Chapter 12 Unexpected events always arrive before expectations. The courtyard remains the same…
The courtyard remained as calm as ever. Shi Wenzhe lowered her guard, leaning her back against the pillar, her fingers unconsciously tracing the stone slabs, her eyes lowered. She had thought she could stay like this until Qin Wenxue found them, but suddenly a bell rang in her mind. The sound seemed to come from a high mountain, its lingering echo appearing in her mind without warning, making her soul tremble.
She seemed to be under a spell, her eyes glazed over, and she stood up silently. She wore several red thread chains around her waist, with copper coins hanging from them and long red tassels dangling down to her shoes. The copper coins were not ordinary copper coins; they faintly shone with a golden light, and their design was also very special, with intricate and obscure patterns.
Shi Wenzhe noticed it when she woke up in the morning, but she couldn't take it off. She didn't know who had put it on her, but the waist chain was quite pretty, so she didn't care that she couldn't take it off.
She approached the golden light step by step like a puppet, but the dull surface of the copper coin began to glow faintly. With each step Shi Wenzhe took closer to the golden light, the faint light grew brighter. Finally, when she stretched out her fingertip to touch the golden light, the copper coin suddenly glowed red, and a burning sensation came from her thigh, as if it wanted to burn her through. Shi Wenzhe suddenly woke up and was so frightened that she retreated repeatedly.
There seemed to be some warmth left on her fingertips. She wasn't sure if she had actually touched the golden light, but the anxiety in her heart was growing stronger. She couldn't help but turn around to look at Ming Shu, only to see that Ming Shu seemed to be frozen in place, unable to move at all.
A sandstorm began to rise, and Shi Wenzhe heard the sound of the glass cover shattering. She looked around but didn't see anything. Her hair was disheveled and tangled, and the wind made her unsteady. Feeling helpless, she could only try to back away and run towards Ming Shu. But the moment she turned around, she felt a strange, stone-like object under her feet.
Her heart sank, feeling as if it were about to leap out of her chest. Fine beads of sweat appeared on her forehead, and the constant pounding of her heart filled her ears.
The sensation of something foreign under my feet grew stronger and stronger, and it was trembling slightly. Something underground was about to get out of control.
The sound of shattering followed one after another, and in an instant the earth shook. Shi Wenzhe was thrown to the ground, and Ming Shu also thawed in an instant. His arm, which had been frozen in mid-air, fell down and hit his moon-white clothes.
"You heard about this?!" he exclaimed in surprise. "What happened to you?"
Shi Wenzhe didn't care much about the cuts on her arms from the stones on the ground. She propped herself up and tried to get closer to Ming Shu, but the earthquake came unexpectedly. As the ground shook, she moved further and further away from Ming Shu. Something behind her seemed to be pulling her towards the ancestral hall.
She exclaimed in alarm, "Ming Shu!"
Seeing that the situation was not right, Ming Shu swung out a long blue whip. The sound of the whip cutting through the air came from afar. Shi Wenzhe felt a tightness in her waist and was pulled over, landing in Ming Shu's arms. In that instant, she heard the other party's rapid heartbeat. Shi Wenzhe's body tensed up, her whole body went cold, and she was about to dodge backward, but he held her still.
"What are you touching?" Ming Shu scolded. "Didn't I tell you not to touch these things?"
Shi Wenzhe didn't know how to explain, so he could only whisper, "I'm sorry."
"Never mind." He shielded Shi Wenzhe behind him, watching the great formation warily. The golden light on the formation rippled like waves.
Ming Shu's back was stiff; everything was out of control.
The clear moonlight was gradually shrouded in a layer of blood mist, and the hoarse cries of birds pierced through the clouds, as a sudden change occurred.
The courtyard was shattered, the sky collapsed, withered trees fell to the ground, rocks flew everywhere, and everything began to crumble, changing beyond recognition in an instant. Only the ancestral hall remained standing firm, as if it were unaffected by the chaos.
