劍問蒼天 - 第134章 煞氣 - 翰墨軒

Ming Li glanced in the direction Xiao Hui had gone, unconcerned, and turned back intending to find a stone for himself to sit on. All the way to this day, the grave wound he had taken at Seven Li Cave, though severe, had not damaged sinew or bone, and it improved daily—only the wound on his right shoulder still ached faintly. He gently touched the wound on his right shoulder, and the image of Li Xun in the Burning Cloud Valley flashed before his eyes; he snorted coldly in his heart.

Yet a moment later, behind Li Xun there was another graceful figure, white-robed as snow...

Ming Li shook his head, lost in a daze, and just as he was pondering, Xiaobai's voice suddenly sounded at his side: "How is Huqi Mountain so barren? I've looked and looked—not so much as a blade of grass or a tree?"

Ming Li frowned. "It has been so ever since I came here."

Xiaobai stood beside him, silent a moment, then shook her head. "When I left this place long ago, Huqi Mountain was green from peak to foot, thick with grass and trees—nothing at all like this."

Ming Li shook his head. "Then I couldn't say."

Xiaobai sighed, turned away, and said no more.

Ming Li glanced at her, knowing that a thousand years ago she and the fox-spirit clan had lived and thrived here, and that she must harbor a peculiar attachment to Huqi Mountain; yet he did not know what to say, and in his present state of mind he did not wish to talk much anyway.

At the mere thought that Bili was within that range, and that perhaps by this time tomorrow she might be reborn—at that thought, Ming Li could not help but feel his blood race through his whole body, and he could think of nothing else.

The three rested a while; when the Great Shaman had recovered a little strength, Ming Li led the two of them onward. To say he led the way was in truth to speak only of the Great Shaman.

Xiaobai walked on alone ahead, her face calm, silent, yet she seemed to grow gradually familiar with the paths around them. At the first few forks she had asked Ming Li, or waited until he took the right path before following.

Later on, it seemed the memories of old had begun to wake within her, and naturally she became the guide instead, leading the others along the mountain paths toward Huqi Mountain.

The monkey Xiao Hui, back from the woods at some unknown hour, now clutched several wild fruits from who-knew-where, gnawing on them.

Slung behind Xiao Hui was a large wineskin—the very one stolen from the Miao folk of the Southern Frontier. There had originally been two; but drinking steadily along the road, the monkey's capacity had apparently grown, for over fifteen days it had drained a whole great skin of strong liquor and never once gotten drunk again.

Seeing the monkey forever dragging the wineskin about, Xiaobai found it a nuisance and sewed a strap onto the skin with cloth, so that Xiao Hui could carry it on its back. This only delighted the monkey further, and it spent its days running about with the wineskin on its back.

Thus three people and a monkey, to the sound of the monkey crunching wild fruit, silently pressed on, each nursing their own thoughts.

The sun sank westward and the light slowly dimmed; just at the very edge of dusk, they finally reached the foot of Huqi Mountain.

Almost at the same instant, both the Great Shaman and Xiaobai trembled. The Great Shaman, as though sensing something, glanced at Xiaobai beside him and said in a low voice, "You feel it too?"

Xiaobai's fine brows knit slightly. With the cultivation of a thousand-year spirit fox, her spiritual power and senses were naturally extraordinary, exceedingly keen. Almost the moment they reached the foot of Huqi Mountain, she had suddenly sensed that within this lofty peak, beneath this seemingly ordinary desolation, there faintly emanated a dense and violent baleful aura.