劍問蒼天 - 第93章 瘴氣 - 翰墨軒

Within the brilliant golden-blue radiance Shihun at once steadied, no longer drifting with the wind, and held firm there in the midst of the storm. Ming Li concentrated and observed, but the storm around him only grew fiercer, the clouds surging in fury, and everywhere his eyes reached there was nothing but gray.

Ming Li brooded a moment, and at last knew this was a place of terrible danger where he could not linger. He drove Shihun to force its way toward the edge of the violently spinning storm; after an instant of thunderous roaring in his ears and a spinning of heaven and earth, he at last burst free of that tempest's eye hidden within the outwardly placid miasma.

The force of that burst was no small thing. Once out of the miasma vortex he still shot far onward before he could stop, and after such a buffeting his head was spinning. Though the miasma around him was gradually calming, Ming Li's brows knit; he could not tell whether he had gone astray.

As he brooded, Xiao Hui on his shoulder suddenly screamed a sharp warning. Ming Li was startled; without time even to look closely, he moved almost by instinct and flung his body three chi to the side in midair.

"ROAR!"

Through the gray clouds a huge black thing hurtled past, sweeping through the very place where he had just stood. A rank stench assailed his nostrils so violently that even Shihun's ring of light could not wholly block it, and it seeped faintly through.

A moment later the grotesque thing vanished once more into the miasma.

Ming Li stood stunned. His heart suddenly began to pound violently; that immense creature which had appeared and vanished in an instant had struck him like a blow to the head. The next moment, heedless of Xiao Hui's screeching, he gave chase, reckless of the enormous danger.

But the monster had vanished in a flash. Its body was inconceivably huge, yet its speed was by no means slow, and with this thick wall of miasma limiting sight to half a zhang, in a moment he could no longer find any trace of it.

Ming Li frowned and slowly came to a halt. As he gathered his wits, a startled cry suddenly rang out ahead, followed by a great clamor of shouts from all sides—there were several people ahead, and the monster's passing must have scattered them all in panic.

Ming Li's spirits lifted. He flew up bodily, and saw the clouds before him parting and rolling. Suddenly an angry shout rang out ahead, a voice cold and clear: "Demon!"

Before the word had died away, a fierce blue light burst in from the side and thrust straight at his chest, like a rainbow spanning the heavens, and in an instant it bathed even the surrounding miasma in brilliant blue.

Ming Li was greatly startled. This one's sword way was savage and unstoppable, striking without the least mercy; the mere height of cultivation revealed in that single thrust was not to be underestimated. In that critical moment, instead of slowing, he sped forward faster, flashing like lightning straight up into the sky to shake off the sword behind him and then strike back.

But the one among the clouds was truly no ordinary foe. The two of them were now separated by miasma and could not see each other's figures, yet guided solely by the sense of the sword, that blue light came pursuing with the speed of wind and lightning, clinging like a shadow to the bone, and the distance between them did not shrink in the least.

In moments the miasma nearby was churned wide open. Ming Li became a dim blue radiance, and behind him a streak of blue light; the two of them soared to the heavens and plunged to the earth, shifting form and position, swift as lightning and light, chasing without end through those layers of poison, and wherever they passed the clouds and mist went seething.