Chapter 31 — Suspicion

It was like a passage into the underworld: a vast whirlpool, pitch-black and unfathomably deep, hung inverted across the sky like the gaping maw of a demon from the Nine Hells, ready to devour everything in the world. A bitter gale howled, scouring the clouds to shreds. Thunder rumbled and lightning writhed.

Zhang Qingyue dove in, the dark iron staff flaring with a blue-black radiance that stood out starkly beneath the black clouds filling the heavens. Lu Xueqi watched him come, wrapped in that blue light, and her jade-white face turned ashen.

"The True Art of the Divine Sword That Commands Thunder" was the supreme marvel of Daoist immortal arts, summoning the ultimate might of heaven and earth through the body of a mortal. One could well imagine the immense strain Lu Xueqi's body was enduring at that moment. "Tianxuan" was a divine weapon such as the world had rarely seen, and by rights the perfect blade for working this art—but compared with it, Lu Xueqi's own cultivation was simply not enough.

At that instant she felt the boundless force in the clouds above surging into her body like a furious, pounding tide. To outsiders her body seemed unchanged, but within, her blood and breath churned and boiled, nearly bursting her apart. Had Tianxuan not ceaselessly drawn off that torrent of gathered power, Lu Xueqi would long since have collapsed.

The wind screamed, the thunder roared; she stood suspended in the void, and in her daze nearly fancied herself a frail blade of grass in the storm. The next moment she remembered what her master, Shuiyue, had said when she passed down this marvel: "Xueqi, your gifts are the finest I have seen in my life, but this true art is too powerful, and so its backlash is equally irresistible. Your years of cultivation are still shallow; though you can just manage to grasp it, you must never use it at will, lest it bring down utter ruin upon you."

"Boom!"

A thunderclap burst almost directly overhead, above Receiving Heaven Peak; everyone faintly felt the ground shudder beneath their feet, as though the ancient thunder god had been roused from his slumber and roared in fury.

In an instant every face changed.

Zhang Qingyue was now only two zhang from Lu Xueqi. At such a display, anyone could see that once her casting was complete, he would be reduced to flying ash. But suddenly his whole body tightened, and he came to a halt as though he had struck a soft wall, unable to advance another step.

In that instant Zhang Qingyue's face went dead gray. "The True Art of the Divine Sword That Commands Thunder" was one of the Canglan Sect's founding marvels, wondrous beyond compare: in the casting it naturally laid an invisible ward around the caster through the divine weapon, and Zhang Qingyue could not get in.

The dark iron staff blazed brighter still, yet could not advance a single step. Perhaps in sheer spiritual power his staff was not inferior to Tianxuan, but in method he was far outmatched; he could only drive the staff's might with his own spiritual power, which could never compare to Lu Xueqi's supreme art, tempered through the ages by generation upon generation of Canglan's founding masters.

But at this moment of despair, just as the giant whirlpool overhead spun faster, the lightning and thunder raged, the radiance of the divine sword Tianxuan grew brighter and brighter, and this peerless immortal art was about to be completed—Lu Xueqi suddenly convulsed. Her pale face flushed crimson in an instant, and with a "wa" she spat out a great mouthful of fresh blood, almost forming a mist of blood before her.

The light of the divine sword Tianxuan wavered at once, as though unsteady. Lu Xueqi clenched her silver teeth, closed her eyes, and gathered all her heart and spirit into Tianxuan. After a moment the light steadied, and instead blazed brighter than before—dazzling, too bright to look upon.

A tremendous crash sounded from the black clouds; at the deepest heart of the giant whirlpool a light seemed to appear—countless bolts of lightning converging into one, faintly aimed straight at the divine sword Tianxuan in Lu Xueqi's hands.

But in Lu Xueqi's heart there was only despair. Amid the wind came a shrill shriek, just as she had feared. She had thrown all her strength into guarding Tianxuan, and had none left for the ward around her. Zhang Qingyue, overjoyed, dissolved with his dark iron staff into a pillar of spreading blue light, streaked across the sky, and charged the beautiful woman swaying in the wind.

Was this how it ended?

Was everything to stop here?

Her heart suddenly grew calm, and in that instant she thought, faintly, such a thought.

In that instant—that brief instant—heaven and earth were silent, frozen; all things stood still, and only she stood in the wind, garments fluttering, black hair streaming, opening the eyes she had closed, gazing at the streak of blue light rushing toward her.

That moment seemed eternal.

Zhang Qingyue saw her—and saw her eyes.

She stood alone in the wind and rain, facing the terrible might of heaven and earth, yet so serene; only her face was faintly pale, and in her eyes there was a trace of sorrow, and a flicker of alarm.

The wind and rain screamed; the world was desolate. This beautiful woman gazed at him in silence.

Whose eyes were those, so sorrowful and so bleak, as though—last night—that person had been wounded by love! That pain had sunk deep into the marrow, deep into the soul.

Deep. Deep.

Was it you—the woman who loved another?

Did you pledge yourself to him with iron resolve, never to regret it in this life?

Zhang Qingyue suddenly smiled, with a trace of sorrow and a heart gone dead, as though it were last night again.

The dark iron staff melted into the radiance of the divine sword Tianxuan; no one could see the two figures any longer, nor see that the staff's light had suddenly dimmed. At that moment a tremendous crash sounded from the heavens, and an inconceivably vast pillar of lightning descended from the sky onto Tianxuan.

The whole world, all the gods and buddhas of heaven, seemed to chant in unison at the same instant.

A gigantic pillar of light refracted from Tianxuan, carrying the force to destroy heaven and earth, and rushed at Zhang Qingyue. At the moment of life and death, the dark iron staff leapt into the air and shielded its master.

The next moment, Zhang Qingyue was swallowed by the light.

A long time. A long time. A long time.

The black clouds scattered; the radiance vanished.

The crowd stared blankly at the sky, at that youth clutching a black iron staff, falling straight down like a stone battered and scarred by every torment.

He did not hit the ground. Tian Buhui appeared beneath him like a ghost and caught him. Tian Buhui's face was grave; his hand moved like wind, prying open the mouth of the senseless Zhang Qingyue, pulling a small bottle from his robe, and—heedless of measure—pouring the yellow pills straight down Zhang Qingyue's throat.

The pills dissolved the moment they touched his tongue. Tian Buhui said not a word, sprang up, and a crimson light rose at once, bearing him away swift as wind and lightning; he did not so much as glance back at the arena. By the look of that direction, he was returning to Dazhu Peak.

Su Wan and the rest of the Dazhu Peak party followed one after another.

Then the pale-faced Lu Xueqi descended, and was at once surrounded by the overjoyed disciples of Xiaozhu Peak. Amid her senior and junior sisters' embraces, she raised her head without a word and gazed at that crimson streak in the sky, fading into the distance until it vanished, saying nothing.

He seemed to have slept in darkness for a thousand years, longing to wake yet unable to open his eyes; in the boundless, sunken dark, he was utterly alone.

Yet he was utterly unwilling to walk alone through this darkness—and yet, apart from the darkness, there was no road to take.