Chapter 173 — Escape
The Sword Questions the Heavens · Page 2 of 6
"Ah!..."
The sound was so shrill and wretched that the crowd was nearly frightened out of its wits, and every eye fixed at once on Ming Li. His face was ghastly pale, his whole body shaking without cease, and the skin of his face and hands, wherever it was not covered by clothing, was visibly and swiftly shriveling, turning dry and withered. At the same time a strange, thin keening rose from the Immortal Slayer, its red glow growing brighter and brighter, and those with keen eyes could already see faint red threads being drawn from Ming Li's left hand—the hand gripping the sword—into the blade.
The sight was monstrous beyond words; not a trace remained of the Canglan Sect's open, upright, orthodox bearing. All present were aghast, yet not one of them moved.
Except Lu Xueling.
The woman had been leaning helplessly in her elder sister Wen Pei's arms, but now, somehow, she suddenly struggled, as though she meant to fling herself at Ming Li and the Immortal Slayer. Wen Pei was greatly alarmed and hastened to hold her back. Lu Xueling struggled a few times, and at last her body sagged powerlessly; anxious beyond measure, she opened her mouth as though to cry something out, but after a glance around she closed it again in despair, and leaned into the arms of her sister Wen Pei, who was all concern. Her gaze was deep, and it rested upon that man.
So it was—after all the tossing and turning, all the thousand thoughts and ten thousand longings, all the heartbreak—that she was to watch him die before her own eyes, in such misery as this?
Tears streamed down her face.
At last she could no longer care about the eyes of all the others around her.
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The red light on the Immortal Slayer had grown ever more brilliant, and by contrast Ming Li's condition grew ever more hideous. By now anyone could see that under the "divine might" of the Immortal Slayer, this demonic heretic—the great scourge of the orthodox path—had come to the very edge of death. Perhaps this too was the divine sword's spirit at work, casting a spell to rid the world of evil!
Many quietly thought so in their hearts, and were entirely unwilling to consider whether such a thought made any sense at all.
Ming Li, of course, would not have thought of it, nor had he the leisure to think of what was in other people's minds at that moment. At this moment he was struggling at the very gate of death. The devouring force of the Immortal Slayer grew greater and greater—greater, even, than what he had faced as a youth, when he had encountered the Bloodthirst Orb in the back hills of Great Zhu Peak. Only now his cultivation was far beyond that of the boy he had been, and so he had endured in bitter agony until this moment. Yet he understood well enough that he could not endure much longer.
The eerie devouring force of the Immortal Slayer was much like the demonic power of the Bloodthirst Orb of old, yet different as well. Compared with the Orb, the power of the Immortal Slayer—now turned a demonic sword—was greater still; and unlike the Orb, which had merely consumed blood, the Immortal Slayer, even as it drank in blood and vital essence, was likewise draining away the true qi that Ming Li had cultivated over many years.
In Ming Li's eyes now, the Immortal Slayer before him gave off a blood-red radiance, dimly like a demon grinning with its vast bloody maw opened wide, about to swallow him down.
So this was how a life ended?
In the instant before he sank into unconsciousness, the thought flashed through his mind.