Chapter 114 — Breakout
The Sword Questions the Heavens · Page 1 of 7
To Bili, this memory from her past was a wound that had cut her to the bone. Buried deep in her heart all these years, it had surged back to her at this moment of life and death, throwing her spirit into turmoil. Add to that the scarcity of food these past days and her growing frailty, and she had sunk into a long, unbroken faint.
Zhang Qingyue looked at the demon-sect girl who even now, deep in unconscious sleep, still clung tightly to him. He could not help shaking his head with a bitter smile. Not long ago he himself had been the invalid who had walked to the very gates of hell and back; who would have thought that now the roles were reversed and it was Bili's turn to fall ill? The two of them had collapsed one after the other—if fate meant them to die, it was proving remarkably hard to avoid.
After a while longer, Zhang Qingyue himself grew drowsy, yet he forced himself to sit upright. Bili was lying in his arms at that moment, and gazing at her gaunt face, faintly contorted with pain, he found he could not bring himself to leave.
Sitting like that, though, was no easy matter. He sat on the platform with one leg dangling in the air and one foot braced on the ground, leaning half sideways, his body held ramrod straight with nothing to lean against. As time wore on, every part of him ached. Worst of all was the place where Bili gripped him—her fingers dug in hard, and even in her stupor that force did not slacken in the least. The pain pierced to the marrow. It was only thanks to Zhang Qingyue's somewhat stubborn fortitude that he gritted his teeth and endured it; anyone else would long since have leapt up.
Even so, the suffering was no trifling matter. Zhang Qingyue cursed his lot inwardly, yet in the end he did not move away. As time went on, drowsiness too set in, and amid that slowly numbing ache and soreness, he actually dozed off sitting there.
"Ah…"
Zhang Qingyue stretched and woke, feeling sore all over. He was just sighing when he suddenly realized that at some point he had come to be lying on the platform, and that Bili, who had been beside him, was gone.
Startled, Zhang Qingyue rose to his feet and looked around. Still no sign of Bili. The whole cave was empty—not even a whisper of sound. A chill rose suddenly in his heart, as though he had been left alone in a tomb. He frowned, stood up, and without a second thought began searching for Bili.
He searched the stone chamber of the Heavenly Book, then went to the treasure chamber, but found no trace of Bili. Zhang Qingyue thought for a moment, then headed outward, and sure enough, before long he caught sight of her in the stone chamber where the two great evil deities of the demon sect were enshrined.
Before the benign, kindly visage of the Holy Mother of the Dark Void and the hideous, snarling countenance of the Heaven-Bane Ming King, Bili knelt on the ground, her shoulders shaking. Though she strove hard to suppress it, low sobs still escaped her.
She was actually crying.
Zhang Qingyue stood frozen where he was. However he might have imagined things, he would never have guessed that this demon-sect woman, so strong-willed and proud all this time, would be weeping secretly before these idols. He stood there, at a loss for what to do, but in the end he walked slowly over and said hesitantly, "You—uh, you, what… don't cry!"
Unfortunately, saying nothing would have been better. The moment she heard his voice, the grief Bili had been forcing down burst out all at once. Her voice rose at once, loud and sorrowful, and she slowly lifted her head. On that face, usually like polished jade, tears now hung like pearls.
Zhang Qingyue was dumbstruck. He was himself no more than a youth—what did he know of a girl's heart? He immediately grew flustered, as though he were the one who had made her cry, and even his words came out stammering: "You—don't, don't be like—like this… I, I—no, you, that's not—I mean I…"