Chapter 163 — Fierce Battle

Pu Zhao's gaze finally wavered. Slowly he looked toward that baleful object. At the tip of the Soul-Devourer, the "Blood-Devouring Bead" now blazed with light, and the faint, dark red veins threading through the bead's body seemed, in turn, to be gazing back at him with a cold, mocking smile.

A monstrous stench of blood suddenly appeared out of nowhere from the figure of Ming Li ahead, then came surging over like mountains and seas. As though swept by a gale, Pu Zhao's monk's robes flapped wildly. He stood staring blankly as that hideous red glow, fraught with despair, charged at him like a cornered beast.

He made no move to evade at all. He stood there without stirring an inch. The next moment, that desperate, ferocious red light passed through his body, slowly came to a halt behind him, and coalesced into the figure of Ming Li.

The aged monk slowly lowered his head and took a slow look at his own body. Then, as though with a sigh, his head drooped, and he toppled slowly to one side. Behind him, Ming Li whirled around and stared at Pu Zhao, the expression on his face shifting violently like a raging storm. Gradually, the ferocious look faded, and grief welled up once more. The red glow in his eyes dimmed. He stared woodenly at that frame that seemed slowly to be losing its life, and in an instant let out a heart-rending, rending howl!

"Ah!..."

The black demon staff fell to the ground. He seemed to lose all his strength in that instant. Thunder rumbled across the sky, lightning flashed and thunder roared, and in the sighing wind and rain, a chill settled over his heart.

He staggered toward Pu Zhao, the ground beneath his feet seeming to turn to mire, every step draining the last of his strength. Again and again he fell, and again and again he crawled back up, using every ounce of his power to crawl toward that gaunt, withered body. At last, he struggled to Pu Zhao's side.

In one motion, he clutched that withered hand tightly. Over these ten-odd years, this had been the dearest palm of all—and now, holding it in his own, his eyes were blurred with tears.

"Master... Master..."

He choked, crying out in a low voice, tears streaming down his face, a note of hysteria in it: "Why, why—why is it like this?"

With great effort, Pu Zhao turned his head and looked at this youth who seemed once more to have become the helpless boy of years ago. He did not answer. His face was so pale, and his lips stirred faintly—but in the end, he said nothing more.

The withered hand slowly rose, reaching toward the young man's face before him. That hand trembled ceaselessly in the wind and rain, as though the wind's blade and the rain's arrows all fell upon it. Zhang Qingyue stopped weeping, lifted his head, and looked at him.

Their gazes met in the wind and rain, held, congealed, came to a standstill, grew strange, grew distant...

Pu Zhao's lips moved, as though he wished to say something, but he did not. Then his hand fell gently, without the slightest sound.

Life, it seemed, departed in an instant!

The youth was struck dumb, his whole body rigid as though turned to stone. Slowly he lowered his head and looked at his own two hands: "I killed him, I killed him..."

As though in keeping with the eerie atmosphere all around, strange changes began to come over him as well. One moment his face bore a hideous, ferocious expression, transformed into Ming Li; the next he seemed wracked with unbearable pain, as though he had become once more that simple, honest Qingyun disciple, Zhang Qingyue. There beside Pu Zhao's corpse, he writhed in agony.

Above, beneath the vault of heaven, the wind and rain sighed on and on, a scene of utter desolation!

********

The moment Xiao Yichen and the company of elite disciples joined the fray, the situation steadied at once. Moreover, these disciples clearly shared an unspoken understanding: in groups of three or five, they flew straight to the hardest-pressed, most critical points of the battlefield. The gaps the beast-demons had forced open were abruptly reinforced by these fresh troops, and in an instant the breach was driven back, the beast-demons that had poured in cut down almost to the last. The whole curtain of light turned firmer and more dazzling still—impregnable.

Amid the crowd, the most dazzling sight of all was at the very center of the light curtain: Lu Xueling, the Heaven's Axis Divine Sword in hand, standing proud upon the clouds like a fairy of the nine heavens. Within the myriad rays of sunset glow, the Heaven's Axis seemed to have become a blade of bloody slaughter—wherever it passed, blood rained down and shattered bones piled up, until a small mountain of them had gathered at her feet.

As time wore on, not only did those ferocious beast-demons begin to regard this cold, aloof woman—whose white robes had turned pink with blood—with a measure of dread, even the righteous cultivators behind Lu Xueling were stirred to alarm. On this battlefield where life and death were fought for, Lu Xueling seemed to regard life and death as nothing at all, charging back and forth, time and again plunging into the midst of the beast-demons in the narrowest of windows, raising gust after gust of bloody wind and rain.

Yet on her face there was not the slightest expression—no fear, no pain, no horror, no disgust. Even when the foul, stinking blood of the beasts splashed onto her, who had always loved cleanliness, Lu Xueling gave no reaction at all. She merely fought on, pouring out all her strength. In the bloody wind and rain, her cold yet exquisitely beautiful face seemed all the more striking, filling one with sudden dread, yet forbidding any approach.

An hour slipped quietly by. The black torrent pressed ever against that curtain of light, but in the end it did not break through. Across the Cloud Sea Plaza, once like a realm of immortals, lay lifeless bodies and rivers of blood and filth. In the dark sky, the low clouds hovered heavily, gazing down coldly upon it all.

Suddenly, from deep within the ranks of the beast-demons, from some unknown place, a strange sound arose—like a horn, and yet like a howl, mournful and desolate, as though on a night of the full moon a lone wolf bayed at the moon. At the sound, the torrent of beast-demons, which had been surging forward without regard for death, suddenly halted. Their attack ceased, and slowly they began to fall back, opening a distance between themselves and the righteous path.

On the righteous side, as the fighting paused, the curtain of light dimmed as well—and what rushed in to fill the Cloud Sea in its place was the sound of countless people gasping hoarsely for breath.

Every person seemed stained with blood. A bleak, eerie crimson had dyed the whole Cloud Sea. On the open ground at the center, where the two sides had drawn apart, corpses lay everywhere—beast-demons and human disciples alike.

Most of the righteous disciples who had been flying in midair came down to the ground, seizing the moment to catch their breath. No one knew when those mad beasts might come charging again. Only a few disciples of deep cultivation still hovered warily in the air, watching what lay ahead.

Xiao Yichen, brows tightly knit, drew his gaze back from the distance, where the beast-demons lay in black, unbroken swaths as far as the eye could see. Even now, this decisive battle of life and death offered no glimpse of a bright future. He sighed softly in his heart and turned his head—and suddenly started. There, not far from him, Lu Xueling stood quietly in midair, the bloody wind blowing, her blood-soaked garments swaying gently.

On that peerless face there was now not a trace of life. She only gazed fixedly ahead at that vast black torrent.