Chapter 252 — The Loss of Heart
The Sword Questions the Heavens · Page 6 of 6
"It worked, it worked... it finally worked! Ah..." He drew a deep, ragged breath, his voice long since gone hoarse beyond recognition. The muscles of his face twisted, his complexion red as blood, and he looked utterly grotesque.
Suddenly he clenched his right hand into a fist, and in an instant a mighty force burst from his body. Faint traces of blood-light could almost be seen dancing about his hand like tiny lightning, ceaseless and agitated, while the surrounding stone walls, as though yanked by an immense power, collapsed in a great sheet all at once, rubble flying everywhere.
"Hahahaha... hahahahaha..."
Amid the wild laughter, mad and exultant, the Nether King strode toward the chamber entrance—only there he suddenly paused. Into the madness and savagery on his face there crept a flicker of hesitation; his body shifted slightly, as though he wished to turn and look at something.
Behind him lay Bi Li's still, quiet form.
Yet after that brief moment's hesitation, the Nether King did not turn back after all. The massive, unyielding stone door before him suddenly split asunder and was blasted away. Through the violent quaking and the rain of flying stones, with a savage resolve, the Nether King strode out of the cold-ice stone chamber.
"Boom!" The violent quaking kept up its strange clashing din, and the falling rocks grew ever larger, as though about to swallow this place whole. And that slender green figure lay quietly upon the stone platform, solitary and still, touched with a faint desolation.
"Ding... ding..." The clear, crisp sound of a little bell echoed softly through the stone chamber—only to be drowned out, all too soon, by the greater roar and crash of falling rock and collapsing stone.