Chapter 101 — The Yellow Bird
劍問蒼天 · Page 4 of 6
In that one instant, Ming Li's heart suddenly went dim and distant: faintly, dimly, it seemed there was a woman in water-green robes beneath the blue sky, smiling gently at him. Only—her smile, somehow, was a little blurred.
Time, in that instant, seemed suddenly to slow.
His body tumbled through the air. He saw the hideous face of the Blackwater Mystic Serpent coming up behind him; he saw the hard stone door slowly closing before him; and he saw, beside him, the white-robed woman drifting through the air as helplessly as he.
Suddenly he wanted very much to ask Lu Xueling: for what—for what would she risk her very life to stop him?
"Cheep, cheep, cheep!" Shrill as though at his very ear, the monkey Xiao Hui's cry jolted him awake. Xiao Hui had at some point run to the gap in the stone door and was bounding about in frantic agitation, shrieking at the top of its lungs—and by now the gap between the door's edges was less than two feet wide.
He was about to smash into the stone door.
He was about to reach the end of this life.
He was about to see the blue sky and white clouds come pressing down upon him.
If he gave up...
He gritted his teeth and spent his last ounce of strength to twist his body a few degrees. In that instant, from the corner of his eye, he glimpsed what lay ahead: that gap, aligned with him.
Perhaps he could cheat death after all?
He let out a breath, his whole body feeling as though it were about to die, without an ounce of strength left.
The wind howled bitterly—and yet he suddenly felt that someone was watching him.
He lifted his eyes.
Lu Xueling had at some point regained consciousness, and she was right beside him, flying in a direction that would surely dash her against the hard stone door. But for some reason, upon that pure, exquisite face, there was not the slightest fear.
In this moment of heaven and earth spinning, at this pass where life and death hung by a thread, she was borne helplessly toward death—and yet her face held no trace of sorrow, no trace of terror.
Like a night-blooming cereus, her figure dotted with crimson blood, amid the cries of horror from afar, before Ming Li—no, before the Zhang Qingyue of old—she suddenly smiled.
In that pale smile was a tenderness never before seen. In so bitter a wind, her lips parted and closed softly, gazing at the one beside her.
Four words passed through the wind, passed through the blood, and more than that passed through the years and time, hovering lightly through ten years, then lingering at his ear, echoing in the depths of his heart.
"You—come back..."
She closed her eyes, and her body seemed suddenly to sink, as though about to leave him—as though her last strength had vanished with the speaking of those four words.
Her black hair lifted, veiling one side of her pale face in the wind. The woman drifted with the wind, and yet at the corners of her lips there seemed still to linger a faint smile.
But what was it that echoed so fiercely in the depths of his heart, like a raging flood surging until all barriers gave way? All the things of this world may vanish—but this moment, that figure in white—
How could he let go?
How could he forsake her?
In his throat was a low, hoarse cry. In that nameless blur of tears he struggled; in the fierce, bitter wind he struggled; reaching out his hand, reaching out his hand, reaching out his hand...
And clenched tight!
Just as ten years ago, beside the Dead Spirit Abyss, amid countless rocks falling like rain, that woman in white had come toward him heedless of everything and caught his hand.
Clenched tight...
Before his last shred of awareness vanished, he spent all the strength in his body pulling that woman toward him.
Ahead lay the gap in the stone door, only a foot wide now; and the golden light within the door had by then vanished completely, leaving only darkness.
There was a faint warmth in his palm.