Chapter 93 — Miasma

The wind swept across the Dead Marsh.

Beneath his feet the water grasses swayed, ripples spreading across the water. As far as the eye could see, the expanse had no end; though there was no trace of human life or smoke from hearths, it possessed a beauty all its own.

Shihun gave off a faint dark-blue glow, its light turning and flowing as it hovered in midair. Ming Li stood upon it, hands clasped behind his back, gazing ahead.

This day was one of the rare fine days in the Dead Marsh. Warm sunlight shone down, and the former gloom had largely dispersed. Yet a few dozen zhang ahead of him lay a dense, gray, fog-like expanse of immense miasma, billowing up in vast surges, stretching left and right, so high its top could not be seen, writhing and churning against itself as though it had no boundary at all.

This was the inner marsh of the Dead Marsh—one of the most perilous places in the world!

The monkey perched on his shoulder, Xiao Hui, gave a low, uneasy cry.

Ming Li reached up and patted Xiao Hui gently. The monkey quieted, though its bright, quick eyes remained fixed on the miasma ahead. Just then a whistle suddenly sounded behind him, and a streak of light came flying like lightning.

Ming Li shifted, and Shihun, as though reading his mind, slowly turned about.

The light halted abruptly before him. It bore a young man riding the air, with sword-like brows slanting toward his temples and a gaze bright and sharp. In a flash he was before Ming Li and bowed. "Deputy Sect Master, everything has been arranged."

Ming Li did not ask what everything referred to; presumably he already knew full well. He nodded slightly. "Good. Then I leave this place to you." Having said so, he seemed to recall something more. "Yan Hui."

The man called Yan Hui said, "What is it?"

Ming Li glanced behind him. "You have always been calm, and I trust you. But the Slaughtering Monk has a violent temper and kills too readily. With every faction gathered here in the Dead Marsh, he must not act rashly. Keep him well in hand."

Yan Hui smiled faintly. "Rest assured, Deputy Sect Master. Slaughtering Monk may look down on everyone, but he has never dared defy your orders, and I will restrain him as well."

Ming Li looked at him and nodded, about to turn away, when Yan Hui suddenly said, "Deputy Sect Master, there is one more matter."

Ming Li regarded him. Yan Hui pondered a moment, then urged his artifact forward to draw near Ming Li and lowered his voice. "A message just came from the main hall. Two of the Four Holy Envoys—the elders Azure Dragon and Vermilion Bird—set out toward the Dead Marsh several days ago."

Ming Li's expression shifted slightly, but he at once composed himself. After a moment of silence he said, "There is no need to spread this about. You will carry on as usual and wait quietly to see how matters unfold."

Yan Hui bowed his head. "Yes."

With that he bowed to Ming Li and turned to go.

Ming Li watched Yan Hui's figure disappear, then slowly turned back, his gaze falling once more upon the vast miasma before him. After a long while he said suddenly, "Xiao Hui, let us go."

Xiao Hui, crouched on his shoulder, raised a paw and scratched its head, chittering twice.

Ming Li smiled faintly. Shihun's light flared, and man and monkey dissolved into the dark-blue radiance, soaring forward into that immense wall of miasma.

The instant they entered, all light around them vanished in a heartbeat. The bright sky of moments before was gone without a trace; only a gray, boundless haze of miasma remained on every side, so thick that the eye could not see even half a zhang.

Almost at the very moment Ming Li entered the miasma, Shihun's dark-blue radiance blazed up, surging from beneath and rising to form a ring of light that shielded Ming Li and Xiao Hui securely. The miasma churned endlessly around them but could not encroach upon that ring by so much as a hair.

Looking outward from within, as Ming Li flew through the air, the surrounding miasma parted like cloud and mist before him and closed again behind, and above his head and beneath his feet there was nothing but that gray haze.

On he flew, and flew a long while, and Ming Li's expression gradually grew grave. This wall of deadly, poisonous miasma was the clearest boundary between the inner marsh and the outer marsh of the Dead Marsh. The outer marsh, though riddled everywhere with bottomless pits, was not greatly dangerous if one proceeded with care. But here in the inner marsh, to say nothing of the rest, the miasma alone was deadly beyond measure. Should an ordinary mortal encounter it—never mind drawing a breath of it, even holding one's breath—the merest touch of that poison against the skin would let it invade within moments, strike the heart, and kill.

Ming Li's cultivation was now greatly accomplished, far beyond the little disciple he had once been on Mount Canglan, yet even so he dared not treat such poison lightly. Everywhere in the Dead Marsh lurked deadly peril, and the inner marsh above all was a savage, primeval land, its dangers impossible to fathom. He therefore redoubled his caution and advanced warily.

Yet this wall of miasma proved unbelievably thick. After flying a while longer he was still within it, surrounded by ever denser gray. Ming Li was secretly alarmed. By his own reckoning he had by now flown at least a hundred zhang. In this savage, cursed land the miasma had never dispersed since ancient times; even if some rare treasure were to appear within it, surely no one in ten thousand years would ever know, let alone obtain it.

Such were his thoughts, yet Shihun's radiance only grew brighter, and the gray miasma around him churned without cease, as though its speed too were faintly quickening.

Suddenly Ming Li's heart gave a leap. Deep in the miasma ahead, a blue light flashed—and vanished in an instant. The color was pale, yet somehow it struck him as faintly familiar.

Almost at that same moment the miasma, which had been churning quietly, abruptly sped up, suddenly boiling like water in a cauldron.

Above and below, to left and right, the gray miasma began to whirl madly. Countless vortices of miasma, great and small, burst into being ahead of him, each with a faint drawing force that came at Ming Li from every direction. Xiao Hui on his shoulder did not dare stir, giving soft little cries and clutching tightly at Ming Li's clothes.

Ming Li's face was like still water, but his brows had drawn deeply together. Suddenly he gave a cold snort, tensed his whole body, and from within Shihun's blue radiance a golden light burst forth, shining in tandem with the blue and forcing the surrounding miasma back several more paces. At the same instant Shihun shot into the air as though it wholly disregarded the danger ahead, driving straight into the largest of the miasma vortices before him.

The instant his figure entered that immense vortex, Ming Li felt the pulling force around him surge. A howling gale rushed in from every direction, all of it deadly poisonous miasma. Ming Li's face went pale; the raw force of nature tore him up bodily and sent him flying straight into the sky.

In an instant the shrill wind whistled without pause and the clouds of vapor seethed like a furious wind god roaring. Suspended in midair, Ming Li drew a deep breath, then suddenly thrust out both hands—the left forming a seal, the right a dharma sign—and upon his face golden and blue energies rose together, flickering again and again before swiftly merging into one. Had an expert of the righteous path been present, he would surely have been struck dumb with amazement.

The "Supreme Ultimate Profound Purity Way" of the Canglan Sect and the "Great Brahma Prajna" of the Brahma Sound Temple had, in this young man, been perfectly fused into one!