Chapter 204 — The Broken Sword
The Sword Questions the Heavens · Page 2 of 6
Amid the yin winds that filled the courtyard, the mysterious man's garments flapped and whistled, but he seemed wholly untouched by the bewitchment of these yin spirits and ghosts. Those eyes hidden behind the black qi narrowed slightly, and suddenly he said in a cold voice: "The art of the ghost path!"
Xiao Wan's brows were faintly drawn, and her originally lovely face now looked somewhat pale—whether because she was unaccustomed to casting such an art for the first time, or because a girl is naturally averse to and fearful of things like ghosts and yin spirits. But be that as it may, this ghost-path spell, cast by her for the first time and catalyzed by the ghost-path treasure, the blood-jade bone shards, had already taken shape. A layer of deep black qi gradually gathered around Xiao Wan's body, and as her arms turned, it coalesced completely into a gigantic black skull that was utterly at odds with her appearance—a sight strange beyond measure.
The seven blood-jade bone shards rose slowly into the air as well and set themselves into the two eye sockets of the skull formed of black qi. In an instant the skull seemed to come to life: red light blazed from its eyes, its jaws opened wide, and as the yin winds rose in a great gust, a peal like thunder rolled far out into the distance. A bolt of black qi, swift as an arrow, shot from its mouth and flew at the mysterious man.
The sound of it tearing the air was like the shriek of a whistling arrow, and in the blink of an eye it reached the mysterious man. He turned his body—seemingly slowly, yet in that split second he evaded the vicious ghost-qi arrow, which tore on past, the reverberation of its passage still ringing in their ears.
But before he could catch his breath, the black skull's mouth spat out one vicious black ghost arrow after another, shrieking through the air in wave upon wave straight at the mysterious figure, each from a slightly different direction—high and low, left and right—leaving him no room at all.
Behind Xiao Wan, Zhou Yixuan and the Wild Wolf Daoist both changed countenance—though not in the same way. The Wild Wolf Daoist was startled and delighted, never having imagined Xiao Wan's arts could be so formidable; but Zhou Yixuan's expression was far more complicated, with little joy in it and far more worry and misgiving.
It was at that very moment that Zhou Yixuan's face suddenly twitched. He stepped back and looked off toward another part of the courtyard—not where Xiao Wan and the mysterious man were battling, but rather a place no one had noticed, the ruined house of the mortuary that they had just searched.
The shadows lay deep there, yet compared with the ghostly gloom that filled the courtyard at present, that place seemed almost the better of the two. A moment ago Zhou Yixuan and the Wild Wolf Daoist had peered inside from the doorway; it had long since fallen into ruin, empty of everything but broken tiles and rubble—and a few dilapidated coffins that made one uncomfortable to look at.
Yet it was precisely this that suddenly drew Zhou Yixuan's attention, so much so that for a moment he did not even notice Xiao Wan, still locked in fierce combat.
In that ruined house, what was it that had appeared?
Zhou Yixuan stared at it without blinking.
In the courtyard, Xiao Wan's ghost-path art was a fearsome sight, and for a time it completely dominated the mysterious figure on the field of battle. The black skull she had summoned kept loosing vicious ghost arrows, one after another shrieking through the air; though not one struck the mysterious man, they forced him to dodge without pause. This grim and eerie power of the ghost path seemed to be something even a mysterious man of unfathomable cultivation was unwilling to meet head-on.