Chapter 36 — The Fiend
劍問蒼天 · Page 1 of 6
Facheng, standing at the front, murmured a Buddha's name under his breath. A moment later, a round bead wreathed in solemn golden light rose from his palm. At first the radiance seemed to cling to Facheng, but as he poured his power into it, the golden light blazed up in an instant. With the bead at its center, the light surged outward in every direction like a tide. Zhang Qingyue stood where he was, and for a moment he could have sworn he heard a great rushing "whoosh" beside his ear as the golden halo swept past him.
Every face in the cavern was washed a pale gold, and at the same time a ease settled over their hearts; even the trace of tension they had felt was smoothed away in an instant. The vast space was bright as day in the blink of an eye. Had it not been for the grotesque rocks and the writhing bats, one might almost have thought they had stumbled into a Buddhist paradise.
Li Xun, who ordinarily looked down on everyone, now wore a flicker of astonishment. Standing to one side, he blurted, "The Wheel of Rebirth Bead!"
Facheng glanced at him. "Senior Brother Li has a keen eye."
Li Xun's tone, however, seemed to have turned notably more courteous toward Facheng. "You flatter me. It is you, Senior Brother Facheng, whose cultivation runs deep."
By the light of the Wheel of Rebirth Bead, Zhang Qingyue could now see clearly that he was indeed standing on clean, solid ground. He looked up and saw that on the rocky roof of the cavern those black bats had vanished, he knew not why—yet the rustling "shasha" sound was unmistakably still there at his ear.
He looked more closely, and only then did he realize that on the cavern roof behind them, countless black bats still clustered along the ceiling. But directly above the solid ground where they stood, a thin red line ran across the rock of the cave roof, looking for all the world like a vein grown within the stone itself.
With that red line as the boundary, the countless bats crowded and jostled on the far side; not one had crossed it. And on the ground beneath their feet, mere inches away, there was no trace of the foul, stinking bat droppings.
Facheng looked around and said in a low, grave voice, "There is much that is strange in this place. We must all be on our guard."
They all knew it well enough, but having finally found clean footing, and having scouted the surroundings and found nothing amiss, most of them set about tidying their clothes. Zeng Shuyan, standing beside Zhang Qingyue, took off his shoe and poured out the disgusting mess inside, then muttered to Zhang Qingyue, "This is the first time in my life I've learned what a comfort it is to walk on clean ground!"
Zhang Qingyue smiled and quickly cleaned himself up, and felt somewhat better for it. After a while, when Qi Hao saw that everyone had more or less recovered, he said, "Let's go." And with that he took the lead toward the depths of the cavern.
The others followed. Soon, as they pressed forward, the darkness closed in behind them once more, endless and complete.
And ahead, the darkness was like some demon beast spreading its arms wide, baring its fangs in a grin, welcoming them in.
A single point of light moved slowly through the dark.
How far they walked, none could say. The ancient, deep cavern seemed to have no end at all. It remained spacious throughout, yet it twisted and turned, winding this way and that, and save that it seemed to slope gradually down into the earth, one could hardly tell which direction was which.
The rustling of the bats at the cave mouth had long since faded from hearing. In that darkness there was no sound but their own footfalls. Zhang Qingyue felt the damp growing heavier around them and could not guess how deep beneath the earth they had come.