Chapter 101 — The Yellow Bird
劍問蒼天 · Page 2 of 6
Almost simultaneously, the Blackwater Mystic Serpent suddenly quickened its pace, hissing as it surged upward. The company was startled into alarm, and Jin Pingyue, Zeng Shuyan, Lin Jinghong, Facheng, and the rest were the first to take flight.
The air reeked of rank stench, and a fierce wind blew from somewhere, cutting at the face like a blade.
Ming Li suddenly wheeled and threw himself back, flying toward the Heaven Emperor's Treasure House. Facheng and the others, now in midair, were greatly startled; looking back, they saw the Blackwater Mystic Serpent in what seemed a towering rage, its huge eyes glaring wide, wisps of black vapor seemingly jetting from its mouth, its enormous body writhing without cease—and in the blink of an eye it had reached the very front of the Treasure House.
The stone door of the Heaven Emperor's Treasure House, so vast to human eyes, now looked to be no larger than the serpent's head.
Hanging in midair, Ming Li felt the darkness come down behind him all at once—that mountain-like darkness surging toward him like a tidal wave. He did not need to turn his head to know that the Blackwater Mystic Serpent's vast body was right behind him.
He transformed into a streak of azure light, racing like lightning before the leviathan's bulk, toward that stone door.
Ahead, the monkey Xiao Hui suddenly shrieked!
A dark shadow came crashing down, and the wind of it was so fierce that before it even touched him, it had already forced Ming Li's body violently aside.
Ming Li was greatly alarmed, but he was no longer the youth he had been beneath the Dead Spirit Abyss in those days. In an instant his will moved with his thought, as though he had eyes in the back of his head, and riding the Soul Devourer he slipped through the descending bulk of the Blackwater Mystic Serpent, dodging it by a hair's breadth.
Now the sound from the stone door of the Heaven Emperor's Treasure House grew steadily louder, and with a booming roar, under the sunlight, the great door—whole and unbroken until now—suddenly split open along a seam down its center, then slowly slid apart to either side.
Golden, dazzling, blinding light came surging out from that seam with a roar. Even in broad daylight it was so brilliant that the eye could not bear it, and even the sun rising slowly at the horizon seemed, in that moment, to dim.
As though something within the Heaven Emperor's Treasure House were roaring, thundering within that golden radiance!
The Blackwater Mystic Serpent's entire vast body suddenly snapped taut and gave a hiss that shook heaven and earth. Paying no heed to anything else, it drove its huge head straight at the stone door of the Heaven Emperor's Treasure House.
And that streak of azure light flying between it and the stone door seemed to have beaten it by a step—in a moment it would enter the Heaven Emperor's Treasure House...
If not for that sword, bright as autumn water—the Divine Sword of the Celestial Pivot.
A curtain of blue light, no one knew when, had come above Ming Li's head and gathered into a giant blade of light that came chopping down at him. The red light in Ming Li's eyes flared bright; the stone door was right before him, but if he did not block that blazing sword radiance, he would likely be cut in two on the spot. With no choice, his azure light reversed and shot up to meet it. Blue and azure light clashed violently against the black shadow clawing up behind him, and in an instant a shockwave of invisible force raced out in all directions—even Jin Pingyue and the others flying in midair could not keep their faces from changing.