劍問蒼天 - 第233章 悲哀 - 翰墨軒

Yet the purpose of her visit was naturally not to admire this Miao statue of the Dog God. After a moment her attention centered upon the dog's head. How ancient an age this statue had come down from, none could say, but its maker had plainly been a master craftsman; the skill of the carving was beyond question, vivid to the life. More remarkable still, every hair upon that dog's head was rendered in fullest detail, with nothing vague or blurred—had the stone not been so obviously stone, one would almost have taken it for a living black hound with its jaws slightly parted.

And upon the head of the Dog God, the most striking feature was the pair of eyes. By their material they too seemed black stone, yet the two stones set within the sockets were wholly unlike those around them—purer, deeper. In the distance the fire blazed high, and its light was mirrored only in that pair of eyes; in a daze one felt they held a spirit, gazing silently back at Xiao Bai.

Xiao Bai's heart suddenly gave a jolt, and she stepped back. At once the pressure upon her whole body eased, and her senses cleared. Frowning slightly, she looked once more at the statue, gave a cold laugh, and said, "So there is even a restrictive spell here to beguile the mind." Then, thoughtful, she pondered a while, and a trace of confusion crept into her voice as she murmured, "But this is plainly a Daoist art of the Central Plains—how does it come to be here?"

She brooded silently for a moment, then gave a slight shake of her head and cast the idle thought aside; for the purpose that had brought her here, this was certainly not what she had come to investigate. She studied the statue anew, and at last her gaze settled once more upon that lifelike pair of eyes. She seemed to hesitate, but then reached out and pressed lightly upon those eyes, black and pure and deep.

Within the ancient cave a dull rumbling suddenly arose—not loud, yet it seemed to set the whole spacious cavern trembling. There before Xiao Bai the ancient Dog God statue slowly sank, descending into the earth amid that low resonance, until the greater part of its body was buried and only the dog's head remained above the ground.

Behind the statue appeared a stretch of smooth stone wall. Unlike the surrounding rock, it seemed shrouded in a faint black mist that blurred it from view. But this could no longer trouble Xiao Bai. A faint smile touched her lips; she stepped forward, raised her hand, and swept her sleeve. A light breeze at once rolled out from beneath her hand and passed across the stone wall, dispersing the black mist in an instant.

Then, out of the deep darkness of the wall, a single point of golden light suddenly surfaced. Moments later, another appeared; point after point of golden radiance, like a divine portent suddenly descending upon the mortal world, welled forth in a spring across the stone face, forming scene upon scene of wondrous pictures and characters—so bright that even Xiao Bai, standing some distance off, had her face faintly lit by the reflected gold.

Xiao Bai gazed at the mysterious patterns and writings that emerged one after another, rings of light revolving about them, her eyes flowing along line by line. Before her lay the final secret of the ancient shaman race, passed down through countless ages. Her gaze leapt and lingered, now fixed, now delighted; and at last she saw the image of a giant fire dragon roaring skyward, fierce and untamable.

Xiao Bai drew a deep breath, and a smile appeared at the corners of her mouth. Then she confirmed it once more, and half closed her eyes as if silently committing it all to memory, engraving those pictures and characters upon her heart.

When she opened her eyes again, that brimming, waterlike gaze swept across the stone wall, and she murmured to herself, "To think those fellows actually left such a trick behind. Could they have known the shaman race was doomed?"