Song Wen suddenly sensed a powerful surge of divine sense descending upon him.
"You fiend! Release Qing Lian at once!"
A furious shout exploded through the cavern, shaking the stone walls.
Immediately afterward, a howling gale rose, wrenching the river water outside the cavern into the air. Like the Sky River pouring down, it surged into the distance, suspended overhead.
In an instant, the river, several miles wide, ceased to flow.
The silt on the riverbed and the cavern's rock walls were swept away with it.
Song Wen and Qing Lian were immediately exposed to the daylight.
"Big Brother is here!" Qing Lian raised her head and looked up into the sky.
With that, she rose into the air.
Without the slightest hesitation, Song Wen hurried after her.
Qing Lian was his protective talisman. He absolutely could not afford to stray far from her.
They had only flown a few hundred feet when Song Wen noticed a figure approaching from the distant horizon.
The newcomer had a human torso and a serpent's tail. Her face seemed carved from ice and sculpted from jade, her skin was as smooth as snow, and her eyes were as cold as winter stars. Her long black hair streamed in the wind.
Her features bore some resemblance to Qing Lian's, but her beauty was colder and more striking.
She was dressed much like Qing Lian, with only two coverings over her ample chest-scales from some unknown demon beast, each merely palm-sized and utterly incapable of concealing those magnificent snowy peaks.
The greatest difference between her and Qing Lian lay on the underside of her serpent's tail. A crimson marking ran across the scales along its entire length, perhaps the origin of her name.
"Miss Qing Lian, this is your big brother?" Song Wen asked in