Chapter 157 — The Secret
劍問蒼天 · Page 1 of 6
Facing Ming Li, though Master Ghost still had not emerged from that coffin, he was plainly far more cautious now. That mote of ghost-fire in midair burned in silence, slowly brightening and swelling, until the faces of everyone around were cast in a green glow.
Ming Li gazed at the ghostly green orb, his face expressionless, then suddenly took a step forward. Almost at the very instant Ming Li's figure moved, the ghost-fire seemed to be provoked by something; its radiance flared violently—yet this time it did not split into five parts to form the five-star array, but instead the whole green mass abruptly surged upward, rousing a gale that sent dust sifting down from the rafters of the gloomy house. Zhou Yixuan and the other two, caught off guard behind him, rubbed at their eyes.
In this moment of mounting tension, the air was thick with spectral menace, and it looked as though some mysterious and uncanny art was about to be unleashed. Facing this ever-enigmatic Master Ghost, Ming Li dared not be careless either, and stood wholly on guard—when suddenly his brows lifted, and his whole body shot up into the air. Almost at the same instant, a tremendous crash came from deep beneath the floor of the house; the entire room shook violently, as though the earth itself were quaking.
A gigantic, ghastly white skeletal arm burst through the flagstones with a thunderous roar, smashing down heavily where Ming Li had stood but a moment before. The blue bricks and flagstones that had paved the floor were pulverized in an instant, shards flying everywhere. The whole room was suddenly steeped in a cacophony of ghostly howls. Ming Li hovered in midair, and the skeletal arm, as if driven by some mysterious power, surged upward and lunged straight at him.
Ming Li's brows knitted tightly, but there was no panic in his face. The white shadow of the onrushing skeletal arm was mirrored in his eyes; just as it seemed about to smash into him, his body swayed in midair and drifted to the right, slipping past in the barest fraction of a heartbeat. The arm crashed down upon the ground, and once more sand flew and stones scattered.
By now the house was thick with ghostly vapors and a biting gale. Zhou Yixuan and his two companions pressed their backs hard against the wall, wanting to flee yet not daring to move carelessly, lest in the chaos they be struck by the white bones by mistake. Fortunately, Master Ghost's attention seemed fixed wholly on Ming Li, and where the three of them huddled in the corner by the altar table, the bones did not come to harm them. It was only that, through the swirling sand and flying stones, they watched that room—never spacious to begin with—now suddenly crowded with a giant skeletal arm pursuing Ming Li's shadow, and it seemed already rather cramped.
But this, it seemed, was not enough. Just as Zhou Yixuan was muttering to himself, another muffled roar came from deep underground, a sound tinged faintly with irritation and ferocity, like a savage soul long imprisoned that had finally found a chance to breathe and vent its pent-up fury.
The house shook violently; earth heaved and stone split. In a flash of white bone, another equally gigantic skeletal arm thrust up from the ground and hurtled savagely at Ming Li. Ming Li's figure wove and dodged between the two arms, his eyes fixed and intent—but to this point he had not struck back once.
Within the room, in but a moment, it grew even more impossibly crowded.
White bones gleamed and danced wildly through the air; a spectacle eerie, unpredictable, and terrifying played itself out quietly within that gloomy house. Though Master Ghost and Ming Li fought fiercely, the two seemed to share a tacit understanding: the reach of their arts was confined to the house. Master Ghost's uncanny ghost-path techniques did not spill beyond the walls, and Ming Li likewise kept his maneuvers within the room.