劍問蒼天 - 第20章 抽籤 - 翰墨軒

There at the edge of the Bishui Pool, the giant beast that had been sleeping soundly all this while — the water qilin — suddenly stirred awake. It whipped its head around with a vicious jerk; its huge eyes blazed with boundless malice, the hairs along its back stood on end one by one, and it opened a bloody maw to bare two long, sharp fangs. It had actually dropped into an attacking stance. And its target was, unmistakably, the Canglan Sect disciples standing on the stone steps.

This water qilin was a primordial spirit-beast, an ancient monstrosity of the wild. The moment it loosed its might, wind and cloud changed color; the sky, blue a breath before, went dark in an instant. With its first stride toward the steps, the once-placid mountain wind turned to a gale that shrieked and tore across the summit of Jietian Peak. And the pool of jade-green water nearest the qilin changed most of all: from mirror-flat calm it began to tremble, then abruptly churned, the whole pool spinning as a deep vortex opened at its center, and from the depths of that vortex came a faint rumbling. A moment later, with a great roar, a column of water shot straight up out of the vortex — thick enough that three men with arms linked could scarcely have encircled it — and it held together, unbroken, instead of scattering. It whirled once in midair, then bent down as though driven by some will and came to rest before the qilin, supple as a swimming dragon, crystalline and translucent, circling and gliding in the air.

By now not one of the Canglan disciples on the steps — Qi Hao and the most accomplished among them included — could keep his composure. Every face had changed; some had gone white as paper, trembling faintly.

The water qilin's fitness to serve as Patriarch Qingye's right hand in quelling demons a thousand years ago, and the extreme reverence in which the Canglan Sect had held it for a millennium, were fully laid bare in that moment. Of the five elements — metal, wood, water, fire, earth — the water qilin is the supreme spirit creature of water. To judge by this single display of commanding water out of empty air: no borrowed force, a summoned column so thick and yet so tightly knit that it could coil and swim through the air with no sign of strain at all. Its spiritual power and the purity of its will had long surpassed those of ordinary cultivators in the mortal world. Even in the Canglan Sect, where masters are thick as clouds, few could achieve such a thing by will alone — and scarce any could match it even with the aid of a magic treasure.

In that instant heaven and earth darkened together, wind and cloud seethed, and the Canglan disciples, seeing the Venerable Spirit — the water qilin — roused to a thunderous wrath it had not shown in a thousand years and more, stood dumbstruck, not knowing what to do. But in a flash, the qilin's throat poured out unending roars, its eyes went round, and the fury and loathing in them deepened by the moment, as though it sensed some mortal enemy or something utterly abhorrent, and meant to fight it to the death, to the last breath. And the great water column coiling before the beast spun faster and faster, until with a mighty boom the vast tower of water came crashing down upon the Canglan disciples with earth-shaking force.

At that critical instant, a shout came from midair: "Venerable Spirit, stay your wrath!"