Chapter 39 — The Abyss
The Sword Questions the Heavens · Page 1 of 5
Legend tells that in the beginning this world was darkness; then, after forty-eight thousand years, there came the giant god Pangu, who split heaven from earth and gave form to the mountains and rivers; and after another forty-eight thousand years, Nüwa came and made humankind.
Legend tells, too, that the first beam of light in all creation was born in the darkest place of all.
Zhang Qingyue felt cold all over, a chill that sank into his very marrow; a cold that seemed to reach beyond the body and freeze even his heart, the feeling of one about to die.
Yet he was not afraid, not in the least; he felt only a weariness such as he had never known, as if he lacked even the strength to open his eyes. Strange to say, though his body lay utterly spent and helpless, his mind grew clearer by degrees.
Something, it seemed, was wrapped about him, very gently, very carefully, yet cold as ice, slowly drawing the warmth from his body, and with it a peculiar comfort that made a man long to close his eyes and sleep just so.
But for a familiar, icy breath rising in his right hand as though to guard its master; but for his sudden sense that in his left hand he still held another hand, cold and soft.
Through his drowsiness he struggled, inch by inch, to open his eyes.
It was a beam of light in the eternal darkness.
In that endless, boundless dark, before Zhang Qingyue's eyes alone a faint glimmer quietly kindled, a dim and ghostly pale light that drifted unsteady in the blackness, twining about him like the gentlest of women taking hold of her beloved, lingering with him so tenderly.
It was like a wisp of thin smoke, vague and insubstantial, and there in midair beside Zhang Qingyue it slowly shaped itself into a face, beautiful and desolate, and bent toward the boy's lips to kiss him.
On those lips there was a faint sweetness, a faint stirring of confusion, and beyond that—nothing but ice.
An ice that pierced to the heart.
The Black Iron Staff suddenly flared up, and its dark blue light barred the way before Zhang Qingyue. The lovely face wrought of that smoky white radiance seemed to fear it, and drew back perforce. Zhang Qingyue's body jerked; he rolled over and sprang to his feet, and then, understanding, cried out in alarm: "A yin spirit!"
From ancient times it has been handed down that when men live and age and die, only the soul does not perish; when a lifetime ends, the soul leaves the body and goes to be reborn, life after life, in unending cycle. Yet in this world there are also vengeful spirits, which by reason of greed, wrath, and delusion, and by reason of dread and loathing and fear, cling to the mortal world, look back upon their former lives, and will not go on to rebirth—and these are called yin spirits.
Naturally, a yin spirit is a thing of the yin and the shadow, and loves to dwell in dark, damp places; in this Abyss of the Dead, dark and wet, such ghosts were hardly to be wondered at. But never in his life had Zhang Qingyue met such a thing. As a child in Liumiao Village he had heard the grown folk say there were ghosts in the world, and later on Dazhu Peak his senior brothers had told him these were called yin spirits, and he had been somewhat afraid of them; now that he saw one face to face, the chill ran from his head to his heels.
His cry carried far into the darkness, and in all that blackness about him his voice sounded thin and weightless; after a long while a faint echo drifted back. And with that cry, as though something had been startled awake, the darkness around him soundlessly kindled once more.
Zhang Qingyue felt his heart leap, and then it seemed to stop within his breast altogether. He held his breath and watched as a pale, ghostly light, almost exactly like the yin spirit of a moment before, lit up in the darkness ahead.
Then one kindled on his left, one on his right, one before, one behind; he looked up, and even above his head lights came forth, flickering with that same ghostly whiteness.