If the white whip begins to glow, the hazy white-blue halo is like clouds in the sky, indistinct and vague. Sometimes, through the halo, one can almost see a distorted, chaotic plain stretching for miles, but in an instant, that plain transforms into a small courtyard.
Ming Shu gripped the whip tightly and said in a deep voice, "This is not good."
Shi Wenzhe's eyes were bloodshot. She didn't know if what she had just seen was an illusion. Ming Shu was on high alert. She didn't want to make him worry about useless things at this moment.
“I’m truly powerless now,” he sighed, giving Shi Wenzhe a bitter smile. “Remember to stay close to me. I can only protect you from death, but when you get out alive depends on Yun Jin.”
"Can they find us?" Shi Wenzhe asked softly, unsure of himself.
"Yes." He raised an eyebrow, seemingly unconcerned about his current predicament. His eyes held the carefree spirit of youth, but Shi Wenzhe's heart calmed down in his bright, fox-like eyes. She smiled and joked, "If you're so sure, is she your Daoist partner?"
Ming Shu seemed to have heard something incredible. His calm and composed demeanor instantly turned chaotic. He didn't even know what to do with his hands and feet, and waved his hands repeatedly, saying, "You...you mustn't be talking nonsense."
Shi Wenzhe looked at his bright red ears and laughed happily.
She affirmed, "That must be the person you've fallen for."
Ming Shu was speechless. He just stared at Shi Wenzhe with his fox-like eyes, a blush spreading across his cheeks and burning down to his eyebrows and eyes, like a layer of rouge cloud covering the distant green mountains.
Shi Wenzhe politely looked away.
She changed the subject and asked, "Will Qin Wenxue come too?"
Ming Shu did not reply.
Shi Wenzhe repeated, "Hmm?"
Ming Shu coughed lightly to cover up his discomfort, his throat tightening considerably. He stammered, "Yes...yes, I might discover it even earlier than Yun Jin." With the Heart-Protecting Incantation in place, his soul was connected to Qin Wenxue's.
"Enough talk, follow me." Ming Shu glanced in the direction of the ancestral hall and ran towards it. The wind lifted his clothes, and the hem of his clothes brushed against Shi Wenzhe's drooping fingertips. She smelled a faint, cool fragrance that seemed somewhat familiar.
Without thinking about where she had smelled it, she ran after Ming Shu's footsteps. The closer she got to the ancestral hall, the more obvious the strong suction became. Shi Wenzhe and it were, in a sense, heading towards each other in a two-way race.
If the whip lashed out at the great formation with the force of a thunderbolt, it produced a tremendous sound. Shi Wenzhe felt as if his ears went deaf for a moment, and then a buzzing sound spread through them.
The wind ruffled her hair. Under Ming Shu's continuous attacks, the golden array finally flickered and disappeared as if due to a malfunction, only to reappear in the next moment. Over and over again, a loud cracking sound was heard, as if a huge hole had been torn in the sky, and tiny golden specks of light fell from the heavens like a vast and beautiful meteor shower, quietly descending upon the world.
Ming Shu turned to look at her. At that moment, the gale in the formation surged up, blowing his hair into a mess. Only then did Shi Wenzhe realize that Ming Shu had white hair, with a few strands hidden among his black hair. If it hadn't been blown away by the wind, it would have been impossible to tell.
Shi Wenzhe looked at the thin layer of sweat on Ming Shu's forehead and thought that he seemed very tired, but the tiredness was somewhat abnormal. It was more like he was being suppressed by something, causing his spiritual energy to be disordered and his whole body to be weak. However, Ming Shu still stood very straight, his eyes were bright and he was neither humble nor arrogant.
He smiled reassuringly at Shi Wenzhe, flicked the whip in his hand, and the Ruosu whip wrapped around his wrist. Mingshu pointed to the ancestral hall, and Shi Wenzhe looked up and saw that the golden light was full of mottled cracks. Mingshu reached out his fingertip and touched it lightly, and it turned into dust and vanished into nothingness.
