劍問蒼天 - 第150章 瘋狂 - 清風書屋

Xiao Bai watched quietly as the man sat down beside Bi Li and then gazed at the body lying on the cold ice stone platform, motionless. She sighed softly, shook her head, and slipped out without a sound, leaving Ming Li alone in the stone chamber with Bi Li.

How long passed, no one could say, before the heavy stone door opened once more and Ming Li slowly emerged from the Cold Ice Stone Chamber, looking somehow even more haggard than before. He had taken only a few steps from the chamber when he suddenly stopped. There in the passage not far from the door, the white figure of the Nine-Tailed Celestial Fox still stood, waiting patiently.

Xiao Bai looked at him and sighed. "Seeing Bi Li like that must be terribly hard for you. It pains me to see it."

Ming Li shook his head woodenly. "I'm fine."

Xiao Bai came to his side, patted his shoulder, and said in a low voice, "Don't lose heart. There is always hope."

Ming Li's body gave a start, and he turned to look at her, his mouth opening slightly. But seeing his expression, Xiao Bai forestalled him with a bitter smile. "Don't ask me. I don't know what to do now either."

Ming Li's face fell at once. He turned away in silence and was about to step forward when suddenly a ringing buzzed through his mind; the world seemed to spin, and in an instant his whole body turned ice-cold as a chill burst up violently through the meridians within him. Ming Li was badly startled. The icy breath wreaking havoc inside him now was the familiar demonic power of the Blood-Devouring Bead, but in past days—especially after he had cultivated the true methods of the three volumes of the Heavenly Book and his power had advanced greatly—this icy breath had gradually been brought under control and no longer acted up. He could not imagine why it had suddenly erupted like this today.

Within moments, beneath Xiao Bai's astonished gaze, the color drained entirely from Ming Li's face, as though it had been coated in frost, and the space within three feet of him was slowly enveloped in a strange dark-green radiance that seeped from his body, within which lurked a faint, ferocious thirst for blood.

Xiao Bai's expression changed. She reached out to steady him, but the instant her hand touched the dark-green light, she felt a devouring demonic force surge at her from the strange glow. Frowning sharply, she retreated three steps and only then evaded it. Little Grey, who had been perched on Ming Li's shoulder, had already sensed something wrong; he leaped clear of Ming Li's body and landed behind Xiao Bai, his three eyes wide and staring blankly at his master.

Pain rose on Ming Li's face. His sleeve suddenly stirred, an icy breath flashed, and the Soul-Devouring Demon Staff slid out—yet it did not fall to the ground, but floated before him, slowly turning, as though fixing a strange, cold gaze upon the man who had possessed it for so many years.

The flickering dark-green radiance pulsed and wavered, and the air was thick with strangeness. Xiao Bai's face was pale and her brows tightly knit, but this blood-devouring demonic power was issuing from within Ming Li's own body. Even if she wished to help him and rid him of this sudden demonic force, its root lay inside Ming Li himself—how could she lay hands on it? For a moment Xiao Bai was at a loss.

Just as Ming Li's face grew paler and paler, until he seemed barely able to breathe, a warm, pure-yang red light suddenly shot from his chest and beat back much of the yin-cold demonic force. Ming Li's expression shifted; he forced himself to sit, and in an instant gold and azure light flashed together on his face. Driven at once by the two great true methods of the orthodox path within him, the pure-yang fire of the "Mystic Fire Mirror" blazed ever more fiercely, gradually suppressing the yin-cold breath. But by the time Ming Li had fully recovered, half an hour had passed.