Chapter 188 — A Sudden Appearance

Looking up, he saw that the mechanisms of the second and third tiers, where Xiaobai had once been confined, had lost their power and simply stood open, revealing empty, gloomy dark mouths. In all that towering Profound Fire Altar, under the faint flicker of firelight, there was only Ming Li's solitary figure, gently swaying.

Ming Li stood silent a long while, then shook his head and walked to the Eight Fiends Profound Fire Formation and studied it closely. Within the vast diagram, all the fiend gods remained as he remembered them, carved with utmost clarity and lifelike to the last detail, and the patterns linking them were likewise eerie and intricate. Ming Li drew a deep breath and sat down cross-legged before the formation.

Just as he was about to calm his mind and fathom this legendary, uncanny shaman formation, suddenly, in that silent and gloomy altar of fire, out of the darkness above him came a woman's laugh—clear and bright, echoing through the hall.

Ming Li's face changed drastically. He sprang to his feet and looked up, and the words burst from him: "Is that you, Xiaobai..."

His voice broke off. A figure came drifting down from the dark shadows above: the familiar pale yellow robes, the clear and tender gaze, a beauty that seemed to intoxicate the eye at a single glance—

It was, astonishingly, the very person he had never dreamed of—the woman said to have died in the great calamity.

Jin Pingyue!

After the first shock, Ming Li quickly composed himself. Jin Pingyue still stood where she was, looking as though nothing had changed—her robes, her face, her expression, even the faint, infinitely seductive smile still lingering at the corner of her lips.

She gazed at Ming Li, smiled slightly, and said, "Hello there."

Ming Li watched her in silence, and only after a long while said, "How is it you are here?"

Jin Pingyue lightly brushed a strand of hair from her temple—a small gesture that seemed to hold boundless charm—and said softly, "I have been waiting for you here."

Ming Li frowned. "Waiting for me? To do what? And how did you know I would come here?"

Jin Pingyue smiled. "Have you forgotten? Last time you came to this place, you came with me. I hear that this time you mean to track down the Beast Lord, and by the tales of the southern border, sealing the Beast Lord will surely require the formation here. If not here, where else would you go?"

She narrowed her eyes slightly, as though a little pleased with herself, and with a loveliness beyond words, soft as water, she laughed and said, "See? Am I not clever?"

Ming Li's brow knitted. Though his cultivation had advanced greatly, under such beguilement as Jin Pingyue's he found his heart still stirred a little, and he was secretly alarmed. Since the great calamity, this woman said to be dead seemed, if anything, to have gained another layer of power.

If she was not dead, then what of the others—the other masters of the demon cult factions who had perished in the calamity?

Could it be that they had not died either?

Ming Li's heart was full of doubt and alarm, but his face stayed cold as he said, "You still have not answered me. What are you waiting for me to do?"

Jin Pingyue smiled with tender charm, and in a mild tone she spoke words that shook the heart: "I know the location of the Ancient Demon-Sealing Cave where the Beast Lord is to be sealed. When the Lord of the Nether King Sect learned of it, he sent me to assist you."

Ming Li's whole body gave a great jolt. He jerked his head up to look at Jin Pingyue, only to see her gaze like water and her smiling face like a flower, without the slightest trace of anything amiss.