Chapter 249 — Nine Tails
The Sword Questions the Heavens · Page 2 of 5
All around was still utterly deserted; even at the far end where the red light blazed, there was only flickering radiance and no unusual sound. Xiao Hui sniffed the air—the smell of blood here was so thick it seemed it could never disperse. Then the monkey's gaze suddenly froze, fixed on the mouth of the passage it had just come through. The stone wall, originally blue-grey, had somehow turned a dark red by the time it reached this place, and the damp water trickling slowly down the wall gleamed in the light a startling, vivid crimson—like fresh blood.
Drip. Drip. Falling slowly.
The golden light between Xiao Hui's brows gradually brightened. After gazing at those drops of blood for a long while, it slowly turned about and looked at the distant flickering red glow for some time. Then the monkey once more set its feet in motion and walked toward it.
The red glow flickered uncannily, as though alive, breathing softly, spreading slowly outward, until it swallowed the figure of the monkey advancing step by step into itself.
It was deep night now. Though day and night could not be clearly felt within the caves of Mount Huqi, outside the mountain the sky was sown with stars, their light glittering and scattering down upon the world as it had on countless nights past, illuminating here and there the dark, bare slopes of Mount Huqi.
Beneath the starlight a white figure suddenly drifted in from afar—light and ethereal, seeming to carry no weight at all, borne on the night wind of the wild hills like a falling leaf, settling slowly upon the summit of Mount Huqi. By the faint starlight the slender white figure turned: graceful brows, limpid eyes, skin of ice and snow, and a faint, inescapable enchantment lingering about her features that set the heart stirring. It was none other than the Nine-Tailed Celestial Fox, Xiao Bai.
Just now her delicate brows were lightly knit, and her face wore a rare gravity. She stood upon the summit of Mount Huqi as the night wind sighed around her; the land about was bare and bald, without a single tree to break the wind, so that her robes fluttered and danced, revealing all the more her full, alluring figure. Xiao Bai looked slowly about her. Mount Huqi today was rubble and gravel everywhere—not to speak of trees, there was not even a blade of grass.
Looking on this scene of desolation, who would believe that mere decades ago this had been a place of green hills and clear waters?
Others might not know it, but Xiao Bai did—for the region around Mount Huqi was the ancestral home and birthplace of the fox-demon clan, and she herself had grown up here. Every hill and stream, every tree and blade of grass here was unlike anywhere else to her.
Only, at some unknown time, all of it had vanished uncannily, leaving nothing but this stretch of barren waste before her.
Xiao Bai slowly crouched down and reached out a pale hand to scoop up a handful of earth from the ground—no, call it sand. The soil of Mount Huqi was cracked and split; only grit remained. The hard grains scattered across her tender palm. Xiao Bai studied the sand in her hand closely, strange lights flickering in her eyes, as though she would read something from those tiny grains.
After a moment she slowly closed her hand into a fist, then gently opened it downward. The sand slipped silently through her fingers, but midway down it was snatched away by the night wind from afar, glinting faintly in the starlight before vanishing into the dark distance of the night.
The sand here was no different from sand anywhere else.
Xiao Bai rose slowly and lifted her head to gaze at the stars strewn across the sky. Starlight spilled down upon her, like gentle hands stroking her body, comforting her.
Her brows knitted slightly; she sank into thought for a long while.