Chapter 209 — The Eight Wilderness Fire Dragon

The Zhenmo Ancient Cave. Before the cave mouth.

Black Wood stood in silence before the statue of the Linglong Witch, and the vicious spirit Black Tiger seemed likewise silent, standing at his back. Lu Xueling and her companions had been inside for a long while now, to say nothing of Ming Li and the others who had gone in earlier, and in all that time no one knew what had truly happened within that ancient cave.

Only, neither of these two brothers appeared to show the slightest concern. In their eyes, there seemed to be nothing but that single statue of the Linglong Witch.

Suddenly, in the midst of that stillness, the ground beneath their feet began to tremble faintly, and a muffled thunderous rumbling issued from within the Zhenmo Ancient Cave. Black Wood started, turned, and exchanged a glance with Black Tiger; but before they could make sense of it, an even greater upheaval had already taken place.

In the originally pitch-black heavens, from the black clouds that shrouded the summits of the scorched-black peaks, a golden ray of light suddenly shot forth, falling from the sky like a sharp sword, piercing through the heavy darkness. At once, the edges of the thick black cloudbank began to radiate a faint golden glow, as though the dark clouds had been inlaid with a rim of gold.

The rumbling thunder resounded once more after ten thousand thousand years above that cursed mountain peak; the clouds began to surge wildly, as if some mysterious and unfathomable power were ceaselessly awakening, moving even heaven and earth to awe.

Black Wood and Black Tiger stared blankly at this upheaval of heaven and earth. Then suddenly Black Wood turned, hesitated a moment, and said in a low voice that seemed to tremble slightly, "The yin wind... it has vanished too."

Black Tiger's massive bulk gazed into the depths of the cave; within the deep darkness there was no longer any bone-chilling yin wind, replaced instead by a scorching, churning heat.

"What's going on? What has happened inside?" Black Wood's voice carried a faint excitement, but his face, shrouded in black cloth, revealed no expression; one could only see him staring fixedly at the Zhenmo Ancient Cave.

In contrast to him, Black Tiger's expression as he faced these upheavals was most complex and strange, as though there were some inexpressible joy in it, yet upon that face formed of white smoke, a trace of sorrow was unexpectedly revealed as well.

"It is the fire dragon. The Eight Wilderness Fire Dragon!" he said faintly, in a low voice.

"What?"

Black Wood whirled about in disbelief, staring at Black Tiger, and said, "What did you say? The Eight Wilderness Fire Dragon? In this world, apart from the Lady herself, how could anyone now still be able to summon the Eight Wilderness Fire Dragon?"

Black Tiger's gaze was vast and distant; slowly it shifted to that stone statue, and after a long while he said, "Originally there was no one, for the summoning incantation and the Xuanhuo Mirror, the essence of all flames, were long since lost. And yet—" He smiled, then looked at Black Wood with a very strange expression and said, "And yet, in this world there is still one person who once grasped all of the Witch Lady's sorcerous incantations, and the Eightfold Fierce Mystic Fire Formation that the Lady alone left standing in this world, and that can summon the Eight Wilderness Fire Dragon, happens to be right here."

Black Wood was stunned and said nothing. After a long while he shook his head despondently and said, "So he... actually had this trick in reserve. But the Eight Wilderness Fire Dragon is a creature of destruction that annihilates all things. In summoning this divine beast, has he forgotten that the Lady used this very fire dragon to burn him to ashes back then?"

Black Tiger gave a faint, cold laugh and said, "Who knows. I only remember one thing the Lady said to me with her own lips when she was departing, on her deathbed."

Black Wood started and said, "What?"

A deep hatred surfaced on Black Tiger's face. He turned abruptly and, looking at the Zhenmo Ancient Cave, where the upheaval grew ever more pronounced and the tremors ever greater, said with a cold laugh, "The Lady charged me that no matter how many years should pass, once the fire dragon returned to life and descended here, that would be the hour this knot of grievance and retribution is ended!"

Black Wood murmured it over: "The hour the grievance is ended..." Suddenly his expression changed, and he said, "Could it be that the Lady foresaw all of this long ago?"

Black Tiger paid him no heed. To him, in this hour when the scorching wind grew ever more searing, when the clouds across the sky roiled and churned, when golden rays flashed in confusion and heaven and earth displayed a chaos of portents, there was in his eyes only that stone statue.

He moved slowly to the front of the statue, all expression gone from his face, and said in a low voice, "Lady, Lady... I have finally waited for this day. Do not be anxious; wait a little longer. When everything is over, Black Tiger will come to find you, and from then on serve forever at your side."

Black Wood gazed numbly at this elder brother from a former life, and then he raised his eyes to the heavens.

What the heavens gave him back was a thunderclap straight overhead!

Boom!

The wind and clouds grew more urgent still; the trembling of the earth grew ever more violent.

Within the passage of the Zhenmo Ancient Cave, Zeng Shuyan stepped back half a pace, dodging a white orb of light that came flashing toward him, and took cover to one side; yet inwardly he was groaning. Ever since Li Xun and the others had somehow, without warning, provoked a woman in white within this Zhenmo Ancient Cave—a woman who, oddly enough, seemed several degrees more bewitchingly alluring than even Jin Pingyue—her cultivation had proven unbelievably high. Li Xun and the Fenxia Valley disciples had rushed her all at once, only to be driven back entirely by a most bizarre sorcery, and now every one of them was trapped by a spell she had cast.

It was the very same sorcery that Xiaobai had used to trap Jin Pingyue: mysterious white orbs of light charging at the crowd. The Fenxia Valley disciples struck them away with their respective magic treasures, only to find that the more they struck, the more of them there were. At first it was nothing much, but after a while the entire cavern had fallen within the compass of that white radiance. The Fenxia Valley disciples were many, but far inferior to Jin Pingyue in quickness of wit; in almost the blink of an eye the white orbs had multiplied into countless numbers, hurtling every which way through the air, and those Fenxia Valley disciples, who at first had meant to seize Xiaobai and punish her soundly, were beaten into a chorus of misery.

Seeing the Fenxia Valley disciples in such straits, Zeng Shuyan could hardly stand by with folded arms and was forced to join the fray; but the woman in white's cultivation was fearsomely high, and Zeng Shuyan could not catch her either—on the contrary, he too was soon surrounded by a host of white orbs. Zeng Shuyan, however, was exceptionally quick-witted; within a few exchanges he realized something was amiss and at once shouted a warning to the nearby Fenxia Valley disciples not to slash recklessly at the white orbs, and only then did the others come to their senses.

Even so, the white orbs already filled the sky, hemming the righteous-path disciples in tight; one came shooting from the east, another rammed from the west, and everyone was thrown into frantic confusion.