The light dimmed further, but the scene before them grew clearer.
A vast, boundless cliff stood before them. Its surface was smooth as jade, and it was pitch-black from top to bottom. Its height was impossible to guess, but surely several thousand zhang. The instant it came into view, no one paid attention to the cliff's towering majesty. Every gaze was drawn to the figure carved into its face.
It was the likeness of a middle-aged Daoist priest, his hair bound in a simple topknot and his plain robe hanging loose. His features were unadorned, his head tilted slightly upward as if surveying the vault of heaven. His eyes held neither sorrow nor joy.
The priest's figure was immeasurably imposing. The cliff stretched for thousands of zhang in every direction, yet it still seemed unable to contain his form.
The instant the priest's likeness entered his eyes, Xu Yi felt a deep, resonant clang rise in his heart, like the tolling of a great bell. For no reason he could name, he was overcome by a sense of his own lowliness, as though he ought to prostrate himself and bow in worship.
Just then, the light before them dimmed still further. He finally made out its shape: a huge, irregularly shaped luminous object, moving toward the cliff.
Xu Yi and the Nameless One raced forward at full speed. In the blink of an eye, they had covered another twenty-odd li and finally saw the luminous object in full. It was a fragment of a chart.
The design on the fragment was identical to the pattern at the left side of the collar on the robe of the sky-gazing priest carved into the cliff.
The glowing fragment was slowly moving toward the left side of the priest's collar.
A fragment of