Chapter 253 — The Offering

Ming Li was silent for a moment. He had just meant to turn away when his body gave a violent start and his face changed drastically. Mount Foxqi was now quaking, the whole situation strange and treacherous, danger everywhere. And at such a time the Ghost King had come here alone, clearly wrapped in some evil aura, utterly unlike his usual self.

But what of Bi Li?

If the Ghost King had gone to the blood pool at a time like this, then who was guarding Bi Li?

The color drained from Ming Li's face in an instant, leaving him deathly pale, and his head rang with a buzzing din. He dared not delay another moment. Like a bolt of lightning he leapt up and shot into the passage, speeding away.

The whole way, one thought raced wildly through his mind: Bi Li... Bi Li... you must not come to harm...

The whole of Mount Foxqi was trembling—such was the feeling in Ming Li's heart as he flew through the passages. This earthquake had already lasted far longer than any before, and still it showed no sign of stopping. On the contrary, from the ground beneath his feet and the stone walls around him came the sense that the tremors were still steadily worsening.

Everywhere, near and far, came the grotesque din of collapse, enough to make the heart quail. After Ming Li darted out of that hidden passage and burst from the Ghost King's stone chamber, the corridors of the Ghost King Sect before his eyes had been wrecked beyond recognition.

Stones had fallen from the walls everywhere. What had been a clear, unobstructed passage was now a winding, pitted track heaped with rubble, and more and larger rocks kept dropping from the walls without cease. The deep, rumbling roar from the heart of the mountain, mingled with the quake, only made the unknown horror all the more palpable.

As Ming Li swept outward, he soon discovered that from those crisscrossing passages countless Ghost King Sect disciples, like ants gone mad with terror, were fleeing desperately toward the cave exits. The sect's once-strict rules had at last lost all their force at this juncture of life and death; no one paid them any mind anymore.

The stream of people merged into a river, and Ming Li's urgent steps were soon blocked by the crowd. At a time like this, every soul was fleeing for his life. No one regarded his title of Vice Sect Master any longer, and no one made way for him.

Nothing but people, and more people.