Chapter 223 — Reunion
The Sword Questions the Heavens · Page 3 of 5
With that he shot Xiaowan a fierce glare, seized her, and strode off. Seeing them go, the Wild Wolf Daoist hurried after them. Xiaowan looked embarrassed, but still insisted, "Grandpa, what are you doing?"
Zhou Yixuan snorted. "Are you looking for trouble?"
Xiaowan's voice dropped. She stole a glance back at the Witch Demon, saw the black-clad man still standing where he was, and could not resist murmuring to Zhou Yixuan, "But they really are so alike..."
Zhou Yixuan could not be bothered with her. He gripped her tighter and strode on toward the distant road. As the old man and the two youths walked far away, a few of Xiaowan's grumbles seemed to drift faintly on the wind. The Witch Demon felt rather baffled for a moment; after a while he seemed to give a bitter laugh, shook his head, and turned to go.
But he had barely stirred when he suddenly whipped back around, facing the direction of the abandoned mortuary he had come from, a keen light flashing in both eyes as he stared fixedly at it.
Following the direction of his gaze, two shadowy figures could be faintly made out in the distant sky, one pursuing the other, hurtling down toward that mortuary.
The demonic creature hesitated for a moment, then finally suppressed its curiosity, shook its head, turned, and drifted away.
In its intuition, that mortuary was no place to go—better to keep away!
Meanwhile, within the abandoned mortuary, silence still reigned. Lu Xueling slowly opened her eyes and cast a clear, bright glance around. Seeing all quiet and nothing amiss, she allowed herself to relax.
Tian Buhui remained as before, sitting cross-legged on the stone steps with his eyes closed. Now and then a night wind stole past, yet for some reason it could never stir his garments, as though every breeze veered around his body.
A sudden thought stirred in Lu Xueling's heart; she seemed to have sensed something strange, and her brows knitted slightly as her gaze fell upon Tian Buhui's form. After watching for a while, the doubt in her eyes only deepened.
Ever since she had first rescued Tian Buhui from that imprisoning coffin, Lu Xueling had noticed that this long-unseen Martial Uncle Tian of Dazhu Peak was much fatter than she remembered. Yet his face seemed unchanged—it was only that squat, portly frame that had broadened by a good two sizes, so that the clothes he wore now looked rather tight on him.
Still, for some reason—though Tian Buhui had always been inclined to stoutness—Lu Xueling could not shake the feeling that there was something not quite right about this fatness, though she could not put her finger on just what. Unease began to gnaw at her. She had used a Daoist art imbued with the wondrous methods of the Heavenly Book to break the coffin's seal, yet in those few brief exchanges she had been greatly startled by the eerie demonic power that had bound Tian Buhui—its potency and its sinister strangeness were like nothing she had ever seen.
At this thought, Lu Xueling felt she ought to question Tian Buhui properly. Her resolve made, she turned and was about to speak—when at that very moment, Tian Buhui, who had been resting with closed eyes, suddenly opened them. A piercing light shot from his gaze, and it was not upon Lu Xueling beside him that he fixed it, but upon the ink-dark night sky, his face faintly contorted.
Lu Xueling's heart tightened. She rose and looked up, and a moment later her whole body gave a shudder.
High above in the pitch-black vault of heaven, a dark figure came hurtling down like a gale, like lightning, wrapped in a shroud of black qi. Before it even drew near, that surging demonic power seemed already to come roaring at them.
Tian Buhui slowly rose to his feet.
Lu Xueling felt her mouth go dry. "Is it him?" she asked in a low voice.
Tian Buhui nodded slowly and said in a deep voice, "It is him."