Chapter 131
Chapter 131
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>Translator: Ryuma
>Chapter: 131
>Chapter Title: Death
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> Li Huowang swayed unsteadily as he gazed at the "six people" in the distance. Now, they looked completely different in his eyes as well.
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> Their bodies remained the same, but their facial features had twisted and elongated, reassembled into various blood-flesh mahjong tiles.
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> “Stop! We’ll help you get rid of Danyangzi right now!”
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> Hearing this, Li Huowang, on the verge of collapse, let out a laugh. It was merely an instinctive reaction—there was no joy in his heart whatsoever.
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> He should have been happy at a time like this. Yet the excruciating dual torment had stripped him of any ability to feel joy.
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> All his strength was devoted to resisting the overwhelming urge to end his own life.
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> In his dazed state, Li Huowang saw one of the Three-Strips speak up.
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> “Xuanyang, legs crossed! Hands cupped at the dantian, form the Crouching Dragon mudra, guard the heart chamber!”
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> Li Huowang did his utmost to comply. The blood talismans around him trembled along with his swaying body.
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> Next, Li Huowang watched as the six elders drew near, stopping three zhang away. They sat cross-legged, forming a circle.
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> As the six spoke in unison, unexpectedly, they uttered not some arcane incantation or obscure spell, but a reverberating question.
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> “What is the Dao of Sitting and Forgetting?”
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> “Shed the limbs, reject hearing and intellect, abandon form and knowledge, merge with the Great Thoroughfare—this is Sitting and Forgetting!”
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> As they spoke to themselves, the elders’ robes billowed in the wind and began to levitate. The colors around them started to shift out of alignment.
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> “No!” An unknown voice seized everyone’s hearts in an instant, and the world around them dimmed to gray in a flash.
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> “No!”
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> “No!”
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> “No!”
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> “No!”
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> “No!”
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> “No!”
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> The six elders repeated in unison, their voices amplifying countless times over.
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> The cracked sky became shrouded in some sort of black clouds. Li Huowang’s fused senses gradually separated, though not quite like before.
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> “Sitting is motion. Forgetting is remembrance. Not sitting halts servitude; not forgetting stills thought. When servitude ceases, the spirit calms. When thought rests, the heart finds peace!”
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> As the six elders uttered these words, Li Huowang sensed something and jerked his head up. There, hidden within the black clouds, was Danyangzi.
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> This time, Danyangzi was different from before. A translucent, umbilical-cord-like thing protruded from his abdomen, connected to Li Huowang’s body.
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> Danyangzi’s three heads all turned toward Li Huowang, six eyes glaring at him with utmost hatred.
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> “Wretched disciple! Calling others to deal with your master again? Hmph! You think you can escape? Your master is already an immortal!”
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> “Immortal... immortal... heh heh heh...” Teetering on the edge of breakdown, Li Huowang stared at the repulsive tentacle-organs writhing on Danyangzi’s body.
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> Li Huowang took a deep breath and bellowed at Danyangzi, “A creature like you can become an immortal? On what grounds? Is there no justice in this world!?”
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> “Hmph! You’ve killed no fewer than I have—what right do you have to say that!”
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> Danyangzi’s child-head on the right shook slightly. A flesh-and-blood copper coin sword was wrapped in its three tentacles.
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> With its mutated body, it dove toward the six elders below like a hunting hawk, treading upon the black clouds.
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> Ignoring Danyangzi overhead entirely, the six elders simultaneously formed mudras and pointed at Li Huowang in the center.
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> “The three flowers atop the head are but illusion; the cloud-riding feet below, equally false. The great dream must end in awakening; the rootless and boundless return to dust.”
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> At these words, Danyangzi in the sky was smashed down like he’d been struck by a mountain, trailing afterimages straight to the ground.
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> Immediately after, Li Huowang, engulfed in flames, felt something stirring in his belly.
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> It might have been painful, but he couldn’t feel it anymore.
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> He only saw the “umbilical cord” connecting him to Danyangzi thicken and darken, now tangible enough to grasp with his hands.
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> He tentatively reached out with both hands and discovered he could indeed touch it. Even better, the flames on his hands made it sizzle and burn.
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> “This... this is impossible!! I’m an immortal now! Who dares stand in my way!!” Danyangzi, who had crashed heavily to the ground, struggled to rise.
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> The six elders sighed in unison and began chanting together.
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> “This is form manifesting while the mind grows confused, principles emerging while emotions flicker. How much more so for the Supreme Dao, beyond color and flavor, true nature severed from desire—those who hear the subtle, believe in the suspended, heed the imageless without delusion. Like one who hears the method of Sitting and Forgetting...”
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> As this booming and fading voice rang out, Li Huowang suddenly noticed everything around him had shifted out of place.
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> He should have been sitting cross-legged in the center of the group, yet now he was tilted, stuck halfway in the air.
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> He wasn’t the only one—everyone else was the same. Some were even half-buried in the soil, half-exposed.
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> Compared to them, Danyangzi’s transformation was even more drastic. Amid the encircling chants, everything on his body began to melt. That ethereal immortal sash fell limply to the ground, stained with mortal filth.
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> “Within the Supreme Dao, all is silent void; the spirit’s function boundless, the heart’s form likewise. Tracing the heart’s form...”
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> As the chanting continued, wisps of white smoke drifted from the mahjong heads of the six elders, twisting together into a hemp rope that burrowed into the earth.
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> “This... impossible... this... impossible! I’m an immortal...!!” These were Danyangzi’s final words.
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> After uttering them, Danyangzi collapsed entirely.
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> His body dissolved into clumps of black cloud, floating upward, only to dissipate completely before reaching halfway.
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> Almost simultaneously, Li Huowang began vomiting violently. “Urp~!” Out came half a face wrapped in tentacles.
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> It was half of Danyangzi’s face—pale, rotting, and clearly dead.
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> Li Huowang stared at the half-face before him as if in a dream.
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> With trembling hands, he cradled it, watching helplessly as Danyangzi’s half-face burned to ashes in his grasp.
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> Danyangzi was gone. The thing that had constantly schemed to assimilate him was finally gone.
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> As for how happy he should have felt in that moment, Li Huowang didn’t. He just felt an emptiness in his heart.
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> The agony of body and mind left no room for other complex emotions.
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> The six elders exchanged glances and pointed at Li Huowang once more, chanting in unison.
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> The hook-shaped blood talismans around him slowly settled back to the ground.
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> The black clouds in the sky parted, and the distant, lofty Ba Hui shone down on everyone once more, like a sun.
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> Li Huowang stood frozen in place, ignoring everything around him. He didn’t care what the six elders were doing, nor did he want to know.
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> Just holding back from ending it all was already taking everything he had.
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> He didn’t know when he passed out. The last thing Li Huowang saw was the charred ashes of Danyangzi on the ground.
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> (End of chapter)