Chapter 43 — The Blooddrop Cave
劍問蒼天 · Page 1 of 6
Zhang Qingyue had not expected such a violent reaction from Bili, and it startled him. He pointed at the cave ceiling. "There are some red stones up there…"
Bili came over at once and peered carefully at the ceiling. Through the veil of water droplets she could indeed make out seven red stones, each about half a palm's breadth, set into the rock of the ceiling. In grain and texture they were no different from the stone around them; only their color set them apart.
Seeing Bili so tense, so utterly absorbed in the ceiling, Zhang Qingyue felt his own curiosity stir. He rose and looked that way too, and saw the seven red stones scattered crookedly across the ceiling, arranged in what looked like a strange, lopsided shape—like an old-fashioned spoon.
It was the color above all: he could not guess how many years the water in this cave had washed over them, yet they remained as crimson as blood. Even the crystalline droplets, when they ran across those red stones, took on a blood-red hue and fell away as though the ceiling were weeping drops of gore. Yet once the droplets had passed beyond the stones, their former clarity returned.
As he watched, he suddenly heard Bili murmuring beside him, chanting under her breath: "Blooddrop Cave, Blooddrop Cave, blooddrop… ha!" Her face lit up with delight, and she brought her right hand down hard on Zhang Qingyue's shoulder. His face went white at once—the force of that blow was truly no light matter.
Zhang Qingyue was furious and was about to demand an explanation, but the woman only smiled at him radiantly, entirely unconcerned, her face alight with excitement. "So, you wicked old Blackheart, you went and built the Blooddrop Cave in a place like this! No wonder we searched dozens of times over eight hundred years and never found it." Zhang Qingyue was astonished, but as he turned it over in his mind, he recalled that on their first meeting Bili had demanded to know about the "Blooddrop Cave," and understanding broke over him at once. He gave a cold snort. "Devils and heretics!" Bili was in far too good a mood to take offense; she only smiled sweetly and said, "Devils and heretics I may be—so what? I ought to thank you for helping me find this place!" The more unwilling Zhang Qingyue felt, the more beautiful her smile grew, and from some deep place in his heart an inexplicable anger rose up in him; he felt he had unwittingly done the demon cult's sorceress an enormous favor, and if his elders ever learned of it, punishment was certain.
But no sooner had the thought crossed his mind than it struck him that he could not even get out of this place, let alone worry about the future. His spirits sank at once, and he sat down without a word.
Bili, meanwhile, was overjoyed, paying no attention at all to Zhang Qingyue's inexplicable expression. The demon cult had a history of immense antiquity, its ranks riddled with countless factions and splinter sects, rising and falling through the ages.
Eight hundred years ago, the Refining Blood Hall, the lineage to which the old Blackheart belonged, had been hailed as the foremost faction of the demon cult, mighty in strength and thick with masters; Blackheart himself was an elder ancestor of the cultivation path. But as the years turned and fortunes shifted, and after repeated clashes with the righteous sects, the Refining Blood Hall had dwindled and been supplanted by others.
In the present age, four great factions stood abreast within the demon cult: the Soul-Luring Sect, the Myriad Venoms Gate, the Hall of Longevity, and the Nether King Sect. Yet for sheer renown, none could match the Refining Blood Hall in the day of its glory.