Chapter 254 — Parting by Death
The Sword Questions the Heavens · Page 4 of 6
As though every last ounce of strength had been abruptly drained from him, his body went limp. The world spun and reeled; the whole of creation seemed to be turning and trembling, and that single cry echoed desperately, over and over, in his mind.
Bi Li...
Ming Li stood up in a daze and slowly walked into the stone chamber. Under the impact of countless violent quakes, this Cold Ice Stone Chamber had long since been left in ruins; shattered rock and stone lay strewn across the floor, the walls on every side were split with countless cracks great and small, and even the floor, once kept so clean, had long since gathered a thick layer of dust.
Even around the Cold Ice Stone Platform, now utterly bare, a dozen or so fallen rocks of every size lay scattered, several of them smashed directly upon the platform itself. All this disorder before his eyes seemed to turn into sharp knives, stabbing savagely at Ming Li's heart. He staggered on, gasping for breath, his body tottering on the verge of collapse.
Suddenly, out of the corner of his eye, his gaze caught on something somewhere in the chamber and froze. A moment later his body began to tremble. That was the most badly damaged corner of the Cold Ice Stone Chamber, where the fallen rocks had piled into a mound half a man high—and beneath that pile, from under one great stone, a corner of green garment showed.
Green—a corner of a garment...
In an instant he lunged forward like a madman, flung himself down before the heap of stones, shoved the rocks aside one after another, clawing and digging with all his might. The jagged edges of the stones cut his palms until they ran with blood, yet he seemed not to feel it at all.
At last he heaved aside the final and largest boulder—and then he froze.
Slowly, he crouched down...
Before him lay a corner of green garment.
Only a corner of green garment—nothing more.
His gaze drifted slowly to the ground around that scrap of cloth. On the dust-covered floor there had appeared, strangely, a great many footprints, some large and some small—and Ming Li knew with absolute clarity that such things ought never to have been here.
In the Cold Ice Stone Chamber, of all the Ming Wang Sect, practically only he and the Ming Wang could come; the few others who might, such as Master Gui, were either with him or else not upon Fox Qi Mountain at this moment.
Then in such chaos, when every soul was scrambling to flee for their lives, why would anyone have slipped secretly into this place?
The next moment Ming Li's face went abruptly pale. Almost instinctively, he had already arrived at the answer: the Hehuan Bell.
Among the demon cult, everyone knew the Hehuan Bell for a peerless and rare demon-cult treasure, one that might even be mentioned in the same breath as the Blood-Devouring Orb of Old Man Blackheart in the days of the cult's full glory. In the grip of such greed—could it be...
Ming Li did not go on thinking. His mind had gone blank in an instant.
Deep in his heart, something quietly snapped, shattered—that last slender prop upholding the sea of his spirit, fine as a gossamer thread, yet bearing a weight of a thousand jun.
There was nothing left...
At last, nothing at all was left...
As in a dream, a green figure suddenly rose before his mind's eye, that brimming smile forever so lovely and so gentle. The air around him grew colder and colder, the chill pressing in from every side; only that figure was warm, and that smile the last warmth in his heart. Yet slowly the figure dimmed, faded away, and even the warmth that lingered began to ebb, little by little, and was gone...
A deathly, silent cold, like some chill tide from a place in memory he could not name, surged over him and swallowed him whole.
Bi Li...
The last name his heart cried out.
The next moment he lost consciousness, his whole body crashing heavily to the ground and striking up a puff of dust.