Chapter 125 — Heartbreak
劍問蒼天 · Page 4 of 6
With a sharp hiss, Facheng, Li Xun, and the others came down one after another, landing behind Lu Xueling—yet among them all, Shangguan Lue's figure was nowhere to be seen. They saw before them that devil-like Ming Li, his whole body drenched in blood, his face savage and cruel; all who had known him before were aghast. Li Xun bore it somewhat better, but a pain that could not be wiped away flitted through Facheng's eyes, and his body seemed to tremble as he softly intoned the name of Buddha.
"You—you..." The expression on Lu Xueling's face could no longer hold to her accustomed coldness; there was only grief and fury. At this moment she could not even speak.
Li Xun stood beside her, taking in her expression. What a clever man he was—he would never imagine that Lu Xueling had lost her composure merely out of indignation.
"Zhang Qingyue!" Li Xun shouted, his expression solemn and furious. "These southern border folk have never had any dealings with the Central Plains. What grudge do you bear them, that you should take such pleasure in killing?"
Ming Li and Lu Xueling both shuddered almost at the same instant.
Ming Li, shrouded in the red light of the Blood-Devouring Bead, slowly looked around. The Miao and Li had fought long and bitterly; the two peoples were already enemies to the death, and this was a battle to the last breath, merciless in every stroke. Corpses lay strewn across the ground in every direction, most too horrible to look upon, their deaths cruel beyond words. Worse still, the great crowd of Miao women and children who had just been driven from their hiding place by the Li warriors now lay dead and wounded in heaps.
The hatred between Li and Miao was irreconcilable; they spared not even women and children. The scenes of carnage, together with the blazing flames all around, made a hell on earth.
And Ming Li, drowned in blood—at this moment, in whose eyes was he anything but the murderer who had caused it all?
He stood like a blood-devouring demon king, fierce and cruel, upon this slaughterhouse ground.
Greedy and wicked, violent and mad!
And perhaps, buried deep, a trace of despair.
The mild, harmonious yang energy that came too late, as though pinned motionless by the demonic power of the Blood-Devouring Bead, only now began to seep out drop by drop, offsetting little by little the chill that had coiled around his heart.
But he suddenly gave a bitter laugh. Perhaps he would rather never wake.
Through the blazing flames, the grieving gaze of the woman in white pierced through every barrier in the world—straight into whose heart?
She slowly raised the sword in her hand; Tianxuan's radiance was like autumn water.
"Zhang, Xiao, Fan..."
A faint, faint voice came low from beyond the blazing flames. She had bitten her lip; she had shed tears.
Tears mingled with drops of blood fell softly upon the blade of Tianxuan, quietly, sliding down; by the time they touched the ground, they had become water and blood.
Who was it, that broke whose heart...
"Ah!"
Ming Li howled to the heavens. In the sea of blood and fire, his heart was clear, yet the man was mad.
Break it off! Break it off!
Let the past be severed clean with a single stroke!
He grinned savagely in the firelight, cloaking his pain in madness. The Blood-devouring Bead surged with boundless crimson radiance, accompanying its master as he charged toward the side of righteousness!
Someone, far away, sighed softly—but in the end, no one could hear it.
That figure of despair seemed faintly as it had once been. The righteous cultivators shouted in fury and braced themselves, and it was that figure which was mirrored in the bright eyes of Lu Xueling.
Her lips trembled slightly, and she murmured low to herself—that man charging forward in his madness...
"Zhang Qingyue..." In a voice no one could hear, quietly, for the third time, she called his name.