Chapter 239 — Hope
The Sword Questions the Heavens · Page 4 of 5
"You came back a step too late. Miss Xiao Bai came looking for you and only just left."
"If you hadn't come back, we—we truly didn't know whether we'd live to see you again..."
The jumbled, overlapping clamor of their voices startled even Ming Li, and he said in astonishment, "What are you saying?"
These past days the disciples of the Infernal King Sect had truly felt themselves plunged into a mountain of blades and a sea of fire, in unbearable torment—and worse, under such circumstances those who ordinarily took charge had vanished one and all. The Four Holy Envoys had once commanded great prestige, but Azure Dragon had gone to the southern frontier and then fallen silent, missing for a long while; Vermilion Bird had long since departed Mount Huqi; and the Infernal King himself, the very heart and mainstay of the Infernal King Sect, had adopted an utterly unexpected and bizarre attitude of total indifference. Within the sect all was chaos. Had the Demon Cult's rules not been so severe, and the disciples so in fear of punishment that they dared not flee, Mount Huqi might well have become a deserted mountain.
Ming Li had once held lofty station within the Infernal King Sect. Though he usually wore a cold face, he had never bullied or humiliated the ordinary disciples, and in secret they held this taciturn deputy sect master in considerable respect. Now, in a time of peril, to see Ming Li appear all at once was like charcoal offered in the snow, a straw to a drowning man—small wonder they who had been drowning in fear were beside themselves with joy.
Hearing the disciples around him vie with one another, each cutting in on the last, Ming Li lowered his head impassively, reached up, and gently touched his chest. Through the black cloth, the Universe Reincarnation Disc gave off a faint, warm breath.
"Enough!" he said coldly, all at once.
The disciples of the Infernal King Sect around him fell silent, stunned.
Ming Li silently pushed the disciples aside with his hand and walked toward the heart of the mountain. Behind him someone shouted loudly, "Deputy—Deputy Sect Master, don't tell us that even you, even you won't look after us anymore?"
Ming Li's body paused for a moment. Then his low, pent-up voice came slowly: "Ten years. I exhausted every power I had and still could not save Bi Li. I cannot even look at myself with respect—what ability have I to save anyone else..."
He strode on forward, and seen from behind he seemed to carry a certain desolation, wholly lacking the youthful vigor that ought to have been his at this moment. Behind him the Infernal King Sect disciples exchanged glances, every face ashen, despair surging in like a tide from all unknowable quarters, sweeping over them and burying them.
Ming Li entered the passage into the mountain's belly. He had taken no more than two steps when the monkey Xiao Hui, which had been lying on his shoulder all along, suddenly shuddered. With a shriek of "Zhi!" it scrambled upright on its hind legs, and at the same time a faint golden light glimmered in the three eyes on its face—it looked for all the world like a creature facing a great enemy.
Ming Li frowned, reached up, and lifted Xiao Hui down. "Xiao Hui, what is it?" he asked in a low voice.
Xiao Hui gave a few cries of "zhi zhi, zhi zhi," its manner oddly tense, and waved its arms to either side. Ming Li's gaze sharpened; he followed the direction of Xiao Hui's pointing finger, and the expression on his face gradually turned ice-cold.
Where Xiao Hui pointed, there on the once-hard stone wall, were many strange, deep, mysterious cracks.