Chapter 18 — Answering the Summons
劍問蒼天 · Page 5 of 7
Standing on the immortal sword, Zhang Qingyue held Song Dayi tight. Nervous as he was, he could not bear to shut his eyes for anything. The green peaks of Dazhu Peak fell farther and farther behind him; then suddenly all before him turned white—a vast whiteness—and they had plunged into thick white clouds, and he could see nothing more.
Now above and below, before and behind, all was vast cloud and mist. The great wind howled unceasingly, stinging his face. Zhang Qingyue's body trembled slightly, half from nerves, half from excitement. To gallop through the blue sky and white clouds—what a dream that was!
Through the boundless sea of clouds they flew, and how long they traveled he did not know. Just as Zhang Qingyue's heart was slowly beginning to settle, as if to astonish him once more, "Ten Tigers" burst out of the cloud sea amid a sharp, piercing whistle.
Before them lay a boundless blue sky, like the deep sea hanging upside down, so blue it was almost pure—endless, magnificent, majestic. As they burst from the clouds, the white sea beneath their feet seemed like spray, trailing long streamers of cloud in their wake, as if reluctant to let them go, or like the small waves of a great river, drifting up into the air and then slowly sinking back into the cloud sea.
The sky was washed clean. "Ten Tigers" soared upward until it was nearly three hundred zhang above the vast cloud sea below; only then did Song Dayi level the blade and begin flying straight toward Jietian Peak.
In the distance, a towering peak—towering into the clouds, no, towering into the heavens—stood proud and unyielding. There, where the white clouds drifted, faint bell tones echoed through that vast heaven and earth. Jietian Peak—Peak Reaching Heaven—seemed truly to lead to the blue sky.
Zhang Qingyue held his breath and gazed far out. Beneath the boundless blue sky, around that majestic peak, countless rays of light of every color danced and swirled, growing denser the closer they came to Jietian Peak.
Zhang Qingyue knew they were all treasures wielded by disciples of the Canglan Sect, colored variously according to the five elements of each treasure, so that they looked like a riot of color, exceedingly beautiful. These rays of light streamed toward that peak like colored stones falling in rain, a spectacle of magnificent grandeur. And they, together with "Ten Tigers," soon merged into that brilliant, many-colored torrent.
Amid the whistling wind, Song Dayi brought Zhang Qingyue down on his sword onto a vast plaza. The moment they touched ground, the monkey Xiao Hui began looking this way and that, then leaped down from Zhang Qingyue's shoulder and bounced about the plaza, beside himself with excitement. Zhang Qingyue let him be and looked around. Here white jade formed the railings, and waves of immortal aura drifted on the air. In the center of the plaza stood nine great bronze cauldrons, arranged in threes. Most astonishing of all was the vapor that rose and steamed over the whole plaza, so that one walked as if in clouds, giving a person the feeling of having become an immortal.
Zhang Qingyue took it all in and found it strangely familiar. He remembered this was the place called the "Sea of Clouds," one of the so-called "Six Scenes of Qingyun," which he had visited when he first came to Mount Canglan. Five years had passed, and the place was as it had always been, unchanged, still so beautiful and ethereal—only today it was far livelier than five years ago.