Chapter 145 — Meeting
The Sword Questions the Heavens · Page 5 of 7
Another woman suddenly grumbled under her breath, "Master is really too much. She knows Xueqi's temper well enough—why won't she put in a word for her with the sect leader?"
The first woman shook her head. "I don't think that's it. Xueqi used to obey Master above all others, and she respected our martial uncle Daoyan deeply as well. But this time she openly defied the two of them on Heaven-Reaching Peak. I think..." She suddenly lowered her voice. "Could it be that Xueqi already has someone in her heart..."
"Silence!" Wen Pei hissed in a low voice. Everyone started. Wen Pei's expression eased slightly, but her tone remained severe. "We must never speak such guesses aloud. If word of this reached the sect leader or Master, the consequences would be unthinkable."
The others fell silent. The woman behind Wen Pei paused a moment, then said quietly, "Senior sister, the way I see it, the sect leader and Master—what sort of people are they? Whatever we can think of, how could they not have thought of it too? This time, the sect leader and Master deliberately agreed to the proposal from Flaming Sunset Valley, I suspect, precisely because they knew Xueqi had someone in her heart..."
Wen Pei whipped her head around and fixed her with a stare. The woman's expression shifted slightly; she sighed and said no more. Hearing her sigh, Wen Pei herself fell silent for a moment, then could not help sighing as well. "Junior sister Lin, we all feel the same way. Xueqi and the rest of us—though we entered the sect at different times, after more than ten years together we are as close as sisters. None of us wants to see her come to this. But... ah, I don't even know what to say anymore. In any case, I believe Master has always doted on Xueqi most of all. In the end she surely won't make things too hard for her."
The other female disciples nodded in agreement. They walked slowly on, talking in low voices, and now and then a sigh drifted up among them as they gradually moved into the distance.
The shadows in the bamboo grove shifted, and suddenly a dark figure seemed to drift lightly out of the deep darkness, alighting on the mountain path. It was Ming Li. In this place surrounded on all sides by deadly enemies, his face was faintly pale. He stood in silence for a long while, then slowly turned to gaze toward the back mountain of Little Zhu Peak. Behind that bamboo grove, moonlight shone clear and white as frost—the very place, legend said, of Little Zhu Peak's Moon-Gazing Terrace, one of the Six Sights of Qingyun.
A solitary cliff hung suspended in midair, its rear portion alone joined to the mountain body, the greater part of it poised high in the void. The moon was bright that night, hanging high in the sky, its clear radiance like water, like frost and snow, pouring down upon the mortal world and falling upon this Moon-Gazing Terrace. It was not yet the brilliant moonlight of legend that on a full-moon night could illumine the whole of Little Zhu Peak, but still the moonlight on the terrace was soft and gentle, lighting the entire cliff as bright as day. Above all, the smooth rock of the ground, catching the light at a thousand different angles, mirrored countless moons, making the scene all the more coldly beautiful.
When Ming Li stepped onto the Moon-Gazing Terrace, this was the scene that met his eyes. And in that frost-white moonlight there was also a woman in white as pure as snow, her back to him, standing at the front of the terrace and gazing out into the endless dark night, motionless and silent.
Ming Li's face was impassive, but his eyes seemed to flicker with light, as if reflecting that beautiful moonlight. That figure in white stood like a fairy in the moonlight, and there was about her not the slightest trace of the mortal world.
As if sensing something, the figure stirred, and Lu Xueling's voice rose, cool and faintly weary. "Senior sister, why have you all come back again..."