Chapter 228 — Blood Omen

You Si studied the Nether King's face and saw anger lurking there. She was about to say something when a wave of weariness suddenly swept over her heart, and for a moment she felt utterly disheartened. She shook her head and said, "Enough, enough. Suit yourselves. In any case, you had best look to yourselves—I truly cannot manage it, and I have no heart to try."

With that, she turned and walked toward the door. The Nether King watched her receding figure and frowned, as though he wanted to say something to her, but in the end he did not speak.

Just as You Si's hand was about to reach the heavy stone door, her hand suddenly halted in midair. Almost at the same instant, the Nether King, standing behind her, sensed something too, and a fierce light flashed in his eyes.

A vast, formless power, irresistible in its force, swept past deep beneath the earth at their feet like a surging, roaring tide. Both the Nether King and You Si were people of profound cultivation, and in that moment both paled at this uncanny power.

Yet where You Si was shocked, the Nether King's surprise was tinged with delight, and the light in his eyes flickered without cease.

This strange tidal surge came wave upon wave, like a swelling sea that never rested. Slowly, You Si clearly felt that the earth beneath her feet was trembling faintly—and the trembling was slowly growing stronger.

Her face went slightly pale. This sudden uncanny force was of a magnitude beyond imagining, enough to strike terror, something no human could withstand. In her alarm she turned to look back, and saw the Nether King's expression was strange, his eyes blazing, though she could not tell what he was thinking—only that there was not much fear on his face.

At that very moment, within this cold-ice chamber that appeared to be enclosed by countless layers of thick rock and wall, indestructible, several sharp cracks rang out in succession, as though something had burst apart.

This time, the Nether King's expression changed drastically, just as You Si's had.

In their shock they looked at once, and saw that on the stone wall, which had been supremely solid, several short fissures had actually opened. From the broken edges small stones kept dropping, and at the same time the ground beneath their feet seemed to shake ever more violently.

Fortunately, this uncanny force seemed to have found a vent when it tore at the mountain's solid rock. Not long after the wall split open, the two of them keenly sensed that the strange, mysterious power deep in the earth beneath their feet was rapidly weakening, and soon it vanished without a trace.

You Si stood in silence for a long while, her brows tightly knit. Had it not been for those startling cracks still in the stone wall, she might almost have thought it had been her imagination. But the cracks, like knife cuts, were truly carved into that supremely hard stone.

You Si turned to look at the Nether King. For some reason, he gave her but a single glance, then turned back to look at Bili.

"Do you know what this was?"

A shadow suddenly passed through You Si's heart, and she had a bad premonition.

The Nether King slowly shook his head and said mildly, "I do not know either. Later I will send men to survey the terrain thoroughly, to see whether it was an earthquake."

You Si pondered a moment, then said, "It should not be an earthquake. That surging force just now was like a great tide, and there was clearly a fierce killing intent in it—it was no natural disaster."

The Nether King was silent, and only after a moment said, "I will look into this matter thoroughly. You need not concern yourself with it."

You Si stared at his back for a long while, the gauze over her face stirring faintly though there was no wind. After a time she said no more, turned straight around, opened the heavy stone door, and walked out.

With a heavy rumble the stone door slowly swung shut once more, and silence settled over the Chamber of Cold Ice and Stone. Gazing at that serene, beautiful face, faintly touched with a peaceful smile, even the deep, sharp gaze of the Ghost King at last softened, little by little.

In silence he sat down beside the cold stone bed, his eyes fixed only on Bili, filled with an inexpressible longing and grief. And it seemed that only at moments like this, when he faced his daughter alone, did he ever let slip these small traces of weakness.

But who could say?

Or rather, could even the Ghost King himself understand it?

No one knew.

And outside the Chamber of Cold Ice and Stone, Yousi had taken only a few steps from the place when she stopped again, frowned, and looked around.

Perhaps it was because she had been inside that thick, utterly sealed chamber of cold ice and stone that, although she had sensed that strange and uncanny power, the destruction it had wrought around her was not severe; of course, to have torn several cracks in stone walls of such extreme hardness, that force was already no small matter.

Yet outside the Chamber of Cold Ice and Stone, what she saw was far worse. Within the crisscrossing passages carved out by the Ghost King Sect, everything was in chaos; fallen fragments of rock lay everywhere, and from the distance came, now and again, the urgent shouts of people and the moans of the injured.

Clearly, that mysterious power had done graver damage to Fox Qi Mountain than anyone had expected.

And amid all this bustle and confusion, Yousi noticed something else out of the ordinary: in these well-ventilated passages, at some unknowable moment, the air had come to be filled with a faint smell of blood.

Where this reek of blood came from she did not know, yet it seemed to be everywhere; wherever she went, she could feel it. Faint as it was, it still left Yousi deeply uncomfortable. But there were already too many troubles weighing on her now, and she had no mind to fret over this one as well.

To her it felt as though a breath were pent up in her chest, and all she wanted, no matter what, was to burst out of this mountain's belly and breathe the air outside. So she thought, and so she did.

Yousi's figure soon vanished into the passages within the mountain, yet that faint smell of blood seemed still to be quietly seeping through the place...