劍問蒼天 - 第142章 劫數 - 翰墨軒

Once that patch of ground was tidied, he stuffed the stones haphazardly into the great pit Lin Jinghong had blasted open, barely filling it level. The old man seemed somewhat short of breath and weary; he stood resting a while, then slowly turned and walked back into the main hall of the Ancestral Master Shrine.

Within the shrine's great hall all was as quiet and dim as ever. Deep in the hall, before the countless spirit tablets of the ancestors, flames of candlelight flickered and burned in silence.

Only now there was, unexpectedly, one figure more, standing tall before those tablets.

The man wore a dark green Daoist robe, with the air of an immortal sage about him. It was none other than Daoist Daoyan, present head of the Canglan Sect.

Hearing footsteps, Daoist Daoyan turned and glanced toward the old man, but said nothing. He turned back to gaze at the ancestral tablets, then stepped forward, took three slender sticks of incense from the altar table before the tablets, lit them at the candle flame nearby, held them reverently and bowed three times, and set them in the censer.

"It has been some while since I came to offer incense," said Daoist Daoyan, his voice calm and unhurried, as though he were speaking to a very, very old friend. "I wonder whether the ancestral masters will hold it against me."

The old man behind him tottered forward, leaned his broom against the side, picked up a rag, and gently wiped the ash from the altar table. "You have made our Canglan Sect flourish and prosper," he said in a low voice. "The ancestral masters can scarcely be anything but glad—how could they hold anything against you?"

Daoist Daoyan smiled faintly, turned to look at him, and said abruptly, "You seem to have aged a little more."

The old man's movements paused for a moment; then he went on wiping the table, and without turning his head said, "A man whose very heart is dead will naturally age the faster."

Daoist Daoyan gazed at the old man in silence and said no more. The old man slowly and carefully finished wiping the altar table, set the rag aside, turned to face Daoist Daoyan, studied him a while, and then said suddenly, "You saw it all just now?"

Daoist Daoyan nodded silently and said with a sigh, "The boy's aptitude is indeed remarkable, but—" his voice seemed to rise a little "—I never imagined you would pass on 'Beheading Ghosts and Gods' to him."

The old man gave a cold huff. "The boy's character and aptitude are both good. That being so, why should I not pass it on? Must everyone hoard secrets close to the breast like you, and carry them into the coffin when they die?"

Daoist Daoyan's expression changed, as though anger stirred in him; yet somehow, before this old man, this leader revered by all the righteous cultivators of the world under heaven proved extraordinarily forbearing. Even at such sarcasm he only let his face change, then swallowed it down.

"By the way, there is one more thing I should tell you," said Daoist Daoyan evenly.

The old man lifted his head. "I am nothing but an old man in the flicker of a dying candle. What business is there for me?"

Daoist Daoyan said, "Today, a little later, Yun Yifeng, master of the Fenxia Valley, will lead his disciples here to pay homage at Canglan Mountain."

The old man's brows knitted abruptly. "Yun Yifeng?"

Daoist Daoyan smiled slightly. "You remember him, then?"

The old man gave a cold laugh, turned his head away, and his voice suddenly took on a certain meaning. "That man is a sly old fox, to be sure..."

The southern frontier, the Qili Dong mountain range.

Here stretched a rolling, unbroken chain of mountains, spreading out in all directions from the Qili Dong valley as its center. For ages these hills had been thickly forested, green and watered—but now they had utterly lost their former look.