Chapter 101 — The Yellow Bird

Mighty as the clash was, it had no effect whatsoever on the Blackwater Mystic Serpent or the strange golden light within the Treasure House. The golden light remained dazzling, growing ever brighter, and the Blackwater Mystic Serpent came charging on as well. This man and this woman, caught between two violently shifting and perilous forces, still held on doggedly, neither willing to yield an inch.

Until the radiance of their respective treasures overshadowed their very bodies, and both their faces grew paler and paler—but above all, in that instant, swift as a spark from flint, the vast black shadow reached them.

The treasures of human cultivators, powers kindled from their own bodies, scattered to smoke and nothing beneath the force of the Blackwater Mystic Serpent's furious charge.

Lu Xueling and Ming Li were flung forward at the same instant. Ming Li felt his chest heave and his blood churn, his head ringing with a buzzing din, the meridians of his whole body shaken by that vast force until they seemed about to turn completely inside out. Blood caught in his chest; had the Great Brahma Prajna of Brahma Sound Temple not been guarding his heart meridian and circulating rapidly to block and dissipate that external force layer by layer, he would surely have spat blood on the spot.

Even so, he felt agony throughout his body, and who knew how many of his bones were broken. In midair, he suddenly wrenched his head around to look at Lu Xueling.

That cold, pure woman seemed, in that moment, to be in even worse state. Her robes were white as snow, but at her breast they were blotched with blood, and from the corners of her pale lips blood welled without cease—plainly she had coughed up blood on the spot.

The doctrines of the Canglan Sect were wondrous and without peer, but in the matter of steadying the heart meridian and protecting oneself, the Buddhist Great Brahma Prajna was still a cut above.

The righteous-path cultivators hovering in midair could only stare dumbstruck. All of it had happened in an instant—before they could react, Lu Xueling had already blocked Ming Li, and a moment later the two were struck flying together by the Blackwater Mystic Serpent. Judging by their postures, both must be gravely wounded.

Lu Xueling was a disciple of Qingyun, needless to say; and Ming Li was the Zhang Qingyue of old, bound to all those present by the deepest of ties. At this sudden turn, the righteous cultivators came to their senses and at once swooped down, one after another. They could not stop this ancient demonic beast, but they hoped at least to lend the two a hand.

At the same time, Jin Pingyue quietly descended from the other side. Yet beneath the shadow of the Blackwater Mystic Serpent, her lovely eyes were fixed only on the brilliant golden light within the stone door of the Heaven Emperor's Treasure House, glittering bright in her gaze.

Far off, the newborn sun had climbed a little higher.

The sunlight fell, and upon the horizontal stroke of the character HEAVEN above the Treasure House, it had shifted up a little further.

Suddenly, the stone door—opened halfway, some three feet wide—abruptly stopped moving, and a moment later, incredibly, began to close again. And the golden light within it gradually dimmed.

Ming Li felt his whole body on the verge of bursting apart, yet he and Lu Xueling both remained conscious. It was only that the force of the Blackwater Mystic Serpent's charge had been so immense that he could not, in that hurried moment, control himself, and he saw that he was about to smash into the hard, thick stone door. At the speed he was going, even with the true doctrines of Buddhist, Daoist, and Demonic schools all protecting him, he would likely be shattered to pieces.

More terrible still: that stone door, with a low, muffled rumble, was slowly closing...

From afar, as though from midair, came the startled cries of Lin Jinghong and the others!

In that one instant, Ming Li's heart suddenly went dim and distant: faintly, dimly, it seemed there was a woman in water-green robes beneath the blue sky, smiling gently at him. Only—her smile, somehow, was a little blurred.

Time, in that instant, seemed suddenly to slow.

His body tumbled through the air. He saw the hideous face of the Blackwater Mystic Serpent coming up behind him; he saw the hard stone door slowly closing before him; and he saw, beside him, the white-robed woman drifting through the air as helplessly as he.

Suddenly he wanted very much to ask Lu Xueling: for what—for what would she risk her very life to stop him?

"Cheep, cheep, cheep!" Shrill as though at his very ear, the monkey Xiao Hui's cry jolted him awake. Xiao Hui had at some point run to the gap in the stone door and was bounding about in frantic agitation, shrieking at the top of its lungs—and by now the gap between the door's edges was less than two feet wide.

He was about to smash into the stone door.

He was about to reach the end of this life.

He was about to see the blue sky and white clouds come pressing down upon him.

If he gave up...

He gritted his teeth and spent his last ounce of strength to twist his body a few degrees. In that instant, from the corner of his eye, he glimpsed what lay ahead: that gap, aligned with him.

Perhaps he could cheat death after all?

He let out a breath, his whole body feeling as though it were about to die, without an ounce of strength left.

The wind howled bitterly—and yet he suddenly felt that someone was watching him.

He lifted his eyes.

Lu Xueling had at some point regained consciousness, and she was right beside him, flying in a direction that would surely dash her against the hard stone door. But for some reason, upon that pure, exquisite face, there was not the slightest fear.

In this moment of heaven and earth spinning, at this pass where life and death hung by a thread, she was borne helplessly toward death—and yet her face held no trace of sorrow, no trace of terror.

Like a night-blooming cereus, her figure dotted with crimson blood, amid the cries of horror from afar, before Ming Li—no, before the Zhang Qingyue of old—she suddenly smiled.

In that pale smile was a tenderness never before seen. In so bitter a wind, her lips parted and closed softly, gazing at the one beside her.

Four words passed through the wind, passed through the blood, and more than that passed through the years and time, hovering lightly through ten years, then lingering at his ear, echoing in the depths of his heart.

"You—come back..."

She closed her eyes, and her body seemed suddenly to sink, as though about to leave him—as though her last strength had vanished with the speaking of those four words.

Her black hair lifted, veiling one side of her pale face in the wind. The woman drifted with the wind, and yet at the corners of her lips there seemed still to linger a faint smile.

But what was it that echoed so fiercely in the depths of his heart, like a raging flood surging until all barriers gave way? All the things of this world may vanish—but this moment, that figure in white—

How could he let go?

How could he forsake her?

In his throat was a low, hoarse cry. In that nameless blur of tears he struggled; in the fierce, bitter wind he struggled; reaching out his hand, reaching out his hand, reaching out his hand...

And clenched tight!

Just as ten years ago, beside the Dead Spirit Abyss, amid countless rocks falling like rain, that woman in white had come toward him heedless of everything and caught his hand.

Clenched tight...

Before his last shred of awareness vanished, he spent all the strength in his body pulling that woman toward him.

Ahead lay the gap in the stone door, only a foot wide now; and the golden light within the door had by then vanished completely, leaving only darkness.

There was a faint warmth in his palm.

He closed his eyes. Boundless, endless darkness—just as ten years ago—came flooding over them, swallowing them whole.