The earthquake seemed to be shocked as well, stopping for a moment, but then it became gleeful and began to rage even more violently.
"Let's go!" Ming Shu escorted Shi Wenzhe toward the ancestral hall. Behind them came cracking sounds, the ground had sunk, and Shi Wenzhe smelled a decaying odor. The old ancestral hall in front of her remained unchanged, standing firm against wind and rain. She looked up and met the dark brown lintel, as if sensing an inappropriate fear from it.
She doesn't understand.
But Ming Shu's movements were skillful, showing that he truly knew the place inside and out.
The moment she stepped into the ancestral hall, a strong pull came from behind. Shi Wenzhe only had time to reach out to protect her clothes before she was thrown backward. The roof was reflected and spun in her eyes, and the wind was whistling in her ears. Ming Shu turned around and saw the vulnerability and shock that she couldn't hide in her eyes.
He thought to himself, "So Shi Wenzhe's eyes are like the smoky gray pebbles scattered on the beach of Wuwang, even a little clear and transparent. If there were sunlight, they might even be tinged with a warm sun color, which would be quite beautiful."
However, the moment his gaze fell upon Shi Wenzhe's back, Ming Shu's fox fur nearly bristled, and Ruo Su whip moved silently, whipping towards the ghostly hand clinging to Shi Wenzhe's shoulder and neck.
Everything in her field of vision seemed incredibly long. "It's too close," she thought. "Will I get hit by Ruosu's whip if I don't move? If I get hit, so be it, because she can't stand that hideous ghost hand on her shoulder. It's just... just too smelly."
Ming Shu looked at Shi Wenzhe, who was still in a daze, and shouted, "Shi Wenzhe! Are you stupid?!"
Shi Wenzhe seemed to wake from a dream, and the next second she landed on the ground. A sharp pain shot through her back from the impact of a hard object. She rolled a few times after landing, dodging the rotting corpse that would be reduced to smoke by Ruosu's whip.
"Ugh—" She couldn't help but vomit, lying on the ground like a dead dog barely clinging to life.
Ming Shu flashed and appeared next to Shi Wenzhe in the next instant. He reached out and helped the limp Shi Wenzhe up, and without saying a word, he pulled him into the ancestral hall.
Shi Wen was like a tattered rag doll, at the mercy of others, and she had no strength to care. The incident just now seemed to have scared her soul away.
The main thing is... Shi Wenzhe closed her eyes, unwilling to face reality, but the tearing and screaming sounds in her ears were not an illusion at all! She opened her eyes and looked into the courtyard. Countless rotting corpses and white bones were climbing out from the cracks. The ancestral hall was completely surrounded. Shi Wenzhe and Ming Shu were like two innocent birds that had fallen into a desperate situation. No matter how capable they were, they could not fly out of this small ancestral hall.
Shi Wenzhe stumbled and was about to sit down on the ground when Ming Shu was caught off guard and pulled down, his body shifting, and he used all his strength in his hands.
"Ouch—it hurts so much." Shi Wen's voice trembled with pain.
Ming Shu's fox-like eyes almost popped out: "Hey...hey, I just didn't mean to, look..." He pointed to the stiff and clumsy rotting corpses and bones: "Look, I had no choice. They look as clumsy as oxen, but they move too fast. Get up and hide in the ancestral hall."
"Wait a minute..." Shi Wenzhe's voice trembled with tears: "I sprained my ankle."
"Heavens!" Ming Shu was struck dumb.
The bones piled up one after another, reaching all the way to the sky. The only light in their sight was the dim candlelight in the ancestral hall, but a layer of dark green fluorescence floated on the rotting corpses and bones, like bone-eating flying insects.
Ming Shu looked anxious and said to Shi Wenzhe, "I'm sorry."
Shi Wenzhe's body was suspended in mid-air when Ming Shu picked her up. The feeling of being suspended in the air made her grip Ming Shu's sleeve tightly, but her sense of propriety prevented her from getting too close to him.
A note from the author:
----------------------
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
