Chapter 121 — Strong Liquor
劍問蒼天 · Page 2 of 8
Ming Li steadied himself and composed his thoughts. "I was once told by a learned master that for an injury such as this, one must find a person versed in the rare art of soul-summoning, who can use the remnant soul as a anchor to work the spell and call back the scattered souls, and only then can she be healed. For ten years I have searched bitterly, yet vast as the world is, I could not find such a one. Fortunately, in recent days—" He glanced at Xiaobai and went on, "Fortunately, in recent days I heard that the great shaman of your people possesses this wondrous art of recalling souls. So I have come especially to beg your aid. If the great shaman would lend his hand, I would be grateful beyond all words!"
The old man listened, his brows knit tight, his face a welter of complicated feeling. But Ming Li's manner was so earnest that he plainly was not lying. After a moment's pondering the old man said, "It is rare indeed that men of the Central Plains should show such loyalty and feeling. But this is not a matter I can decide. Wait here a while, and I will go up to the altar and consult the great shaman, to see what he wishes. If he will not see you, there is nothing I can do."
Ming Li was overjoyed and nodded again and again. "Thank you, honored elder."
The old man nodded. After a moment's hesitation he turned and spoke a few words in the Miao tongue to the warriors beside him, and they all nodded. Then the old man went up the mountain path alone, while the remaining Miao warriors slowly closed in, their eyes fixed on Ming Li and Xiaobai—whether to watch them or, by order, to protect them, one could not tell.
As for the other Miao onlookers, they had only seen the old man exchange a stream of gibberish with these two outsiders (to their ears the Central Plains speech was equally a twittering of birds) and then order several warriors to keep watch over the strangers before turning back up the mountain to the altar. At once they fell to murmuring and whispering among themselves.
Under the gaze of so many eyes, Ming Li was heavy with his own thoughts, his mind elsewhere, and paid the other Miao no heed at all. Xiaobai, however, still wore her soft, alluring smile, gazing slowly about her, drawing countless looks—some lustful, some envious, some resentful.
Only little Hui on her shoulder looked this way and that, uninterested in the people, until at last his gaze fell on the stream nearby. He was greatly taken with the fish swimming there, watching them fixedly and grinning from time to time, his little body twitching as though he longed to leap into the water and play.
The Miao altar was built entirely of enormous blocks of stone, majestic and tall, bearing in itself a touch of the rough and the ancient. The old man climbed the mountain path to the altar. Before it lay a platform, paved flat with long rectangular slabs of stone, quite smooth and level. Beyond the platform stood the altar itself.
Two vast stone pillars rose high before the altar, and at a glance they must have stood a hundred feet tall. Not a single crack could be seen anywhere on them—they had been carved each from a single unbroken mass of rock. How the ancestors of the Miao had ever found stones so enormous, and then hauled them here and raised them before the altar, was beyond imagining.
Past these two great pillars stood the altar built of stone. The Miao altar of Qili Gorge had long been famed throughout the southern borderlands. Half of it was built of massive stone blocks; the other half was hewn directly from the mountain itself, hollowed out of the hard rock face.
The old man stepped inside, and at once the light around him dimmed. The air here seemed much colder than outside.