Chapter 2 — Azure Cloud
劍問蒼天 · Page 4 of 4
Lin Jinghong grew angrier and angrier, his grip tighter and tighter, and he cried over and over, "Do you yield? Do you yield? Do you yield?"
By now the other children had seen that matters were going wrong and quietly edged away, leaving only these two ignorant little ones to carry on their stubborn stand, each driven by his own hot temper in a contest of wounded pride.
Just as a great calamity seemed about to spring from nothing, a Buddhist invocation sounded from deep within the shrine, and a voice said, "Amitabha, stop at once."
A lean, withered hand reached out across the air, extended two fingers, and flicked Lin Jinghong's hands. Lin Jinghong was as if struck by lightning; his whole body convulsed, and his hands came loose of their own accord.
Zhang Qingyue gasped for breath, plainly having been throttled badly. The two stood frozen where they were; when they came to themselves and recalled what had just happened, they looked at each other, and each grew more frightened in retrospect.
Lin Jinghong said blankly, "Xiaofan, I'm sorry. I don't know what came over me..."
Zhang Qingyue shook his head, his breathing gradually steadying. "It's nothing. Say—who are you?"
Following his gaze, the children saw standing in the shrine an aged monk, his face deeply lined, dressed in a worn and tattered cassock, filthy from head to toe. Only the string of jade prayer beads in his hand was clear and translucent, dazzling to the eye and giving off a faint blue light. Strangely, among the dozen or so beads of uniform size, all of them smooth and translucent green jade, there was one round bead of neither jade nor stone, deep purple in color and dull and lusterless.