The Heavenly Sword (Sword Maiden from the Moon Book 1) by Poon Alice

Author:Poon, Alice
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Earnshaw Books
Published: 2023-01-10T00:00:00+00:00

19

As Sai’er was unconscious and her wound still weeping blood, Binhong and Monk Faxian decided to stop over at an inn on a side street leading to the city square of Liaocheng, satisfied that no pursuers were on their tail.

Monk Faxian was known to the innkeeper through his Jinan militia connections and got a room almost immediately.

As soon as they entered their rented room, they carefully laid Sai’er down on her side upon the bed. Monk Faxian went out to find an inn helper and returned with a basin of warm salted water and wads of clean cotton cloth.

Both Binhong and Monk Faxian knew their priority was to get the arrowhead out before infection set in, but they were wary of the danger of unstaunched bleeding. She was wheezing softly and her chest was almost still. Her face was turning bluish white like glacial ice.

Sai’er lost consciousness right after the arrow hit. The last sensation she had was one of withering pain shooting up her spine.

She was reeling weightless as her soul divorced from her body.

Her spirit hovered on the edge of the Bridge of Forgetfulness, the place for the good souls to await a drink of Meng Po’s soup of oblivion, so reincarnation could start on a clean slate.

She winced at the sight of souls bobbing in and out of the foul-smelling, viscous Blood River below the Bridge, hands flailing and faces twisted into beastly shapes. They were the ones who had done evil deeds in their mortal life, and hell guards had pushed them into the river, where they were doomed to flounder and sink into deeper levels of torturous hell.

Having floated away from the grisly scene and back to her stiff cold body, Sai’er saw the tiny blood-drenched figure curled on her side in a fetal position, stray tufts of black hair clumping on her temples. The blue-grey Taoist robe on her was splotched with rust-color congealed blood. The Taoist cap was missing. It had probably fallen off when her grandfather lifted her up from the ground.

This image was being carved onto her spirit’s mind. She realized she was no less vulnerable than a fetus upon its entry into the world. In her twenty years, she was just a pathetic mass of blood and flesh shuffling aimlessly through life until disaster struck.

The previously pulsating mass was now making a silent and unceremonious exit from the mortal world. She mocked herself for her futile existence, not having left a tincture of good on earth before the light in her extinguished.

Then it struck her that she was destined to return to her immortal life in the Moon Palace. She breathed a light sigh of relief. But how was she going to answer to the Queen Mother?

Swirling in the air like a kite cut off from the string, she listened in on her grandfather’s talk with Binhong.

“I think one of her arteries has been punctured,” said Monk Faxian with a deeply creased brow. He was looking at the half-dead girl with woeful red-rimmed eyes, his face twisted in pain.

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