Chapter 183 — Hard to Cross
The Sword Questions the Heavens · Page 1 of 6
As on countless days before, the melodious morning bell rang out once more, echoing among the Sumeru Mountains, reverberating through the thin mist and mountain wind. It had passed through countless years and ages, and would go on echoing thus, day after day, in the days to come.
day after day, without end.
Standing in the morning light, Ming Li stood with his hands clasped behind his back, listening with his head tilted.
He closed his eyes slightly, as if to savor the bell's lingering, melodious reverberations. At this moment, Ming Li—somehow, though his features had not changed at all—gave off the impression of a different man entirely; in his bearing and manner there was, compared with the past, a touch more composure and a touch less of murderous fury.
Perhaps it was truly those Buddhist dharma arrays that had done their work?
This question arose in the minds of many among the monks of Fan Yin Temple after Ming Li awakened.
Two days earlier, after Ming Li had awakened again, Master Pu Cheng and the others had examined him carefully; there was nothing seriously wrong with his body, and even the slight concussion one might expect after such a heavy blow seemed absent from Ming Li. Glad as Master Pu Cheng was, to guard against any mishap he still asked Ming Li to stay a few more days at Fan Yin Temple, and Ming Li did not decline overmuch, but remained there.
In these days Ming Li was even more taciturn than usual, and toward a figure who had actually provoked Heaven's wrath and brought down heavenly punishment, most of the Fan Yin Temple monks kept their distance; only Master Pu Cheng, Fa Cheng, and a few others had no such scruples and came often to see him. Ming Li himself seemed not to notice the people and affairs around him, never stepping outside his door, save that each day at the hour when the morning bell and evening drum sounded, he would walk out into the small courtyard and listen quietly.
"Dong..."
The final toll of the bell, trailing its ceaseless aftertones, circled and lingered over Fan Yin Temple for a long while, and at last faded into silence. Only then did Ming Li slowly open his eyes.
Bathed in the morning wind of Fan Yin Temple, the breath within his body—beneath that quiet exterior—surged and swelled, as though the whole man might take flight. The monks of Fan Yin Temple would never know it, but Ming Li himself understood in his heart.
What had appeared unexpectedly there, within that Wordless Jade Wall, was none other than the legendary fourth scroll of the Heavenly Book, the scripture of the demon cult. Others might not understand it, but he was the only person in this world who had cultivated the first three scrolls of the Heavenly Book, and at a glance he had recognized it as the crucial fourth scroll he had dreamed of all his life on the path of cultivation.
The countless problems in his past cultivation that had seemed unshakable and insurmountable—at this moment he had grasped the key to them all. Before his eyes now lay almost a broad highway, an endless open road. He even had the feeling that if he walked this road, his progress would surely be smooth, and perhaps he might even glimpse realms he had once not dared to hope for.
Even when he looked upon old feelings and the people and affairs before him, he found himself with a sense of transcendence, as though he had attained a new realm and was looking back upon the past from on high.
Yet for some reason, in his heart, amid such excellent circumstances, there remained a faint, hidden sense of loss—though he could not say how to describe it—and that vague notion that something was not quite right clung always to his mind.
Ming Li stood there a long while; no one knew what he was thinking, and no one came in to disturb him. Until at last he turned abruptly and, for the first time in several days, walked out of that small courtyard.
When he left the courtyard, he did not look back once.