劍問蒼天 - 第126章 巫妖 - 翰墨軒

The black robes of the man in black billowed in the night wind, yet his figure hung motionless in midair—just as his voice was unhurried: "His Eminence the Beast Sovereign has grown impatient with waiting."

Shangguan Lue said slowly, "Back then, I and my senior brother Yun Yifeng, before His Eminence the Beast Demon, said to his face..."

The man in black cut him off suddenly: "Those words your valley-master senior brother spoke—do you yourself believe them?"

Shangguan Lue fell silent.

The man in black smiled faintly. "Old friend, you and I each serve our own masters. The road ahead is perilous. Take good care of yourself!"

With that, he tucked the black staff into his breast, and his whole body retreated backward. In the blink of an eye he vanished into the darkness.

Shangguan Lue's eye twitched; his body stirred as though he would do something. But in the darkness across from him the two crimson fires suddenly blazed brighter, and the roars abruptly grew loud.

The voice of the man in black came from afar in the darkness: "Old friend, your cultivation is deep and far surpasses mine. But I have the foul dragon, and with the Black Staff and the Bone Jade besides, you cannot stop me. For the sake of our many years of friendship, let us spare each other some face!"

Shangguan Lue's figure halted abruptly. A moment later the two crimson fires too faded gradually into the darkness.

Between heaven and earth, only he remained, standing alone in that bleak, cold valley. After a long while came the long, drawn-out sound of his sigh.

The night grew deeper.

In Qili Tong, the land that had once been prosperous and fair was now drowned in a sea of fire; everywhere was the sound of weeping. The Great Shaman of the Miao, revered as a god, was gravely wounded, his life or death uncertain; Ahetai of the Li, on whom such hopes had rested, had suddenly vanished; and into Qili Tong had suddenly come many outsiders, among them a figure like a malevolent ghost.

In such circumstances neither Li nor Miao had the heart to fight. The Li gradually withdrew from Qili Tong, and the Miao had no mind to pursue them, scattering instead to aid the wounded in their homes, while countless eyes, full of hostility, watched the outsiders still in Qili Tong.

But those people paid no attention at all to the Miao around them. In their eyes at this moment there was only the red and blue light clashing in midair.

The outstanding young cultivators of the new generation, of the Orthodox and the Demonic paths of the Central Plains alike, in this strange valley in a foreign land—a place touched faintly with desolation—fought one another to the death.

Lu Xueling's Tianxuan blue light grew ever more brilliant, sweeping across earth and sky, shrieking as it came, as though at the mere flick of her white hand the heavens turned and the earth stirred, the wind howled fierce, and all ghosts fled before her—an unstoppable majesty.

Beneath her sword-light one could dimly glimpse that resolute, haggard face, without the least expression, and her strikes showed not the slightest mercy.

Sword after sword, the wind of them, the shrill keening through the air, covering heaven and earth, surging madly in from all directions and dying away again.

Ming Li laughed wildly, galloping and soaring through the rain of swords. The Blood-Devouring Pearl seemed almost sentient, its excited red radiance blazing ten thousandfold, like a malevolent ghost howling at the sky, clawing and fanging as it fought.

That sword like frost and snow, drifting down; someone uttered a long cry and rose against heaven.

Tianxuan devours blood,

Blood devours Tianxuan!

Behind that peerless, heaven-and-earth-shaking merciless artifact—whose eyes, and what manner of gaze, followed after?