Chapter 251 — The Monster
The Sword Questions the Heavens · Page 2 of 5
Ming Li was now inside the passage, the hard rock walls trembling violently on either side. An ordinary man walking here would truly have feared that the walls might collapse and bury him alive. Yet no such worry could be seen on Ming Li's face at all. His figure only moved faster and faster, and in no time he had reached the far opening of the passage and dropped through. Looking up, directly ahead were the red rays now flickering wildly and a long platform wrapped in crimson shadow; from the far end of that platform came a faint but familiar roar.
Ming Li's face changed slightly. He recognized the roar at once—it was Xiao Hui's bellow after transforming. But what on earth was that thing within the red shadow, and what danger was it, that it could drive Xiao Hui to transform and fight for its life in such a desperate struggle?
He hesitated no longer. His body moved like lightning, hurtling into the dark-red glow as swift as wind and thunder. Behind him, Master Gui drifted slowly down from the opening as well; once he had steadied himself he did not move further, but first looked back. Behind where he now stood was the opening they had just come through, and on the other side a passage equally pitch-black—it was that other passage Master Gui was looking at.
He gazed at the dark passage for a while before slowly drawing back his eyes and lowering them to the astrolabe in his hand. After arriving here, the astrolabe's radiance had not diminished but grown more dazzling still; at the same time, within the halo of light, golden ancient script kept surfacing at the center of the astrolabe—rising into brilliance and slowly sinking again in the white glare. Most wondrous it was, as though straining with all its might to answer some summons.
Master Gui raised his head and looked ahead. The dark-red radiance flickered in disorder and fury, great surges of air rushing and swirling in every direction, and with the violent quaking of the earth and the trembling stone walls, all seemed to proclaim some enormous danger. Yet facing all this, his eyes only brimmed with amusement. He stepped forward, and into the dark-red glow he walked with a light, brisk gait.
Ming Li rushed into the dark-red radiance. Almost the instant the red light fell upon him, even his cultivation was struck by a sudden faint dizziness. Though he recovered in an instant, the scene before him still filled him with shock.
The vast blood pool, the shattered mountain walls, the bloody stench saturating the air—all these were within his expectations. But there in midair now loomed a human-shaped monster formed of countless wisps of crimson blood-qi, a hundred or more yards tall, all but filling the enormous cavern. At the far end of the platform, Xiao Hui, transformed into a giant ape, roared loudly without a trace of fear—but its bulk was far too small beside that giant. And most importantly, Xiao Hui now seemed utterly without power to fight back: as the blood-qi giant kept spewing huge blood-colored flames from its vast maw, the monkey could do nothing but keep dodging.
The frenzied blood-flames kept crashing down from midair, sweeping away everything in their path; wherever they passed, even the hardest rock melted. Xiao Hui might not be of mortal flesh, but it did not dare meet them head-on, and could only leap this way and that atop the platform, dodging through gaps so narrow they scarce allowed escape. Its gray fur was now covered in wounds—plainly it had already suffered a great deal, and was merely holding on by main force, lingering in a last gasp of endurance.