Chapter 39 — The Abyss

If she heard that her junior brother Zhang Qingyue, whom she had played with since childhood, had died untimely, surely she would shed a few tears? Surely her heart would ache? Surely, finding no body, she would raise a grave for him up on Dazhu Peak?

Who could say how many times, in the years to come, she would come before that grave?

And if so—would he, like the yin spirits around him, cling to her and refuse to be reborn, lingering only about that grave, secretly hoping for the figure in his memory?

In the silent dark the boy sighed, softly, and no one knew.

"Ah."

She gave a faint cry, and slowly woke, and opened her eyes.

Down through the centuries there has been an old question handed down: when you wake at last from a long, long sleep, who is the first person you wish to see?

No one knew whether Lu Xueqi had ever heard that seemingly idle question; but now, mirrored in her eyes, amid the ghostly white light, was the anxious gaze of Zhang Qingyue.

It was the only warmth in all that darkness.

Zhang Qingyue's face lit with joy. "You're awake, Senior Sister Lu!" he said gladly.

Lu Xueqi did not answer at once; she seemed stunned for a moment, but very soon she recovered herself, and the look of bewilderment that had first touched her face gave way once more to frosty indifference. Yet as she looked about her, she could not help but be moved again.

"Yin spirits!" cried Lu Xueqi, just as Zhang Qingyue had done before.

Zhang Qingyue nodded and consoled her. "Yes. But there is no need to fear. They seem somewhat afraid of my staff, the Black Iron Staff. We should be safe for the time being."

By now Lu Xueqi had noticed it too. The countless wandering spirits around them indeed did not rush in; they only drifted about the outer edges, seemingly in great fear of that short black rod of Zhang Qingyue's. Her heart settled, and she could not keep herself from asking, "What is this magic treasure of yours called? How is it so formidable?"

Zhang Qingyue flushed. "It is, it is, I call it... the Black Iron Staff. Beyond that, I have no idea why it should be so formidable."

Lu Xueqi said in surprise, "The Black Iron Staff?"

Zhang Qingyue looked at the woman before him, her skin like snow in the faint white glow, somewhat pale and all the more beautiful for it, and could not help lowering his head. "Yes. I am the cook up on Dazhu Peak in my daily life, and I use it as the Black Iron Staff."

Lu Xueqi could not speak for a moment. She stared blankly at that ugly black rod in midair, and after a long while said softly, "The Black Iron Staff! I received the teachings of my honored master, I trained in hardship, I have the Tianxuan Divine Sword, and yet I was defeated by a Black Iron Staff?"

Zhang Qingyue's heart suddenly skipped. He saw that Lu Xueqi's face had gone a shade paler in that instant, until scarcely any color could be seen at all, and could not refrain from saying, "Senior Sister, you won that time! And besides, I heard that if not for the great loss of vital energy suffered in the duel with me, it is not certain you would have lost to Senior Brother Qi Hao in the final at all..."

The more he spoke, the softer his voice grew, until at last it faded away altogether, for Lu Xueqi had silently raised her head and was looking coldly at him, which left him unable to go on. The faint white light shone upon the figures of them both.

Lu Xueqi lowered her head again, drew a deep breath, and said, "How did we come to escape with our lives?"

Zhang Qingyue was taken aback, and he too was rather bewildered. "I do not know." Then something came to him, and he pointed toward the water's edge. "But when I first woke, we were both lying there by the water. Could it be that we chanced to fall into the water and so did not die, and were then washed to the shore by the tide?"

Lu Xueqi looked where he pointed. Against the faint white glow given off by the spirits, she could indeed make out water in the distance, and faintly there came too the "shasha" sound of the tide washing at the bank. Looking to herself, her garments were mostly dry but still somewhat damp, clinging coldly to her body. It was easy to imagine that if not for this Zhang Qingyue pulling her onto the bank, she would likely have frozen to death before ever coming to.

"Thank you," Lu Xueqi said suddenly, in a low voice.

Zhang Qingyue was taken aback. He hastily waved his hand and laughed. "It was nothing, nothing at all..."

Suddenly, both of them froze.

Between the two of them, between the two of their hands, they were still, even at this moment, tightly clasped together.

As if flesh and blood were joined, as if it had been so for many years, there was not the slightest awareness of it; it seemed it should have been so all along, as though both of them had simply forgotten.

Lu Xueqi slowly drew back her hand. Zhang Qingyue gave an embarrassed smile, his hand swinging left and right at his side, yet he did not know where to put it.

After a moment it was Lu Xueqi who spoke. "Before you fell, you took a heavy blow from the fiends of the Demonic Sect. How do you feel now?"

Zhang Qingyue felt as though he had been granted a great pardon, and hearing that this frosty woman seemed to bear him no grudge, he hastened to say, "Well enough, well enough."

Lu Xueqi said, "Can you still ride the sword?"

Zhang Qingyue circulated his qi slightly and felt a stabbing pain within his body. He shook his head with a bitter smile.

Lu Xueqi glanced at him. "Nor can I. Let us rise and search the surroundings, to see whether there is a way out. Otherwise, waiting here doing nothing, surrounded on all sides by these spirits, sooner or later they will drain us into dried husks."

Zhang Qingyue drew in a sharp breath and nodded. "Yes."

Lu Xueqi rose to her feet and examined herself all over. There were no great external wounds, but the meridians and vital energy within her were somewhat disordered, and her whole body was strengthless. It seemed this was the result of that clash with the Shanhe Fan, the force of the recoil having been too strong. And what concerned her most, the Tianxuan Divine Sword, was at this moment returned whole to the scabbard upon her back.

She turned and looked at Zhang Qingyue again. He was rising to his feet with some effort, his movements still not very limber, plainly still troubled by his injuries; and she knew as well how much spirit and strength it must have cost him just now to pull her from the water.

"To what level have you cultivated the Taiji Xuanqing Dao?" Lu Xueqi suddenly asked Zhang Qingyue.

Zhang Qingyue was startled and said nothing. Lu Xueqi, however, took it that he meant to withhold an answer, and turned her head away. "It is no matter if you do not say. But I heard my master say that your cultivation reached only the fourth level, and that it was all the doing of that strange magic treasure. At the time I did not believe it. Today I have seen it with my own eyes. If not for your high cultivation and the firm foundation of your meridians, you would long since have fallen before those Demonic Sect fiends and never risen again."

Zhang Qingyue scratched his head, at a loss for what to say, for he himself was somewhat muddled about his own cultivation at this moment, and so he gave a vague answer. In truth, Lu Xueqi had no idea that if one spoke of the Taiji Xuanqing Dao alone, Zhang Qingyue's cultivation at this moment was indeed only at the fourth level, the level at which one has just barely learned to wield a magic treasure; yet within Zhang Qingyue's body there was another supreme true dharma of the Buddhist school, the "Great Brahma Prajna," and that was in fact the crux of the matter.