劍問蒼天 - 第256章 靈牌 - 翰墨軒

Daoist Cangyan was taken aback for a moment. "Then what will you... do now?"

Jin Pingyue looked utterly weary and said in a low voice, "I will be fine. A little rest and I will recover. How about this: you go on ahead and report to the Nether King; I will follow shortly."

Daoist Cangyan frowned, pondered a moment, then nodded. "That is the only way, then. Rest well yourself."

Jin Pingyue smiled weakly. "Thank you, Daoist."

Daoist Cangyan gave a grunt, turned, and walked on ahead. Jin Pingyue's sudden interruption had made him forget the unease he had felt moments before. Behind him, however, the several dozen Nether King Sect disciples seemed to fall into some small confusion—it appeared that though their bodies were no longer stiff, their minds were still far from sharp. Their red-glowing eyes swept this way and that, and in the end most of them followed Daoist Cangyan onward, leaving only two standing beside Jin Pingyue.

Jin Pingyue sat on the ground, coughing and gasping, and watched the great crowd escort Daoist Cangyan into that expanse of blood-red glow. After that, there was no sound at all.

Her head slowly drooped, and her breathing slowly grew rapid again—but the gaze she kept hidden downward suddenly became incomparably clear and bright. Daoist Cangyan did not know that, not long before, in that valley, behind the woods upstream of the brook, Jin Pingyue had seen the corpses of Nether King Sect disciples—and the manner of their deaths was something she would never forget.

Because she had seen it long ago, with her own eyes, in that great catastrophe of beast-demons that had swept across the world.

And now, the blood-red glimmer faintly showing in the eyes of these Nether King Sect disciples beside her was almost exactly like that of those maddened beast-demons of years past. Though she did not know why, and though these Nether King Sect disciples had not gone berserk as the beast-demons had, Jin Pingyue had already resolved in her heart that she must never enter that red glow.

Inside it was something terrible.

This was her intuition.

Jin Pingyue's gasping grew louder and louder, yet the two Nether King Sect disciples standing beside her seemed utterly indifferent, as though numb to all around them. But a moment later, a strange noise suddenly came from behind them—like a stone striking the ground. Jin Pingyue happened to be facing the direction of the sound, and her expression changed drastically. She stood up and cried out in alarm, "What—you came too?"

Both Nether King Sect disciples were startled. Seeing Jin Pingyue so astonished, they could not help turning to look—but when they turned, they saw only emptiness behind them. Nothing at all—not a shadow of a person, not even a shadow of a stone. It was as if they had seen a ghost. Utterly baffled, they turned back to question Jin Pingyue—but in turning, they found that Jin Pingyue, who had been standing behind them, had vanished as well, as though she had never appeared in this place at all, leaving only a stretch of empty ground.

The two Nether King Sect disciples were greatly alarmed and stared at each other. Then they began shouting—but the sounds they made were not like human voices at all; they were more like the roars of wild beasts. After circling twice on the spot, the two turned and charged into the red blood-radiance.

In the distance, Jin Pingyue slowly emerged from behind a large boulder. That escape had looked simple, but she had in truth spent every ounce of her cunning and cultivation on it. Only now did she slowly let out a breath—and only now did she realize that her brow was covered in cold sweat.