Chapter 38 — The Abyss of the Dead
劍問蒼天 · Page 7 of 8
The woman, fretting for her treasure and awed by the divine might of Tianxuan, hastily drew the cord back. Free at last, Lu Xueqi, sore in every limb though she was, rose at once into the air and caught Zhang Qingyue's flying body.
But before the two of them could draw breath, Elder Nian and the other two had already followed after.
Blue light flickered as Tianxuan flew back before Lu Xueqi to shield its mistress; but her face was pale as paper, and she herself swayed upon her feet.
Just then there came a "swish" from afar, followed by a cry of pain, and Lin Feng roared in fury: "Qingyun pups! You dare wound me? Then look to my treasure!"
"Hong long!" — a roar that rang through every corner of that vast cavern!
As all stood in horror, Elder Nian checked his advance and cried aloud: "Brother Lin, no—"
Before he could finish, all felt the ground beneath them heave and shake; and looking to Lin Feng's hand, they saw that the great river painted on the Mountain-and-River Fan had vanished from the picture.
"Hua!" With a deafening roar, the level ground where they stood split open in a web of cracks, and in an instant a colossal column of water shot up from deep beneath the earth. So tremendous was the force that boulders of great size were flung into the air — only the great stone before them, carved with the three characters "Abyss of the Dead," stood utterly unmoved.
The four of the Canglan Sect were flung outward by the vast force. Lu Xueqi's grip slackened — and in that instant she suddenly felt as though her own heart, too, were sinking away.
Zhang Qingyue's blood-streaked body drifted lightly outward. Before him lay that mysterious, dark abyss!
She gazed deep into the air, and for but a single instant it seemed that all the days gone by flashed one by one across her heart—
Upon the Heaven-Reaching Peak of Canglan Mountain, the youth who had blushed when he drew the lot and looked at her;
In the midst of that contest, amid the thunder and the wild wind, the eyes that had suddenly softened;
And just now, the one who had coughed blood for her sake, who had rushed to save her, reckless of everything!
A great boulder came crashing down from above. Lu Xueqi set her teeth and her face went cold; with the last of her strength she pushed off from the boulder, altering the direction of her flight, and flew toward Zhang Qingyue.
Stones rained down, the water-dragon reared monstrous, but all of it seemed to lie at the far horizon. The divine sword Tianxuan gave off a faint blue light as it followed after its mistress.
Evading several hurtling stones, Lu Xueqi caught up with Zhang Qingyue and seized his hand. She was about to pull him back — when she felt the last shred of strength in her body slip away from her as well.
"Is she coming to save me?" Zhang Qingyue glimpsed Lu Xueqi through his blurring vision and murmured the thought inwardly. Then it struck him that he and Lu Xueqi had already flown past the great boulder carved with the three vast characters "Abyss of the Dead", the stone blazing with fierce light, and were now suspended above the chasm itself.
And then they were falling.
Lu Xueqi seemed to have lost all sense of what was happening; she had closed her eyes, and her body was rolling to one side. Her pale face, seen now, seemed somehow to wear a trace of relief.
In that last instant before he plunged into the bottomless gulf beneath him, a gulf that seemed an eternal darkness, Zhang Qingyue lingered a moment still in the light, and faintly, indistinctly, heard a Buddha's invocation. Then golden radiance blazed forth.
The next moment, he was swallowed by the dark.
Boundless, measureless darkness, as though eternal; even the woman at his side, so close at hand, he could not make out by so much as a hair.
Yet in the final moment before consciousness left him, he still knew that Lu Xueqi's hand and his were still clasped together, very tightly, very tightly.