Ding Songyan pointed his sword at Zheng Zhuxi from afar. The crystalline tip, gleaming with cold light, abruptly and eerily grew larger, as though it had crossed mountains and seas in an instant.
In Zheng Zhuxi's eyes, that sword tip rapidly filled her entire field of vision.
Dressed in a blue-black robe with a curved, wrapping hem, she carried a palace lantern and walked beside a surging river, swaying like a willow caressed by the breeze. She felt the damp heat of the summer night and the eerie chill that followed the opening of the ghost gates.
The palace lantern cast a warm, yellowish glow, dissolving some of the hundred ghosts abroad that night and driving others far away. Every human who had yet to return home was freed from danger and put at ease.
Listening to their repeated thanks, she felt heartfelt joy as an attendant of the goddess Zhuguang.
Suddenly, a youth several yards away called out earnestly:
"Today you light my way; another day, I'll light yours!"
Within the Xiaoming Sect's Mountain Gate beside the great river.
She crowded around the entrance to a secret passage with her fellow disciples. Beyond the hall, battle cries and screams rose everywhere, and she saw several terrifying Heterodox Path titans with bizarre appearances join forces to smash the heavy doors.
"Run, all of you," her master said swiftly, yet calmly. "I'll hold them off. It's chiefly me they want to kill."
With that, the Great Grandmaster held a sword across the chest, turned, and went to meet those fiends and followers of the Outer Dao.
Her vision blurred at once. Swept along by the crowd, she staggered into a headlong flight through the secret passage.
As they fled south, her senior and junior martial uncles, her senior sisters, and