劍問蒼天 - 第194章 足跡 - 翰墨軒

Once the others were settled, Li Xun and Zeng Shuyan walked a little ahead and drew near Lu Xueling as well. Lu Xueling frowned and stepped back. Li Xun's face darkened, but Zeng Shuyan, quick as ever, at once cut in to smooth things over: "Senior Brother Li, you've noticed it too, haven't you?"

Li Xun nodded, his gaze falling to the ground beneath the three of them. In the dense thicket of thorns, blurred but still discernible, were the faint prints of thorn branches broken and trodden underfoot.

"Someone passed through this forest before us—and not long ago, either," he said with certainty, and a worry he could not conceal surfaced on his face.

Zeng Shuyan considered this. "Could they be fellow disciples of yours, Senior Brother Li?"

Li Xun shook his head. "Impossible. Ours is the only company from Fenxia Valley to go deep into the Ten Thousand Wild Mountains. The finest of the valley's younger generation are mostly here. No one else would have come in."

Zeng Shuyan frowned. "Then it's strange. By what Valley Master Yun said that day, this news should never have leaked. Could another sect have learned of it and entered the Ten Thousand Wild Mountains as well?"

Li Xun hesitated, then shook his head anyway. "I don't think so. For one thing, the matter is indeed still secret—known only to our two sects." He coughed lightly and lowered his voice. "The Beast Sovereign is the true author of this calamity. If others were to shove us down the well and snatch the profit, then the blood our two sects shed on Canglan Mountain would have been—"

Zeng Shuyan reached out a hand, his face all smiles, and clapped Li Xun on the shoulder. "Senior Brother Li speaks my very mind—truly, great heroes think alike, ha, ha ha!"

As the two of them exchanged smiles, a cold snort suddenly came from beside them, and from Lu Xueling's lips at that. Both started and turned to look. Zeng Shuyan asked in a low voice, "Senior Sister Lu, what is it? Did we say something wrong?"

Lu Xueling gave him a cold glance, turned her head away, and sneered, "What a repulsive face!"

Zeng Shuyan was dumbstruck, unable for a moment to make out her meaning—whether she cursed him or Li Xun, or simply both. He turned to Li Xun, and the two stared at each other, both embarrassed, at a loss for what to say.

After a moment, Zeng Shuyan, being the thicker-skinned of the two after all, gave a hearty laugh, pretended he had heard nothing, and said to Li Xun, "Senior Brother Li, since the news has not leaked, and it isn't any other disciple of your Fenxia Valley, then for such traces to be here, I fear there's something very strange about this."

Li Xun frowned, clearly vexed that his thinking led nowhere, and was about to speak when Lu Xueling, who had just turned away in front, said coldly:

"The Beast Sovereign!"

Zeng Shuyan and Li Xun both started, astonishment on their faces. After a while Zeng Shuyan nodded slowly; though hesitant, he said, "What Senior Sister Lu says is rather fanciful, but on closer thought, it's actually quite possible."

Li Xun's expression, however, differed from Zeng Shuyan's. He seemed to want to speak and stopped, hesitated a while, then shook his head. "Never mind. Let's go on a while and see. Wild guessing here does no good."

With that he said to the two of them, "Rest a little yourselves. I'll go back and look in on the junior brothers."

Zeng Shuyan nodded. "As you please, Senior Brother Li."

Li Xun added a few more words of caution, then turned and walked back.

Once Li Xun was well away, Zeng Shuyan turned his head toward Lu Xueling's back and suddenly smiled. "Senior Sister Lu, were you cursing me just now?"

Lu Xueling gave a cold snort, neither admitting nor denying it; from the look of her, she leaned rather toward yes. Zeng Shuyan smiled bitterly, pondered a moment, then walked slowly to her side and lowered his voice. "Senior Sister Lu, there's something I must ask you."