344 Where Does the Rainbow Come From?

The monster tide was like an ocean and that shadow obscured the sky, butZhexiu carried Qi Jian and continuously ran off in the exact oppositedirection. Qi Jian maintained her weak consciousness and pointed the way,correcting him on occasion when he began straying from the right direction.However, both time and space in this plain were problematic. No matter how fastZhexiu ran, he still could not escape this plain. For this reason, after he hadmade a little distance between them and that shadow, he stopped and took asmall rest. At the same time, he began to consider what he should do next. Itwas just at this moment that countless sword glows appeared in the sky—justlike this, the Sword Sea appeared in the plain behind them. When Qi Jian, who was resting on his shoulder, saw this scene, she was stunnedinto silence and her body became extremely rigid. "What happened?" Zhexiu asked. Qi Jian's voice was somewhat shaky as she replied, "It seems… it seems likethe Sword Pool has appeared." Zhexiu was quiet, then said, "Continue." The battle on the plain between the monster tide and the myriad swords did notaffect they who were so far away. That magnificent and momentous battle,through Qi Jian's monotonous voice, became much more tedious, but Zhexiu stilllistened attentively, because he knew that this strange activity might be thelast chance the pair had to escape this plain. Finally, when Qi Jian describedhow those myriad swords had flown up into the sky for the final time andtransformed into a golden dragon and engulfed the Golden-winged Great Peng, heaccurately grasped an important fact. "The sword at the very front…was a dagger?" Qi Jian's injuries had not yet recovered. In the course of these many days offlight through this plain, she had grown extremely weak. If it were not for thefact that she needed to give Zhexiu directions, she would have droppedunconscious at any time. However, ever since she was a child, she hadcultivated in the path of the sword, so her eyes were like two intelligentswords, able to get a crystal-clear view of things that were far away anddescribe them very definitively. Hearing her words, Zhexiu immediately put her on his back and once again beganto make his way in the opposite direction of that battle. Qi Jian asked, "Did you recognize that sword?" Zhexiu replied, "That was Chen Changsheng's dagger." Qi Jian was confused. She asked in surprise, "It was Chen Changsheng? Then…shouldn't we go and help him?" Previously, she had seen very clearly that although that dagger had led thatlegion of swords in victory over the Golden-winged Great Peng, it was veryobviously on its last legs. If it really was Chen Changsheng that was battlingwith the demons in the plains, how could Zhexiu, as his companion, just leavehim be? Hearing her question, Zhexiu's feet actually began to move even faster as heanswered. "If he can resolve that problem, he doesn't require our help. If hecan't resolve it, it can only buy us some time. If this is the case, if we wereto turn around, we would just be wasting the opportunity to survive that hefound for us." Qi Jian had grown up in the Mount Li Sword Sect and had grown accustomed tothe mutual affection and assistance her fellow disciples provided to eachother, never leaving each other behind, so she was unable to understandZhexiu's way of thinking. Just as she was thinking of a rebuttal, Zhexiu flatlyand emotionlessly continued, "If it was me fighting the demons and ChenChangsheng carrying Xu Yourong away, I am confident that he would also not turnback." Qi Jian was still somewhat unwilling to accept these words, but she finallydecided to remain silent. Because Zhexiu had said that Chen Changsheng wouldmake the same choice and then had also compared himself and her to ChenChangsheng and Xu Yourong, she did not know how to respond. Zhexiu continued to run forward through the surrounding plain. Just at thismoment, a clear light landed in the sky. Soon after, a piece of the sky felldown on the plains, followed by an explosion. They were suddenly assailed by aberserk gale, and then a fierce shaking knocked them over into the grass. Zhexiu laboriously stood up in the water and asked, "What's the situation?" Qi Jian stared at the distant sky, her face pale as she said, "It seems… thatthe sky is falling." Zhexiu quietly stood for a few moments, then carried her out of the grass andcontinued to run to the edge of the plain. The sky truly was about to fall. Countless streams of frenzied energy engulfedthe entire plain in a storm, then easily tore through the restrictions at theedge of the plain. As one got closer to the edge of the plain to access otherareas of the Garden of Zhou, all around could be seen monstrous tears. Itseemed like the edge of this world's destruction. Zhexiu and Qi Jian were very fortunate. As they ran, none of those stormsbrought about by the clear light struck them. Even more fortunate was that theappearance of the Heavenly Tome Monolith had sent heaven and earth into chaos,dashing to pieces the restrictions around the plains. The different regions nolonger ran on different times and the segmentation of space also disappeared. Just like that, they ran. They ran out of the Plains of the Unsetting Sun andarrived below Sunset Valley. It was still night in the Garden of Zhou. The sphere of light that distantlyshined at Sunset Valley was no longer as calm and beautiful as it once was. Thestorms brought about by the appearance of the Heavenly Tomes had alreadyreached this place. Massive rocks were falling from the cliffs of SunsetValley, as if it had just been struck by a fearsome earthquake. And thisearthquake was still going. Suffering the pain from the wound on her abdomen and the effects of themedicine, Qi Jian fiercely clung to consciousness. Through the mountainsscattered with fallen stones, she guided Zhexiu. Zhexiu once again transformed,his sharp claws digging into the earth, soaring, leaping, running, and plungingthrough the cliffs, time and time again narrowly avoiding a landslide. Finally,he arrived at one of the gardens at the edge of the Garden of Zhou. As soon as Qi Jian