Chapter 93 — Miasma

The vortex around them churned violently, spawning countless smaller miasma eddies, but Ming Li's gaze was fixed straight ahead. Beyond that dense miasma a blue light showed faintly, and he could even feel the killing intent in that person's eyes.

Suddenly a clear, shrill cry, and the blue sword glare came screaming through the air, piercing the clouds in an instant to form a vast pillar of light that split downward at his head. Ming Li did not dodge at all; he flew straight up, forcing his way into the blue light, hurtling directly at where she stood.

The one in the clouds gave an angry shout, and the blue light blazed brighter. In an instant all its radiance was drawn back into the clouds, and a moment later it congealed into a sky-blue immortal sword blazing with ten thousand rays, rushing at him irresistible. Almost in the same instant Shihun's blue light surged, driving back the miasma for a full zhang around them as it rose to meet it.

A life-and-death stroke—and it was now!

She gripped the sword hilt; Ming Li clutched Shihun; the two charged at each other.

Two piercing beams of light, and in an instant the surrounding miasma was blasted clean away!

As though the world itself held its breath, waiting for the moment life and death would be decided...

A pale hand gripped the sword hilt; wind stirred the hem of her garment, fluttering and flying; she was like a fairy of the nine heavens, her peerless face revealed at the far end as the clouds parted and the mist scattered.

Lu Xueling!

Many years later, the moment of meeting once again...

What kind of gaze, in that mutual looking,

Even if, only for a brief moment's time.

Suddenly the whole world seemed to come to a standstill. The gray miasma was forced back by the supreme artifacts, and slowly the figure of that man emerged.

That man, so deeply engraved in the depths of her heart, was there before her.

She did not move at all; only her heart gave a faint, faint quiver.

The two artifacts, like lightning, like light, like fated foes entangled through three lives and seven ages, pressed toward each other. Was it hate, was it love—was it all to be decided in this instant—your death, my life?

That moment—there before her eyes!

That moment—a breath away!

What is it, that moves faster than this lightning; what is it, that coils softly about the heart?

Is it the will of the heart...

Shihun, blazing with radiance, suddenly tilted a fraction and gave way, and in that instant Ming Li's chest lay wide open. On his shoulder Xiao Hui shrieked aloud.

Blue light, scattered like stars, came pouring in!

Yet he felt no pain. The blue light grazed past him with not a hair's breadth to spare, as though some hidden sense had warned him, and the Heaven Ya Divine Sword likewise veered a little to the other side.

That one instant was perilous beyond measure; had either Ming Li or Lu Xueling been a shade slower, or hesitated even a moment, the other could have struck them dead on the spot beneath their magic treasures.

And yet, inexplicably, both had let it go.

In the instant they passed each other, he had still gazed deeply at her.

Within the depths of that beautiful woman's eyes, what was reflected, after all, was his own shadow...

A moment later, because the force with which each had readied for a fight to the death was so great, they were flung apart, each hurtling in a different direction, powerless to stop themselves, separated far and wide!

In the air, upon the lapels of his robe, faint and elusive—was that her lingering fragrance?

The sky suddenly brightened. Ming Li came back to himself and saw beneath his feet an endless, dense forest, and that he was falling toward it. The sky hung low, dark clouds drifting across it, and at some unknown moment he had broken through that inconceivably thick miasma and come at last into the exceedingly perilous Inner Marsh.

He steadied himself in midair and descended slowly, then suddenly turned his head, and there stood the immense wall of miasma, still towering as though it had never changed since the beginning of time—and what need was there to speak of where that woman might be now?