Chapter 101 — The Yellow Bird
劍問蒼天 · Page 3 of 6
Mighty as the clash was, it had no effect whatsoever on the Blackwater Mystic Serpent or the strange golden light within the Treasure House. The golden light remained dazzling, growing ever brighter, and the Blackwater Mystic Serpent came charging on as well. This man and this woman, caught between two violently shifting and perilous forces, still held on doggedly, neither willing to yield an inch.
Until the radiance of their respective treasures overshadowed their very bodies, and both their faces grew paler and paler—but above all, in that instant, swift as a spark from flint, the vast black shadow reached them.
The treasures of human cultivators, powers kindled from their own bodies, scattered to smoke and nothing beneath the force of the Blackwater Mystic Serpent's furious charge.
Lu Xueling and Ming Li were flung forward at the same instant. Ming Li felt his chest heave and his blood churn, his head ringing with a buzzing din, the meridians of his whole body shaken by that vast force until they seemed about to turn completely inside out. Blood caught in his chest; had the Great Brahma Prajna of Brahma Sound Temple not been guarding his heart meridian and circulating rapidly to block and dissipate that external force layer by layer, he would surely have spat blood on the spot.
Even so, he felt agony throughout his body, and who knew how many of his bones were broken. In midair, he suddenly wrenched his head around to look at Lu Xueling.
That cold, pure woman seemed, in that moment, to be in even worse state. Her robes were white as snow, but at her breast they were blotched with blood, and from the corners of her pale lips blood welled without cease—plainly she had coughed up blood on the spot.
The doctrines of the Canglan Sect were wondrous and without peer, but in the matter of steadying the heart meridian and protecting oneself, the Buddhist Great Brahma Prajna was still a cut above.
The righteous-path cultivators hovering in midair could only stare dumbstruck. All of it had happened in an instant—before they could react, Lu Xueling had already blocked Ming Li, and a moment later the two were struck flying together by the Blackwater Mystic Serpent. Judging by their postures, both must be gravely wounded.
Lu Xueling was a disciple of Qingyun, needless to say; and Ming Li was the Zhang Qingyue of old, bound to all those present by the deepest of ties. At this sudden turn, the righteous cultivators came to their senses and at once swooped down, one after another. They could not stop this ancient demonic beast, but they hoped at least to lend the two a hand.
At the same time, Jin Pingyue quietly descended from the other side. Yet beneath the shadow of the Blackwater Mystic Serpent, her lovely eyes were fixed only on the brilliant golden light within the stone door of the Heaven Emperor's Treasure House, glittering bright in her gaze.
Far off, the newborn sun had climbed a little higher.
The sunlight fell, and upon the horizontal stroke of the character HEAVEN above the Treasure House, it had shifted up a little further.
Suddenly, the stone door—opened halfway, some three feet wide—abruptly stopped moving, and a moment later, incredibly, began to close again. And the golden light within it gradually dimmed.
Ming Li felt his whole body on the verge of bursting apart, yet he and Lu Xueling both remained conscious. It was only that the force of the Blackwater Mystic Serpent's charge had been so immense that he could not, in that hurried moment, control himself, and he saw that he was about to smash into the hard, thick stone door. At the speed he was going, even with the true doctrines of Buddhist, Daoist, and Demonic schools all protecting him, he would likely be shattered to pieces.
More terrible still: that stone door, with a low, muffled rumble, was slowly closing...
From afar, as though from midair, came the startled cries of Lin Jinghong and the others!