劍問蒼天 - 第189章 鮮血 - 翰墨軒

Ming Li's brow furrowed; he opened his mouth as if to speak, then stopped. He did not look again at the peerless beauty beside him, but fixed his attention on the carvings. Yet somehow, another thought rose suddenly in his heart:

That day, Xiaobai had said she would go to the southern frontier to seek the method of the 'Eight Fierce Xuanhuo Formation,' but no word of her had come for so long—how was she now? And in all the world, this seemed the only place with a clue to the Eight Fierce Xuanhuo Formation, yet Xiaobai was plainly not here. Then where could she be now?

Was she well…

This faint, elusive thought flickered through Ming Li's mind from time to time over the days that followed.

Only it seemed the destruction wrought by that skyward eruption of magma that day had been greater than Ming Li had expected. Though the fierce god carvings on the ground still looked more or less intact, they had plainly lost the spiritual force that once dwelt within them—or rather, that fierce, baleful energy of mighty power. What remained now was nothing but a set of stiff, lifeless stone images.

Ming Li and Jin Pingyue sat together in the Xuanhuo Altar, secretly pondering and probing, for seven full days, and still gained nothing.

From time to time, disciples of Fenxia Valley came in to inspect the place; several times, even Shangguan Lue came personally with men on routine patrol. But Ming Li as he was now—and Jin Pingyue too—had both advanced greatly in cultivation. Hiding themselves in the dark above the altar, they evaded these searches with ease.

Only they could never grasp the essentials of the formation, and that was truly a headache.

One day, the two had again sat facing those rigid, lifeless carvings for a whole morning, when suddenly Jin Pingyue stretched lazily, her slender waist seeming like a serpent's body of some demoness, carrying a charm that tugged at the soul. Yet the only man beside her still stared fixedly at the carvings on the ground, deep in bitter thought, not noticing in the least Jin Pingyue's performance of her graceful figure.

Jin Pingyue gave a soft humph, shot Ming Li a glare, and a trace of complicated feeling seemed to flit through her eyes—but only for an instant. A moment later, she sighed and said, "Have you seen anything?"

Ming Li stirred, and only then slowly came back to himself. He turned and glanced at Jin Pingyue, shook his head, and said, "And you?"

Jin Pingyue gave a bitter smile and did not answer, but Ming Li already understood.

Jin Pingyue frowned and said, "We have been staring at these confounded things for seven days now. In these seven days we have done all we could, yet not only can we not activate this formation—we cannot even stir a single carving. What in the world is going on?"

Ming Li pondered a moment, raised his head to glance at the darkness above, and said, "That day, when I came here to rescue someone, I triggered the mechanism in this hall, and the Eight Fierce Xuanhuo Formation was instantly set off. But…"

His gaze flicked toward the center of the hall, and his tone carried something strange as he said, "But that mechanism is gone now."

Jin Pingyue followed his gaze and indeed saw, at the center of the hall, a small raised stone platform—but the stone there was scorched black, fused into an ugly lump. It looked nothing like any cunningly wrought mechanism.

In truth, the moment Ming Li had arrived here and seen this scene, he knew that the strange stone mechanism he had seen on his first visit had already been destroyed. And the various violent, baleful energies that had once surged and resonated in his heart when he saw those fierce god carvings on the ground last time—this time he could not sense them in the least.

This stretch of carvings, once so terrible, now looked like nothing but dead, inert stone.