Chapter 245 — Earthshaking
The Sword Questions the Heavens · Page 1 of 6
Ming Li's expression shifted, then he restrained himself again, a flicker of tension showing in his eyes. He looked toward Mr. Gui; though he could not see the man's face, those eyes were fixed unblinkingly on the jade plate, clearly nothing about this was easy.
Mr. Gui's index finger soon drew close to the jade plate, and five inches above it, he stopped. Beneath his finger, nothing on the plate had yet changed; within the soft white radiance, countless tiny jade pieces still glided automatically along their own tracks, and here and there characters surfaced and glimmered in silence.
Mr. Gui held his hand motionless in midair, his eyes fixed all the while upon the plate as though searching for something. Ming Li, though puzzled, dared not disturb him now. And so Mr. Gui waited dryly for the space of perhaps half a cup of tea, when suddenly with a soft cry, the finger that had hovered above the plate pierced the air like lightning streaking across the heavens and pressed down into the plate.
A faint muffled thud—one jade piece had slid to the center of the plate, and the character upon it had just flared to life. At the very instant it began to dim, in that moment of neither light nor dark, Mr. Gui's finger pressed precisely upon that piece.
Upon the calm jade plate, light a hundred times more brilliant than before suddenly burst forth!
Almost at the same instant, Ming Li, seated to one side, was seized by an illusion: it seemed the world beyond him had, in that single moment, abruptly slowed, and the stone chamber where he sat had become a hundred, a thousand times vaster than he remembered. He was like an ant facing an endless, unknowable world.
The eerie illusion passed in a flash, yet it had already left Ming Li's palms slick with cold sweat despite himself. But how could he spare a thought for it now—the moment he came to his senses, his first reaction was to look toward the plate. Before him, the jade plate bloomed with ever more dazzling light, and from deep within that radiance came a continual soft *pop-pop* sound—most likely because Mr. Gui's finger had disrupted the gliding tracks of the jade pieces within, and more and more of them were colliding.
As the popping grew steadily louder, the rays of light from the plate grew more and more piercing, and in an instant had filled the entire ice-cold stone chamber. Ming Li could no longer even see Mr. Gui's figure across from him. Before this sudden mysterious radiance, his heart was filled with both alarm and joy.
The dazzling light continued to intensify, as though a small sun had fallen into the chamber, yet Ming Li felt not the slightest heat. Instead, amid those ten thousand rays, at some unknown moment another sound had arisen—low and faint, like an incantation, like a murmured chant, like the wind howling through deep mountains, like birdsong in a secluded valley.
Suddenly, in this tense and uncanny moment, Ming Li felt his heart give a heavy throb in his chest. His whole body convulsed, and it seemed the flow of blood through his veins had halted for a brief instant; a wave of dizziness swept over him and he nearly fainted.
Ming Li was greatly alarmed, and before he could react, amid that resplendent radiance and mysterious incantation, the palms of his hands, the spirit springs of his soles, the elixir field in his abdomen, and the Baihui point atop his head—those places where the qi channels of the body were most sensitive and convergent—all began to tremble at once. At the same time his blood and qi surged and reversed, a pain as keen as knife cuts, so unbearable that even with his endurance he could not help but let out a muffled groan, full of anguish.
Across from him, behind the radiance, Mr. Gui seemed to sense something and asked, "What is it?"