Chapter 145 — Meeting

It should be to save Bili, surely—if he could bring her back to life, he would die content! This thought he had turned over in his heart on countless nights across ten years, how many times he could not say. And yet that face like frost, in the end, he could never bring himself to cast aside; in some quiet corner of his heart, it drifted gently still...

For a moment he was lost to himself. The night wind sighed, and how long passed he did not know; when he started awake, the youth had vanished. Taotie, too, seemed to have just leapt into the sky, melting into the dark curtain of night, its low roaring carried faintly from afar.

Little Grey darted up onto his shoulder with two soft cheeps. Ming Li slowly lifted his head to the sky and murmured, "Little Grey... I still have to see her once more, don't I?"

Little Grey did not quite seem to understand, and cared even less. It lifted its monkey head to the sky as well, as though still searching for some trace of Taotie.

The dying embers of the fire turned slowly to a wisp of thin smoke and drifted gently away. Ming Li and Little Grey stood in silence amid the deep mountain woods—a long, long while. Only a faint murmur drifted on the night wind.

"...I still have to see her once..."

As time passed, this catastrophe only grew more savage. Monstrous beasts and alien tribes had already broken into the Central Plains, and the common folk suffered grievous slaughter. Most of the Orthodox disciples sent out to scout simply vanished; the few with somewhat deeper cultivation who returned came back wounded, and in their reports to their masters they spoke in the gravest terms of the horrors of the beasts.

The world was drowned in misery, and the Orthodox cultivators were at their wit's end. It was at just this moment that word went out: the Canglan Sect, the Brahma Sound Temple, and the Flaming Sunset Valley—the three great Orthodox sects—would convene an alliance at Canglan Mountain, and they invited all Orthodox cultivators under heaven to join together against this calamity. At once cultivators from every corner of the world began converging on Canglan Mountain. Within a few days, tens of thousands had gathered around it—a thing never seen before—and most of them were refugees from the Central Plains. In their eyes, these immortal-seeming cultivators of Canglan Mountain were their last hope.

The Canglan Sect, charged with receiving them, was run off its feet. More and more fellow cultivators and common folk poured into Qingyun, and soon the guest quarters on Receiving Heaven Peak could hold no more; the other branches were obliged to open their doors as well. Fortunately the Canglan Sect was, after all, a sect a thousand years old, deep-rooted and great in substance, and in the end it managed to take them all in. Only the Little Bamboo Peak branch, which had always been made up of female disciples—and whose Abbess Shuijing was of so peculiar a temper—did not open its doors, to the great disappointment of many young disciples of other sects who had long admired it from afar.

Be that as it may, though the great calamity was upon them, this was still an unprecedented gathering of the Orthodox path. The Canglan Sect, as host, saw its prestige rise higher than ever, and it seemed the world was quietly coming to look to Qingyun for leadership; Daoist Sage Daoyan, sect master of Canglan, now sat firmly in the position of the foremost man under heaven.

Night fell, and every peak of the Canglan range blazed with light—a spectacle the like of which had not been seen in a thousand years. Even far below the mountain, as the mountain wind blew, one could faintly hear the loud laughter and talk of the people high above. In such circumstances, those frightened by the catastrophe seemed to breathe a little easier. After all, even if the sky were to fall, was there not still a Canglan Mountain overhead?

And at this moment the quietest place on Canglan Mountain was, perhaps, none other than Little Bamboo Peak. After the Canglan Sect had politely explained matters, every sect strictly restrained its disciples and forbade them to go near Little Bamboo Peak—for if, under the present circumstances, some farce of lecherous young rakes were still to be stirred up, no one's face would look good.

Compared with the bustle on the other peaks, Little Bamboo Peak seemed far more serene. Now and then two or three pretty young female disciples would pass along the mountain path; the mountain breeze blew softly, and the tear-bamboo covering the slopes swayed all together with a rustling whisper.

That night the moonlight was clear and cold, falling upon the mountain path of Little Bamboo Peak. Bamboo shadows danced, wavering to and fro across the stone steps. From afar came four or five young female disciples, and at their head was Wen Pei. All of them, Wen Pei included, wore somewhat gloomy expressions, brows knitted, as though weighed down by heavy thoughts.

A cold wind blew through the bamboo grove, and something like a dark shadow seemed to flit past.

Beside Wen Pei walked the youngest girl of them all, who looked to be about thirteen and was rather timid. She glanced toward the shadows, her face a little pale, and drew close to Wen Pei, clutching at her sleeve. "S-senior Sister," she whispered, "there—there seems to be someone over there!"

Wen Pei and the others started and all looked that way at once. After a moment Wen Pei smiled and patted the little girl's cheek. "Xiaoshi, that's just the mountain wind stirring the bamboo—the shadows of the branches swaying. It's like that every night. You've only just come up the mountain; give it a while and you'll see."

The girl called Xiaoshi breathed a sigh of relief, though she was still a little frightened. Then, as though something had occurred to her, she suddenly turned and glanced toward the rear mountain. "Senior Sister, there isn't a soul around that Moon-Gazing Terrace on the rear mountain, and it's all these—these gloomy, shadowy things everywhere. Leaving Senior Sister Xueqi out there all alone—won't she be scared?"

Wen Pei's face fell, and she sighed. "It was the sect leader, our martial uncle, who ordered your senior sister Xueqi to do her penance there. There's nothing we can do about it. Still, I doubt senior sister Xueqi would be afraid."

Another woman standing behind Wen Pei gave a sudden snort, plainly indignant. "I really can't understand it. Why does the sect leader have to treat Xueqi this way, just because she refused the marriage proposal from Flaming Sunset Valley?"

Crack. Somewhere deep in the bamboo grove there seemed to be a faint sound, as if some small creature had snapped a bamboo branch underfoot. But the women's attention was all caught up just then, and none of them heard it. Only little Shi, the youngest, seemed to suspect something; she glanced toward the depths of the grove, saw the shadows swaying, and could not help turning pale again. She quickly looked away.

Wen Pei sighed. "Actually, that senior brother Li Xun really isn't bad at all. Handsome and well-born, and most likely the position of Valley Master of Flaming Sunset Valley will pass to him in the end. And from the way he looks at her, he clearly treasures Xueqi dearly. But when it comes to matters of the heart, one truly cannot force such things."

Another woman suddenly grumbled under her breath, "Master is really too much. She knows Xueqi's temper well enough—why won't she put in a word for her with the sect leader?"

The first woman shook her head. "I don't think that's it. Xueqi used to obey Master above all others, and she respected our martial uncle Daoyan deeply as well. But this time she openly defied the two of them on Heaven-Reaching Peak. I think..." She suddenly lowered her voice. "Could it be that Xueqi already has someone in her heart..."