Chapter 108 — Stealth
The Sword Questions the Heavens · Page 5 of 6
Ming Li and Jin Pingyue both frowned slightly, but this was, after all, a rare opportunity. Ming Li said softly to Jin Pingyue beside him, "Let's go in."
Jin Pingyue nodded, but after a glance at Ming Li she said, "I'm very curious about what's happening at the valley entrance. Why don't we make use of the chaos and take a look first?"
Ming Li pondered a moment, then shook his head. "You go. I'll head deeper into Fenxia Valley."
In the darkness Jin Pingyue seemed to pause, then said, "Very well. Be careful."
Ming Li was faintly surprised; those two words, "be careful," coming so abruptly from Jin Pingyue's lips seemed somehow strange. But meeting his gaze, Jin Pingyue merely smiled prettily, and suddenly her figure dissolved into a faint flowing light, gliding silently down the ridge and vanishing into the darkness in moments.
Ming Li frowned, a flicker of sharp light passing through his eyes.
Though Fenxia Valley's history since its founding could not match that of the Canglan Sect or the Devil Sect, it had held this place for over eight hundred years. Slipping in silently through the shadows of night, Ming Li was met by halls and pavilions arrayed in graceful disorder. Their style was rather close to that of the Central Plains, but in the small details—window lintels, eave corners—carvings of fierce beasts appeared here and there, such as were unknown in the Plains. Plainly, over eight centuries Fenxia Valley had been influenced by the rugged local customs of the southern frontier.
At the valley entrance the clamor continued unabated, and the alarm bells that Ming Li and Jin Pingyue found most troublesome had begun ringing without cease. He was now hidden cautiously in the shadow behind a large boulder at the foot of the mountain. On the last infiltration, it was here—a few steps further on—that the inexplicable crisp ringing had erupted.
Now he could only hear the bells ringing in a continuous chorus far off. Three zhang ahead of the boulder lay an open space, and beyond it a plain-looking house that seemed to be the dwelling of Fenxia Valley disciples.
Ming Li drew a deep breath, straightened in the shadows, and looked around. All here was quiet, and set against the distant uproar it seemed all the more deserted and silent. As for the disciples in that house, they seemed already to have been summoned to the valley entrance.
Beneath this oddly eerie stillness, Ming Li walked slowly forward.
One step, two steps…
He walked very slowly, and went five steps in all. Everything around remained as it was.
Yet the look on Ming Li's face only grew graver, for last time it was here—on the sixth step—that the strange ringing had discovered him.
The sharp light in his eyes kindled slowly as he swept his gaze around, and he saw that nothing nearby had changed.
After a moment, he slowly took the sixth step.
"Ding-a-ling..."
Almost at the very instant his foot touched the ground, a crisp bell rang out abruptly ahead of him, carrying far through the deep silence.
Ming Li's body went rigid, alarm and fury surging through him together. The ghostly tricks of Burning Cloud Valley were fiendishly effective, yet he could not discover them at all—truly uncanny.
But tonight was naturally a different matter from the days before. Though Ming Li had tripped some formless mechanism and set off an alarm bell, the distant clamor and sounds of fighting were fiercer still, and in mere moments they drowned the bell out.
Ming Li decided on the spot. Sweeping his gaze around, he rose into the air and skimmed low along the ground to the back of the house ahead—only the bell around him kept ringing without pause, a truly maddening headache.
Just then, the monkey Xiao Hui, who had been lying quietly on Ming Li's shoulder all this while, suddenly gave a low cry. Ming Li started, and turned to glance at Xiao Hui on his shoulder.