Chapter 186 — Soul Gathering
The Sword Questions the Heavens · Page 3 of 6
The expression on Xiaowan's face shifted, now and again crossed by a look of struggle. After a long while, she suddenly raised her head. "Grandfather, his fate was not fixed by heaven."
Zhou Yixuan looked at her face, and his heart sank. He gave a dry laugh. "What?"
Xiaowan drew a long breath and said resolutely: "The Daoist's fate was fixed by himself. It was he who, heedless of all else, rushed here to save us—and so met his unfortunate end. Had he turned and gone his way, where in all this world could he not have found a place to live in peace?" The girl's face was somewhat pale, somewhat sorrowful, and she said in a low voice, "So it is that he died for us. Without him, we would long since be dead. How could we still be here discussing allotted years?"
She looked toward Zhou Yixuan, and he, for some reason, shifted his gaze away. "Grandfather, I will save him. However perilous this art, it cannot be more perilous than what he faced just now to save us—can it?"
She spoke with utter finality.
Zhou Yixuan knew her mind was made up and could not be changed, and so could only lift his head and sigh toward the sky. And the man in the darkness—at this moment both his eyes were fixed upon Xiaowan, gleaming, radiant with light.
Within the forest, it was now the deep of night, and the yin energy was at its height.
In the faint light, that uncanny art slowly unfolded.
The first drop of fresh blood welled from the cut opened on Xiaowan's fair arm and fell, slowly, beside the Wild Wolf Daoist. Then Xiaowan walked around the Wild Wolf Daoist, letting her own blood drip down beside him. Her wrist swayed slowly, and the falling blood upon the ground little by little formed a strange pattern.
In the dense forest, as the blood-red pattern gradually took shape, faint ghostly wails began to rise. Zhou Yixuan stood to one side watching, the corner of his eye twitching slightly. And the black-clad man, who had watched this scene from the shadows for so long, now suddenly knit his brows as well.
This scene—he seemed somehow to have seen it somewhere before!
The Great Sorcerer...
The man in black could not help it—his body gave a faint shudder!
The blood formation Xiaowan had now laid out was plainly somewhat similar to the one the Great Sorcerer had used that day on Mount Huqi when he saved Bili. But after Xiaowan had made her circuit and the formation took shape, the man in black could already see that her formation differed from the Great Sorcerer's in that day. Setting other things aside, the scale of the formation alone was far smaller. Perhaps both used blood as the medium, but Xiaowan, all alone, had cut her own vein for the blood, and so could naturally not be compared with the Great Sorcerer of that day.
Perhaps for this very reason, the array Xiaowan laid down was far simpler in its totemic patterns than what the Great Sorcerer had wrought that day. Yet even so, by the time she had completed a single circuit, Xiaowan was already swaying on her feet, her face ashen pale.
Zhou Yixuan said nothing, stepping forward to steady her. Weak as she was, Xiaowan turned and gave him a faint smile, then slowly lowered herself to sit cross-legged at the array's apex—three feet before the severed head of the Wild Wolf Daoist.
Deep within the gloomy forest, a spectral wail suddenly rose from nowhere. In an instant the whole wood rang with uncanny shrieks, and a yin aura came sweeping down like a blanket from the heavens. Gust after gust of cold, baleful wind blew in from all directions, setting the surrounding trees to swaying; behind every shadow of every branch, it seemed countless icy gazes were fixed upon this place.
Xiaowan's expression turned grave. Slowly she closed her eyes, pressed her pale hands together before her breast, and murmured a mysterious incantation under her breath. After a moment she spread her slender fingers upon her chest, then lowered them slowly and plunged them into the pattern of blood pooled before her.