Yin Wujou could hardly believe his eyes. He stood behind the stalactites, staring intently at the creature's tail—a section of bone, missing flesh, protruded from the tip of the tail, the same tentacle he had seen in the liquid pool. The creature was retreating along the path from which the water elemental energy had come, each step slow but its direction certain, sinking deeper into the underground along the tunnel.
The tremors on the ground gradually subsided. With each step the Demonic Flood Dragon retreated from the Dao Yi, the pulsation emanating from the depths of the earth weakened. When its last tail disappeared from the cave entrance, only the amber light of the array itself and the lingering stench remained in the entire cave.
Yin Wujou stood there for the time it takes to drink a cup of tea. The tremors completely stopped, and the stone slabs on the ground returned to their cold, hard state. Even the faint pulsation of the earth's veins could no longer be heard. He quickly walked to the edge of the circular pit, squatted down, and gently touched Snow Empress's shoulder.
Snow Empress opened her eyes. Her face was paler than before, and the emerald ball of light in her palm had shrunk to the size of a walnut, still slowly rotating. She glanced at Yin Wujou, then at the empty entrance of the passage, and let out a long breath.
"It went back," she said.
"We're back." Yin Wujou repeated, the tension that had been suppressed for so long finally dissipating in his voice, turning into a faint, relieved laugh. "You did it. The array diagram has been reactivated; after Shui Ling guided it back, the array power of the entire side passage was sealed off."
Snow Empress slowly pressed the shrunken ball of light in her palm into the copper sphere. When she stood up from the pit, her legs were a little numb, and she staggered. Yin Wujou reached out and supported her arm. After she stood up, she looked up at him and noticed a faint red under his eyes. It was not clear in the amber light, but she could see it very clearly.
She said nothing, only pulled her hand out of his palm and bent down to pick up the neatly folded outer robe. After putting it on, she spoke, her voice regaining its usual cool and crisp tone. "Let's go back to the Wujou Hall. There are still several lines on that piece of paper you drew to reinforce the formation that you haven't finished deducing. While I still remember the details of the power flow in the formation diagram, go back and complete them."
"Good!"
When Yin Wujou pushed open the heavy ironwood gate of the Wujou Hall, the dawn light of Yin Shi had not yet penetrated into the courtyard. The entire palace was shrouded in a stagnant, dark blue, soaked in the night. Only the two ever-burning glass lamps under the corridor were still lit, and the bluish-white flames dancing on the wicks cast long, slanted shadows of the two people, overlapping and falling on the stone slab in front of the threshold.
Daoist Yun followed closely behind them, still clutching the oil lamp that had been put away. As he got older, his legs became less agile, but tonight he walked exceptionally fast. The three of them emerged from the underground cave and crossed three hidden channels back to the territory of the Wujou Hall, and he didn't fall behind by even a step.
Yin Wujou stopped at the threshold, turning aside to let the Snow Empress enter first. As she brushed past him, the breeze from her sleeve carried a strange scent of water spirit tea mixed with the slime of Demonic Flood Dragon; the latter was so strong that it made her feel as if she were enveloped in an invisible, fishy mist. She walked to the bronze sphere in the center of the hall, bent down, and picked up the walnut-sized, emerald-green orb of light from the groove at the top of the sphere, holding it in her palm. The light illuminated her face, clearly revealing the excessive paleness between her brows and eyes.
"Let's leave it for now." Yin Wujou followed and stood beside her. "Hold that spiritual orb down. Most of the water elemental energy inside has already been used up. Forcing it into the array now won't replenish much. Let's take a break and talk about it later."
Snow Empress didn't turn around to look at him. She simply pressed the ball of light back into the groove and straightened up. Her posture was exactly the same as usual, her back ramrod straight and her shoulders taut. But Yin Wujou noticed that the fingers of her hand hanging by her side were trembling slightly. It was a very subtle tremor, so subtle that it was almost imperceptible unless one looked closely. But he noticed it.
"What happened to your hand?" he asked.
Snow Empress turned her hand over and looked at her fingertips. "It's nothing," she said. "I sat in the center of the formation for too long, and my blood circulation was poor." After she finished speaking, she walked around the bronze ball to the long couch covered with animal skin on the east wall and sat down. She pulled up the collar of her outer robe and added, "Spread out the paper first. I remember the direction of those patterns. Draw them on while your mind is still clear."
Yin Wujou didn't move. He stood beside the bronze ball, watching her, his gaze moving from her face to the hand she was using to gather her collar, then back to her face. " Snow Empress," he said, "How long have you been in the array's core? From the time you sat down to the time you stood up, have you counted it yourself?"
Snow Empress looked up at him. Her eyes seemed brighter than usual in the dim light of the hall, the luster in her pupils possessing a clear, transparent quality as if washed clean, but a faint layer of red veins covered the whites of her eyes. "Less than half an incense stick's time," she said, "You just watch from the side, you know what's going on."
"Half an incense stick's time." Yin Wujou repeated the three words, his Adam's apple bobbing slightly. Half an incense stick's time, while that thing was absorbing the water elemental energy at the edge of the array, she sat motionless in the center of the array's core, the ball of light in her palm continuously emitting emerald light threads that poured into the patterns of the array. The entire array was maintained at its brightest state by her own spiritual energy for so long; he didn't know how much that must have consumed, but he remembered the moment she opened her eyes when he squatted down by the round pit and touched her shoulder—the light in her pupils was so dim it was almost invisible, like an oil lamp that had been blown down to a single flame by the wind.
"Half an incense stick's time, and all the blood and energy in your body has been drained by the array to infuse the patterns." Yin Wujou's voice was very low, so low that Daoist Yun had been standing behind him for a moment, silently retreated outside the hall. "And now you're sitting here telling me you're alright?"
Snow Empress looked at him. After a few moments, she suddenly smiled, the curve of her lips extremely slight, like a fleeting moon reflection on water. " Yin Wujou," she said, "When did you become so long-winded?"
Yin Wujou at her words. Just as he was about to say something, he suddenly noticed that the hand she was using to gather her collar slid down an inch, revealing a small patch of skin on the side of her neck. The color of that patch was wrong—he had seen the Snow Empress's skin before; those whose skin was perpetually bathed in a watery aura had a translucent white base, like a thin porcelain blank covered with a layer of clear glaze. But the patch of skin on the side of her neck that he saw now had an unnatural bluish-gray hue, extending from above her collarbone all the way to her ears. The veins were faintly protruding beneath that bluish-gray, like tree roots winding beneath a thin layer of soil.