Chapter 38 — The Abyss of the Dead
劍問蒼天 · Page 3 of 8
This was deep beneath the earth, within an ancient cave, where no such prodigies ought to have appeared — yet now all four of the Canglan Sect saw them before their eyes and heard them in their ears. As they stood in shock, there came of a sudden a great crash: the treasure fan trembled in midair, and a moment later the great mountain painted upon it actually moved, drawn forth from the fan itself. It grew as it met the wind, and with a rumbling roar swelled into a hill a hundred zhang tall, all but filling that vast space — and then, like Mount Tai pressing down from above, it bore down upon the four of the Canglan Sect.
Zhang Qingyue turned pale with horror. The huge thing was descending straight upon his head and he had no power to withstand it; there was no time to think of anything else. He kicked off with all his strength and flew backward. The mountain came down, and half his body was still beneath it, about to be crushed in two — when suddenly something seized him by the collar and hauled him out by main force.
Zhang Qingyue looked back. It was Qi Hao who had saved his life. At that moment of life and death, an inexplicable bitterness suddenly welled up in his heart, but he still whispered: "Thank you, Senior Brother Qi."
Qi Hao could never have guessed what the boy was thinking. His face grave, he gave a slight nod. He had been standing a little farther back and had retreated a little faster; seeing Zhang Qingyue right beside him, he had simply reached out and pulled him along.
But the great hill that had sprung up so suddenly was a fearful thing to contend with. It came down with a thunderous crash; the ground shook violently, the stone walls trembled, and even the rocky vault a hundred zhang overhead rained down rubble like a shower of stones. Such was its might that it made the heart quail.
Zeng Shuyan had also fallen back, his face a mask of astonishment. "The Mountain-and-River Fan!" he cried. "That is the treasured guardian artifact of the Old Ancestor of Wind and Moon of Jieshi Mountain! How has it come into this man's hands?"
All were startled. Zhang Qingyue scarcely understood, but Qi Hao, a man of wide experience, knew that the Old Ancestor of Wind and Moon was a renowned cultivator who had long practiced in seclusion upon Jieshi Mountain in the east. His cultivation was profound and his fame in the world of Daoist practice considerable. In his dealings he walked the line between righteous and evil; he committed no great wickedness and sought no quarrel with the world, and so neither the orthodox nor the demonic path had ever provoked him. But no one had imagined that this youth would appear among these fiends bearing the Old Ancestor's own guardian treasure.
While all stood in doubt and alarm, the great mountain rose into the air once more, utterly without mercy — and who could say what manner of power it took to lift such a colossal thing?
Behind them, as all could see, was the stone wall; there was no retreat. Upon the huge hill rocks flew like rain, lightning flashed and thunder roared. At this crisis, as the Canglan Sect stood in anguish, Qi Hao set his jaw and was about to step forth, to shelter them all with his mirror and try to withstand the mountain's crushing weight by main force — when a flash of blue light appeared, and Lu Xueqi suddenly stood before the three of them. She gave a clear, shrill cry, and blue light surged; the divine sword Tianxuan rang out like a dragon's roar as it left its sheath, ten thousand threads of immortal aura shooting straight for the vault of the cave.