Chapter 237 — The Strange Treasure
The Sword Questions the Heavens · Page 5 of 6
But now Ming Li was not on Mount Foxqi, so naturally she had no chance to speak of it. As it happened, not long ago she and Ming Li had passed each other by outside the ruined charity hall beyond He Yin's city walls. Had she been present—with her thousand years of cultivation—perhaps the matter Ming Li encountered might have taken a different turn. Yet fate moves in mysterious ways, and no one can say for certain.
Xiao Bai turned it over in her mind: the world is vast and boundless, and to seek out one man, Ming Li, was truly harder than fishing a needle from the sea. But Bi Li was here on Mount Foxqi, and surely Ming Li would return here sooner or later. In any case, all along the road she had been wavering over what exactly to say to Ming Li; better to make use of this waiting time here to think it through properly.
With that thought, Xiao Bai made up her mind, and unconsciously turned her steps toward Ming Li's dwelling. Her footfalls echoed through the corridor. After she had walked some distance, Xiao Bai's brow suddenly furrowed, and she stopped.
In the long corridor, where in days past Hades Sect disciples would often come and go, chatting and laughing—at this moment it was utterly empty, with only her solitary figure standing there in the passage.
Everyone, for some reason, had hidden themselves away. Not a trace of them remained!
Xiao Bai looked back the way she had come. At the end of the corridor, it seemed as though a deep darkness hung, so thick it could no longer be dissolved.
She gazed at it silently for a moment, then turned and continued forward. Her soft footfalls echoed through the empty corridor, seeming several times louder than usual.
In that eerie stillness, Xiao Bai slowly made her way to Ming Li's dwelling. Somehow, though Ming Li was absent, she had still unconsciously come here. Just as she was about to reach out and push open Ming Li's door, her body suddenly went rigid, as though she had sensed something, and she slowly raised her head to look upward.
On the hard stone wall of the outer wall of Ming Li's stone chamber, there were unexpectedly seven or eight deep fissures. The exposed rock was rough and pitted, as though torn open by some immense force, twisting in agony like enormous wounds carved into the stone—only one could not tell whether blood would flow from those fissures!
Xiao Bai's body gave a slight, sudden shudder. Her pupils contracted slightly as she stared at those fissures. With her thousand years of cultivation, she could even faintly and keenly sense that around her and upon those glaring, twisted fissures, a strange aura drifted, now visible, now hidden.
That aura filled her with instinctive revulsion!
But before she could sort out these matters, a sudden upheaval erupted. From far down the corridor behind her, a tremendous roar suddenly came, as though tearing heart and lungs apart, and in the very next instant shrill cries rose on all sides—some in furious rage, some in terror—shouts of anger, cries of accusation, the sound of weeping, all borne toward her as if on the wind.
Xiao Bai's figure flickered and she darted toward the source of the cries. Only at this moment did she truly confirm that something strange and unknown to her had indeed happened here on Mount Foxqi—and most likely it was a horrifying mutation!
Her white figure flew swiftly through the corridor. The passage that had been empty just moments before was suddenly crowded with people pouring out from who knew where—though some fled into the distance, more came surging with killing intent, blades in hand, toward the place where the roaring came from. Far off, someone cried out through tears, "It's happening again, again! This time it's Old Li gone mad..."
Xiao Bai's heart gave a jolt. Somehow, all at once, her heart sank, and then her figure had already swept close, stopping beside an open space surrounded by many people.