Chapter 164 — The Forbidden Ground

Shock, rage and desperation seized him at once, and he threw his whole being into one final effort. His body snapped taut as an arrow loosed from the string and tore through the air with a shrill hiss of speed. Yet when he reached that bend in the mountain path—bare moments later—the dark figure was already gone. Before him stood nothing but an ordinary cave, and carved above its mouth were four great characters:

Illusory Moon Cave Heaven!

Lin Jinghong started violently and pulled up short. He had been a disciple of the Canglan Sect for many years, and could hardly fail to know that this place was a forbidden ground of Qingyun, into which its disciples were never permitted to set foot. To trespass here was already a grave offense. Yet as he cast his gaze around, he saw only ancient trees standing dense and solemn on every side; apart from this cave there was nothing at all out of the ordinary. The figure had simply melted away.

The expressions chased one another across his face, and a flicker of hesitation passed over it. But a strange light glimmered in his star-bright eyes, and in the end wrath won the day. He lifted his foot as though still unsure, yet a moment later he took that first step forward, and walked toward the cave.

In contrast to the headlong pace of the chase, Lin Jinghong now walked very, very slowly, as though something within that commonplace cave made him falter and hold back. Even so, he soon reached its mouth; after drawing a deep breath, he clenched his jaw and stepped inside.

The cave was small, so small that a single glance took in every corner of it. There was no trace of any human figure.

Lin Jinghong froze for an instant, and a shadow of disappointment crossed his face. Then his eyes fell upon the one conspicuous thing in that cave: a taiji diagram set into the stone wall.

The taiji diagram mirrored in his eyes seemed to be telling him of the vicissitudes of years gone by; its broken rim gave off the smell of great antiquity. Lin Jinghong stared hard at it, and after a long while slowly reached out and laid his hand upon it.

The substance was neither stone nor jade, and its faint roughness grated against the edge of his palm. There was no reaction at all. Eyes burning, Lin Jinghong pressed hard and tried to turn it to one side.

Without the slightest warning—without even the stone wall itself showing any change—a fierce heat suddenly burst from the taiji diagram and in an instant invaded Lin Jinghong's arm. Before he could react, his whole arm seemed to be roasting in blazing fire; the blood in his body surged and seethed, and within moments his face was red as blood and his forehead slick with sweat.

Who would have thought that so ordinary a taiji diagram should conceal so appalling a daoist seal? In his alarm Lin Jinghong instinctively tried to pull his arm back, but to his dismay the invisible force held it fast, and he could not withdraw it. At the same moment the stone walls of the cave around him began to give out a muffled, sullen sound, as though something had been startled awake and was about to rise from its long slumber.

The strange noises around him grew louder and louder, gradually converging upon where Lin Jinghong stood, while the spot beneath his palm, after only a brief moment, had grown so hot that no one could have endured it. In his panic Lin Jinghong clenched his teeth; the heat within him threatened to burst him asunder, and he could only summon all his cultivation to resist, desperately channeling the Canglan Sect's Taiji Mystic Pure Dao—the art he had cultivated his whole life long—into his palm, in the hope of holding back that mysterious scorching breath.

Just as Lin Jinghong's head swam and his whole body was being seared by the blazing heat, the mysterious fire in the taiji diagram suddenly receded—and receded with astonishing swiftness, vanishing from his body in an instant like a retreating tide, so fast that for a moment he could not collect his wits.

Hard on its heels the uncanny noises around him seemed to be soothed, and little by little they too subsided; calm returned to the cave. As Lin Jinghong drew back his hand in astonishment, the taiji diagram turned, and a low sound—faint, yet different from before—issued once more from the stone wall.

Before Lin Jinghong's astonished eyes, the stone wall that had seemed one seamless whole split and swung apart to either side, revealing a most uncanny opening. Above that opening a bizarre vapor, shaped like mist and spray, whirled furiously, and within it all was hazy and impenetrable, inscrutable beyond telling.