Chapter 31 — Suspicion
劍問蒼天 · Page 1 of 7
It was like a passage into the underworld: a vast whirlpool, pitch-black and unfathomably deep, hung inverted across the sky like the gaping maw of a demon from the Nine Hells, ready to devour everything in the world. A bitter gale howled, scouring the clouds to shreds. Thunder rumbled and lightning writhed.
Zhang Qingyue dove in, the dark iron staff flaring with a blue-black radiance that stood out starkly beneath the black clouds filling the heavens. Lu Xueqi watched him come, wrapped in that blue light, and her jade-white face turned ashen.
"The True Art of the Divine Sword That Commands Thunder" was the supreme marvel of Daoist immortal arts, summoning the ultimate might of heaven and earth through the body of a mortal. One could well imagine the immense strain Lu Xueqi's body was enduring at that moment. "Tianxuan" was a divine weapon such as the world had rarely seen, and by rights the perfect blade for working this art—but compared with it, Lu Xueqi's own cultivation was simply not enough.
At that instant she felt the boundless force in the clouds above surging into her body like a furious, pounding tide. To outsiders her body seemed unchanged, but within, her blood and breath churned and boiled, nearly bursting her apart. Had Tianxuan not ceaselessly drawn off that torrent of gathered power, Lu Xueqi would long since have collapsed.
The wind screamed, the thunder roared; she stood suspended in the void, and in her daze nearly fancied herself a frail blade of grass in the storm. The next moment she remembered what her master, Shuiyue, had said when she passed down this marvel: "Xueqi, your gifts are the finest I have seen in my life, but this true art is too powerful, and so its backlash is equally irresistible. Your years of cultivation are still shallow; though you can just manage to grasp it, you must never use it at will, lest it bring down utter ruin upon you."
"Boom!"
A thunderclap burst almost directly overhead, above Receiving Heaven Peak; everyone faintly felt the ground shudder beneath their feet, as though the ancient thunder god had been roused from his slumber and roared in fury.
In an instant every face changed.
Zhang Qingyue was now only two zhang from Lu Xueqi. At such a display, anyone could see that once her casting was complete, he would be reduced to flying ash. But suddenly his whole body tightened, and he came to a halt as though he had struck a soft wall, unable to advance another step.
In that instant Zhang Qingyue's face went dead gray. "The True Art of the Divine Sword That Commands Thunder" was one of the Canglan Sect's founding marvels, wondrous beyond compare: in the casting it naturally laid an invisible ward around the caster through the divine weapon, and Zhang Qingyue could not get in.
The dark iron staff blazed brighter still, yet could not advance a single step. Perhaps in sheer spiritual power his staff was not inferior to Tianxuan, but in method he was far outmatched; he could only drive the staff's might with his own spiritual power, which could never compare to Lu Xueqi's supreme art, tempered through the ages by generation upon generation of Canglan's founding masters.
But at this moment of despair, just as the giant whirlpool overhead spun faster, the lightning and thunder raged, the radiance of the divine sword Tianxuan grew brighter and brighter, and this peerless immortal art was about to be completed—Lu Xueqi suddenly convulsed. Her pale face flushed crimson in an instant, and with a "wa" she spat out a great mouthful of fresh blood, almost forming a mist of blood before her.
The light of the divine sword Tianxuan wavered at once, as though unsteady. Lu Xueqi clenched her silver teeth, closed her eyes, and gathered all her heart and spirit into Tianxuan. After a moment the light steadied, and instead blazed brighter than before—dazzling, too bright to look upon.