.
At first, they were only small rocky protrusions. These protrusions could appear anywhere in the Needle Stone Forest, looking like tiny thorns that could easily go unnoticed.
Over time, these thorns slowly grew taller, becoming the size of grass, then as tall as trees, and finally thrusting toward the sky.
Shi Beng did not know why these stone pillars grew. Ever since he had first become conscious, they had already been like this.
As these pillars grew upward, they could collapse for various reasons—perhaps from sandstorms, or perhaps due to damage caused by living creatures.
Once they became enormous, however, collapses rarely occurred.
But the pillars could not grow without limit.
When they reached a certain height and became sufficiently thick, cracks might begin to form inside them.
Mineral veins would slowly begin to emerge within those cracks.
These veins gradually widened the cracks inside the pillars, forming dissolved caves that slowly became complete hollows.
Mineral veins?
At this point, Li Luo asked Shi Beng, "What kind of mineral veins?"
"Any possible kind," Shi Beng answered.
The veins could contain any type of ore, or even several types at once. Most veins contained one primary ore along with other associated ores.
But the strangest thing was that although the Needle Stone Forest was not very large and the stone pillars had roughly the same composition, all kinds of ores could appear within them.
Gold, silver, copper, iron, diamonds, jadeite, all kinds of rocks...
Anything one could think of could appear inside the pillars. They had studied the formation