Chapter 43 — The Blooddrop Cave
劍問蒼天 · Page 2 of 6
And among the demon cult, for eight hundred years, there had always been a legend: that after the great war between the righteous and the demon cult, though the chief leaders of the Refining Blood Hall had all fallen in battle, many of their secret treasures and ritual implements had been hidden deep beneath the ancient lair of the Refining Blood Hall, the Cavern of Ten Thousand Bats, in a secret place known as the Blooddrop Cave.
Over those eight hundred years, who knew how many of the demon cult had slipped in secret down into the Cavern of Ten Thousand Bats; they had even ransacked the Vale of Death Spirits from end to end—and all had come away empty-handed.
Young as she was, Bili had already become a person of consequence within the Nether King Sect, one of those four great factions, and on this expedition into so perilous a place as the Vale of Death Spirits she carried the weighty charge of the Nether King Sect's master. Now the very thing that countless elders over eight hundred years had failed to do, the very place they had failed to find, lay before her own eyes—how could she not be overjoyed? For a moment she quite forgot that she stood in a deathtrap.
Joy in her heart, Bili fixed her gaze on the ceiling, then sprang lightly upward and reached out carefully to touch the red stones. They felt icy to the hand, but otherwise no different from the stone around them. She tapped them gently, and there was no response. By now her expression held a measure of tension alongside the excitement.
She went on to pull, tap, pry, strike, and wrench—she tried every trick she knew, and touched every one of the red stones. But all was as before; nothing out of the ordinary occurred.
Watching from below, Zhang Qingyue felt a surge of satisfaction and could not help laughing. "I don't think this is the Blooddrop Cave at all—you must have guessed wrong!" Bili had no choice but to drop back to the ground, and she shot him a furious glare, though doubt stirred in her heart as well. Could she truly have guessed wrong?
Over the next two hours, Zhang Qingyue sat on the ground and watched the girl in water-green robes—brows knit, pacing to and fro, deep in thought, now and again springing up to try some new scheme against the red stones, and every time returning empty-handed.
As he watched, his stomach suddenly gave a rumbling growl; he was hungry. He reached into his robes for the dry rations he carried, only to find them gone—most likely lost when he fell into the water earlier. At once he was inwardly cursing his luck: hungry now, with nothing in this cave to eat, and the little pool before him clear as could be—so clear that not a single small fish or shrimp was to be seen in it.
As the pangs of hunger grew heavier and harder to bear, Zhang Qingyue, at his wit's end, could only cup up some clear water and drink it down—which did not help in the least.
He sighed bitterly. It seemed he was doomed to starve to death here.
Bili, by contrast, felt no hunger at all; her whole mind was fixed on those seven red stones. But after all her effort she had gained nothing, and she sank down dejectedly—though her eyes still rested on the red stones, staring blankly.
Watching her from the side, Zhang Qingyue could not help reminding her, "What's the good of staring at that? If we don't think of a way out soon, we'll likely starve to death here first." Bili stirred, as though only now remembering that there was a young disciple of the righteous path beside her. She turned and glanced at him, then said suddenly, "Are you hungry?" How could Zhang Qingyue bear to lose face before her? He tossed his head at once. "No." "Gurgle, gurgle"—his belly, as if to spite him, gave two loud growls right after he spoke.
Bili could not hold back a "pfft" of laughter. Zhang Qingyue's face flushed crimson with embarrassment; he wished he could crawl into a crack in the floor.