Chapter 153 — Night Drinking
The Sword Questions the Heavens · Page 1 of 5
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Updated: 2008-07-31
Mount Huqi, the Cold Ice Stone Chamber.
Ming Li gazed silently at Bi Li, who lay peacefully upon the cold ice stone platform. In the curling white wisps of smoke, the sleeping woman seemed to wear forever the faintest trace of a smile at the corner of her lips. Did she still have any sense of things now? Did she still know that someone kept watch at her side?
Or was it that in her heart she had never regretted anything, and so slept thus in peace?
To these questions Ming Li had asked himself countless times, and he had never known the answers, nor dared to think them through; yet each time he dwelled on them, he seemed to suffer one more turn of torment. But his body was growing steadily worse. Though by practicing the true arts of the three volumes of the Heavenly Book he had in these days gradually come to grasp that the true arts of Buddhism, Daoism, and the Demonic Path seemed also to have a place where they merged into one, and his cultivation advanced by the day, the demonic power of the Blood-devouring Bead seemed to wander through his body every day like a specter that would not be shaken off, waiting for the final moment to perish together with him.
That chill sensation—Ming Li had long since grown so familiar with it that he could not be more so. From his youth down to this very moment, it had kept him company all along, this sensation! Even in death, he would die feeling that same chill, surely!
He gave a bitter smile at the thought, cast one last look at Bi Li—this was the third day he had kept watch over her alone.
"Rest well for a while. I will be back to see you very soon." Ming Li spoke softly. "Do not be afraid. Your father and I are only leaving for a time. Even if I die, I will come back to look at you once more before the end."
He gazed at Bi Li, smiled faintly, then turned and walked out of the Cold Ice Stone Chamber. The thin smoke drifted behind him like gossamer.
"Boom!"
The heavy stone door slowly closed behind him, and Xiao Hui, who had long been waiting nearby, shot with a swish onto his shoulder. Ming Li reached out and gently stroked Xiao Hui's head, nodded, and walked all the way outward. Along the way he reached to the walls and corners, or turned down many winding passages to work the mechanisms; as he went, every layer of the traps in the main hall of the Nether King Sect within Mount Huqi was set in motion, and the heavy stone doors alone dropped more than ten times.
Within the belly of Mount Huqi, the sound of mechanisms stirring was now everywhere, yet the only human figure was Ming Li himself; all the others had gone three days earlier, following the Nether King to the Savage Holy Hall. Mount Huqi now was cold and desolate. As Ming Li walked out from the mountain's belly and the sunlight fell upon him, bringing a thread of warmth, he could not help but shudder.
"Rumble, rumble..." The last stone door slowly closed, sealing off that vast mountain belly, and mingled with it came a faint "click-clack"—Ming Li heard it and knew it for the sound of the mechanisms locking back into place. Should anyone come hereafter not knowing how to open the traps here, and think to force their way in from outside, facing these tens of thousands of catties of giant rock, they would need cultivation rivaling that of immortals.
Warm sunlight fell upon him. Xiao Hui, sprawled on Ming Li's shoulder, stretched both arms and yawned, still yawning aloud. Ming Li turned to glance at it and smiled slightly. "What is it? You look bored half to sleep."
Xiao Hui chirped twice, rolled its eyes in its monkey face, then waved its hands and feet, pointing steadily out beyond the mountain. Ming Li laughed. "So you are bored. Hmm, now that I think of it, this place is all wilderness, with scarcely a few trees—no wonder you find it hard going."