saw a girl dressed in the ceremonial garb of the ThirteenDivisions of Radiant Green, that breath she had been holding for this entiretime instantly was all let out. She could hold on no longer and instantly fellunconscious. This was the Mountainside Whispering Wood, a place where the human cultivatorshad gathered. To Zhexiu, Chen Changsheng, and the others that had entered thePlains of the Unsetting Sun, several dozen days had passed. To these humancultivators, not that much time had passed. Of course, to them, the time thathad gone by was already long enough. Because of the demon’s plot, the Garden of Zhou was thrown into completemayhem. They wanted to leave, but they could not leave. This time had beenextremely unbearable for them. Now, that terrifying shaking coming from theplain and those even more frightening storms of energy had made them all feelthat they were in mortal danger. The gardens in which they had gathered werethrown into disorder. Everywhere there were anxious and inquiring voices, andalso many desperate cries. They did not know when the gate to the Garden ofZhou would open, nor did they know if the Garden of Zhou was about to beannihilated. The Garden of Zhou was a miniature world with an extraordinarily complexconstruction. On the other side of the cliff was a very large region. The largelake in that place had already returned to its former serenity. The blood bledby Nanke's two maids had been washed away by the waters of the lake. The bloodspilled by that treacherous sword that had pierced Qi Jian's abdomen had alsobeen covered up by the sand. Liang Xiaoxiao and Zhuang Huanyu stood at the lake shore. They did not lookinto each other's eyes nor speak to each other. They both had no expression ontheir faces, but they represented two completely different emotions. Gazing atthe ominous red sky and feeling the vibrations from deep in the lake, LiangXiaoxiao glanced at Zhuang Huanyu and said, "First live and get out, then wecan talk about other things." Outside Hanqiu City, the fog was still thick. Although it was night, therainbow that came from far away was still as striking as ever. That last strandof disorder had long since disappeared, yet this occurrence had no means ofgoing back in time and affecting what had caused that rainbow to disappear inthe first place. The formless gate to the Garden of Zhou in the fog was stillclosed and it was unknown when it would open again. Zhu Luo stood in the dark forest at the very front of the fog, staring at therainbow in the fog. His expression was grave and stern as he thought aboutsomething. As one of humanity's strongest experts, one of the Storms of the EightDirections, not even he knew how many storms he had experienced. Whether it wascold winds and bitter rains or foul winds and bloody rains, an affair like thiswhere the demons infiltrated the Garden of Zhou and cut off its connection tothe outside world, while it could shock him somewhat, was truthfully not toobig of a deal. Under his leadership, many of the priests of the Orthodoxy andexperts of the Tianliang County were using various spells to repair the gate tothe Garden of Zhou. Examining the degree to which the space within the fog waswarped, he could tell that it would not be long until they met with success.And yet… just a moment ago, he had sensed that something terrible had occurred,that something had happened in the Garden of Zhou and that the garden was nowon the verge of collapse. An expert of his caliber possessed an extremely profound understanding of thelaws of space and could tell when any miniature world was about to collapse orslide into oblivion. Even the Central Continent would disappear after tens ofthousands of years, but… to construct and moreover use a miniature worldinevitably required a relatively stable and firm space. The Pope's Green Leafworld was like this, and so was Zhou Dufu's world. In his view, the Garden ofZhou should have been able to stably exist for at least several tens ofthousands of years. So why were there suddenly signs of its coming collapse? No one could say that their strength was enough to destroy a world, even aminiature one. He could not, the Pope could not, and the Zhou Dufu of the pastalso could not. A power that could destroy a world could only come from theworld itself. If the Garden of Zhou was about to collapse, then the reasoninevitably lay within the Garden of Zhou itself, or else some sort of powerthat surpassed space. Zhu Luo thought of those rumors and his expression grew ever more grave, likea sheet of ice. At some point, Mei Lisha had arrived at his side. The archbishop's elderlyface was usually tired, but now there was only concern visible on his face. Hiseyes were still squinted, but only those people close by could clearly sensethe chill exuded by his gaze. With his hoarse voice, Mei Lisha asked, "How long until we can open the gateto the Garden of Zhou?" Zhu Luo sent out his spiritual sense, using some profound method to sense thetwisting of space within the fog. He then gave a relatively accurate estimate."We should be able to open it before morning." Mei Lisha squinted his eyes even harder. "No good, it's too slow." Even in the face of this peerless expert of the Storms of the EightDirections, his tone was still this direct, even oppressive. Zhu Luo gazed at that rainbow that arose from somewhere in the south. "We'vedone everything that we can do. For it to be faster, we can only look at MountLi." Mei Lisha understood his meaning and gazed silently in the direction of thatprecipitous peak in the south. No one noticed that his robed hands were lightlytrembling, and naturally no one could hear that virtuous and prestigious eldersilently saying to himself: Chen Changsheng, you cannot die. That rainbow that had arisen from the distance was not the key to the Gardenof Zhou. To provide a more accurate description, that rainbow was an actiontaken by the key to open the Garden of Zhou. Black Robe was able to use thesquare plate to influence the rainbow and temporarily close the Garden of Zhoubecause in that instant when the key was about to enter the lock, he hadinserted something extra into the lock.