Chapter 245 — Earthshaking
The Sword Questions the Heavens · Page 5 of 6
Ming Li frowned, his gaze drifting slowly over the ruined surroundings. After this violent battering, the stone chamber, already cracked before, was now scored and gashed beyond measure. And unlike the last time, it was not only the surrounding stone walls that had suffered grievous damage—this time even the floor beneath his feet had begun to show sizable fissures, and in places had been torn open into no small sinkholes.
If the Ice Stone Chamber had been wounded even to this degree, one could well imagine the devastation out in the passages and the places where the Nether King Sect disciples dwelled; the ceaseless groans drifting in from afar seemed to offer the best footnote to it.
Ming Li's gaze gradually sharpened. He went to a crack in the stone wall and studied it in silence, but intently; then, brows knit tight, he reached out a hand and ran it up and down over the rough fissure. Small chips of stone fell away at the passage of his palm, struck the ground, bounced a few times, and rolled into a corner. Ming Li slowly withdrew his arm, then did something curious—he raised his palm to his nose and sniffed lightly, as though checking for some foul odor.
His eyes grew sharper and brighter still.
This uncanny power had surfaced twice since his return to Mount Huqi, and both times it had happened to coincide with his use of the Qiankun Reincarnation Plate to heal Bi Li. To claim there was no connection at all was truly untenable. And since it bore upon the healing of Bi Li, the thing he prized above all, he could no longer stand apart from it.
Deep within the caverns, the Blood Pool.
The wild, strange force of the Four Spirits Blood Array had subsided. Though a thick stench of blood still hung over the Blood Pool, the halo radiating from the Coiling Dragon Cauldron no longer heaved with any great fluctuation.
Master Ghost stood alone upon the platform, gazing up at the Coiling Dragon Cauldron suspended in midair. Amid the flickering crimson radiance that filled the heavens, his eyes were fixed fast upon the white pillar of light at the brow of the demon face upon the ancient cauldron's body.
That white pillar—shaped like a keen blade of light—was unmistakably brighter now than when he had last seen it, and its diameter seemed to have thickened by a full turn. As one waxed the other waned: the demon face was all the more twisted, and the blood-red radiance that had once all but suffused it had been driven back into its lower half. Now, by the look of it, even that last trace of deep crimson was dimming, as though it could not hold much longer.
Yet watching this dire turn of events, Master Ghost's eyes held none of their former anxiety and urgency; rather, there was more of delight in them. After a long moment he gave a sudden low chuckle and murmured, "So it is. So it truly is connected to that Star Plate..."
He stirred and walked forward, halting only at the very edge of the platform. Then he leaned out and looked down at the Blood Pool below, where four enormous spirit beasts lay steeped in the blood, every one of them listless and spent—plainly their true essence and spiritual qi had been drained to the dregs by this uncanny Four Spirits Blood Array Master Ghost had laid down.
Above, around the Coiling Dragon Cauldron, spiritual qi was impossibly abundant, resolving into streaks of red splendor that circled the cauldron without cease; the cauldron itself glittered unendingly, as if answering that qi. Yet at the crucial juncture—the very throat of the thing—the blade of light upon the demon face cut the channel clean through, so that the surrounding qi could not pour into the Coiling Dragon Cauldron, and the blood array could not be completed.
Master Ghost took in all these anomalies, and behind the black gauze his eyes narrowed slightly, a brooding light surfacing in them. His hands were clasped, his fingers tapping unconsciously—plainly his mind was turning something over, weighing and calculating.