劍問蒼天 - 第204章 斷劍 - 翰墨軒

Zhou Yixuan frowned. He had traveled far and wide and seen much, and few in the world could match his experience; naturally he had also perceived what was strange about this mysterious man. A thoughtful look gradually came into his eyes, and then, as if he had thought of something, he suddenly glanced again toward that ruined house.

In the cold night wind that house, abandoned these many years, stood alone, desolate and forlorn—truly without a single thing out of the ordinary. Yet the look with which Zhou Yixuan regarded it was most peculiar, and in it there was even a faint trace of anticipation.

The mysterious man was silent for a while. His voice was still as flat as ever, but in the gaze he turned toward the spot behind Zhou Yixuan there was now a measure of unexpected approval. "A fine natural gift," he said. "A pity it was spent on the petty arts of the ghost path."

Zhou Yixuan turned his eyes to him. "Honored sir, we meant no offense to you. We strayed into this place tonight by mistake and had no other purpose, and still less did we wish to come to blows with you. If there is nothing else, please, honored sir, let the three of us go."

The mysterious man slowly drew back his gaze and looked at Zhou Yixuan. With a cold laugh he said, "Strayed into this place by mistake—you say that lightly enough. Who knows but that you—"

He had spoken half the sentence when suddenly his body gave a slight shudder and the words broke off. Zhou Yixuan was jolted, and then he saw plainly that on the face shrouded in black, within the eye sockets, the two points of red light were slowly kindling again.

The ferocious aura rose once more, closing in formlessly, overawing all before it—greater now, if anything, than before.

Zhou Yixuan's face changed drastically. He sprang back a step, hauled the helpless Xiao Wan to her feet, and said urgently to the astonished Wild Wolf Daoist, "Quick—run, split up! Save whoever can be saved—"

The Wild Wolf Daoist seemed to understand something as well, but before he could open his mouth, the darkness ahead suddenly congealed and the yin winds howled up in full force. A vast shadow came sweeping down from the sky straight over them, enfolding all three completely, leaving no way out at all.

The Wild Wolf Daoist let out a great roar and flung himself forward, pinning Xiao Wan beneath him and shielding her with his own body against that mass of black shadow. Zhou Yixuan froze for a moment, the complex expressions on his old face shifting again and again—but in an instant, that overwhelmingly mighty darkness came down like the vault of heaven itself crashing to earth, a crushing weight that nothing could withstand, and with a thunderous boom it descended upon them, like ten thousand zhang of Mount Tai pressed down from above, and in another breath it would grind all three of them to powder.

Yet in that very instant—that flash of lightning, that razor's edge between life and death—a brilliant crimson light suddenly flared from within the abandoned house, as though someone had bellowed in fury in the heart of the darkness. The light swelled in an instant, like wrath long suppressed, and in the blink of an eye it pierced the dark and became a towering pillar of radiance, dazzling beyond measure, bursting out by main force from the depths of the darkness in that ruined house.

What followed was a thunderous roar that shook the air. The whole abandoned house was blasted apart in an instant by a vast surge of force, and countless clods of earth and shards of tile were sent hurtling skyward amid the deafening din. Crimson light blazed like a roaring fire, and a human figure, transformed into a giant dragon, tore across the dark void and came crashing down with the force of ten thousand thunderbolts, shooting straight toward that mysterious man.