劍問蒼天 - 第180章 陰霾 - 清風書屋

Tian Buhui considered a moment. "I did once inquire of a senior martial brother who knew of it. I heard that after Senior Brother Dao Yan berated everyone on the spot and forbade them to speak of it, he at once picked up the Immortal Slayer, broken in two, and walked into the Illusory Moon Grotto-Heaven, forbidding anyone ever to enter that forbidden ground again. So to this day no one knows what has become of that ancient sword. Perhaps there is still hope it can be repaired?"

Tian Buhui said this last sentence as though to himself, then shook his head with a bitter laugh—plainly even he did not believe it. After two bitter chuckles, he went on casually, "That sword is beyond our reach, but today at Jietian Peak, besides getting an inexplicable tongue-lashing, I did hear one strange thing."

Su Wan started. "What strange thing?"

Tian Buhui shrugged. "You wouldn't believe it if I told you. In the last great battle, so many disciples and elders fell—and now they are being publicly mourned at the Jade Balance Hall on Jietian Peak. Yet our Senior Brother Dao Yan shows his face there barely once a day and then vanishes; instead, he goes every day to the ancestral shrine on the back mountain to keep vigil for the dead. Tell me, isn't that strange?"

Su Wan was dumbfounded. "Keeping vigil? What's happened at the ancestral shrine? Has some elder of the senior generation passed away?"

Tian Buhui shook his head and gave a cold laugh. "Some elder? No. I heard a few young disciples of the main lineage whispering among themselves—it's actually an old man who has watched over and swept the ancestral shrine for decades, who happened to die that very day. How he died, no one knows. All they know is that when Senior Brother Dao Yan heard of it, one moment he stood dumb as a wooden rooster, the next he was stamping and raging; and I hear he then went about for days in a daze, as if his soul had left him. In the end he insisted on placing the old man's memorial tablet inside the ancestral shrine. But the strangest part of all—the tablet he set inside the shrine bore not a single character. It was completely blank!"

The more Su Wan heard, the more bewildered she became, and the greater her alarm grew. She shook her head and said, "This—this—what on earth is going on? Can it really be that our senior brother the sect master has—has truly taken leave of his senses?"

Tian Buhui gave a cold laugh. "Whether he has or hasn't, no one can say. But people have tried to counsel him, and he would not listen. And instead of going to look properly at the spirit tablets of those disciples in the Yuheng Hall, he runs off to the Ancestral Hall to sit staring at that blank tablet. If this goes on, mark my words, the Canglan Sect will come to grief sooner or later—sooner or later it will be ruined at his hands..."

Su Wan was silent, wordless. After a long while she gave a faint, haunting sigh and looked out beyond the Shoujing Hall. In this lonely afternoon the world outside was empty and bare, and only the distant sky showed its deep blue.

The mountain wind blew past, and from the back hills came faintly the sound of bamboo surging like waves—yet somehow it only deepened the sense of desolation.

********

Canglan Mountain, Jietian Peak, the Ancestral Hall in the back hills.

Here it was as silent and solemn as ever. The tall hall still stood erect, the woods around it as green as of old, as though the earth-shaking great battle fought on Canglan Mountain days before had left no mark upon this place at all.

Save that one old man who swept the floors was gone, and there on the dim altar table, in an inconspicuous spot among countless spirit tablets, there was one more—strange and blank.