Chapter 132
Chapter 132
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>Translator: Ryuma
>Chapter: 132
>Chapter Title: New
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“Rip~” A big tongue licked onto Li Huowang’s reddened cheek, scraping off a large chunk of the skin that had only just grown back.
The searing pain, like his face being scrubbed with a steel brush, forced Li Huowang to open his eyes again.
Li Huowang looked around in confusion and realized he was still in the dead town, though there were more collapsed houses now.
After he passed out yesterday, it seemed a lot more had happened.
The sky was bright now, and judging by the position of the sun in the west, he’d been lying here for a full day.
“Woof woof~” Mantou circled around Li Huowang, barking nonstop, wanting to get close but too scared to.
Only then did Li Huowang belatedly notice the strangeness of his own body.
Last night, he should’ve been burned to a crisp inside and out by those flames—dead beyond dead.
Yet here he was, very much alive. The charred outer shell had peeled off, replaced by a thin layer of new skin covering his body.
“It looks like my recovery ability has improved again. No, not just recovery—it’s been amplified across the board.”
Li Huowang thought to himself as he looked down at his bright red body, like it had been scalded.
All his clothes had been burned clean off him.
Fortunately, neither the *Great Thousand Record*, nor the longsword, nor the iron torture tools were damaged by the flames.
He staggered to his feet, and the breeze stung his skin.
Bare as the day he was born, Li Huowang wandered the dead town with the dog in tow.
After a few loops around, he found some new clothes in a rag shop thick with spiderwebs.
Passing the headless skeletal shopkeeper behind the counter, Li Huowang draped a cyan Daoist robe over himself, then tore off a large swath of fabric to bundle up everything in his arms.
The newborn tender skin was easily scraped by the rough cloth, spots of “peach blossoms” gradually blooming across the robe.
The flesh stuck to the skin, and every movement brought knife-scraping agony—like being tortured with each step.
In the rag shop, he found a long bench and sat trembling upon it, quietly waiting for his skin to fully regrow.
Li Huowang waited in the rag shop amid piles of clothes. As time ticked by, the whole place gradually darkened.
The old garments hanging from the beams took on the look of hanged ghosts in the gloom.
A breeze from who-knows-where made the clothes sway gently, lending the room an eerie, terrifying air.
“Woof! Woof woof!!” Mantou barked at the swaying clothes while timidly shrinking under Li Huowang’s bench.
“Shh, quiet. There are no ghosts in this world. When people die, that’s it—nothing left. Otherwise, they’d have come for me by now to demand their lives back.”
Li Huowang murmured, gently stroking Mantou’s head.
Mantou gradually quieted, licking at Li Huowang’s palm.
When it inevitably licked through the skin again without meaning to, it froze in fear, looking up at Li Huowang with guilt in its eyes.
Li Huowang ignored the wound and began checking Mantou’s injuries instead, carefully pressing on its kicked belly.
The blood at its mouth proved it was hurt, but since it had run from the mountaintop down to the town, the injury wasn’t severe.
If Jiang Yingzi had really wanted to kill a dog, it would’ve been effortless. There was only one reason Mantou survived.
She was still kind at heart and hadn’t wanted to kill it, even if the dog had taken its enemy as its master.
“Yingzi…” In the dim rag shop, Li Huowang stared blankly at the clothes swaying lightly in the breeze.
In that moment, a thousand thoughts raced through his mind.
Suddenly, heedless of his scraped-raw skin, he stood up.
Li Huowang walked to the headless rag shop owner, picked up the skeleton, and carried it outside.
That razor-sharp longsword became a shovel once more, digging a pit.
A large hole quickly took shape. Li Huowang positioned the head from the shop beside the headless skeleton, then buried them again.
He pried off a door panel to make a marker but realized he’d long forgotten how to write the characters.
In the end, he simply carved a clothing pattern into it with the sword tip and stuck it in front of the grave.
Next, Li Huowang turned and entered another house, carrying out the corpses of a mother and daughter.
One skeleton after another was buried, one patterned tombstone after another raised.
With his skin not yet healed, the constant friction from his clothes shredded it in no time.
Amplified by his hyper-sensitive pain, it was no different from death by a thousand cuts.
Yet Li Huowang didn’t pause for a second. The more his body hurt, the easier his heart felt.
As he kept carrying bodies, the Daoist robe on him gradually turned dark red again.
When Li Huowang stepped into a flat-roofed house and froze, he saw a bamboo cradle inside.
Seeing that thing, he hesitated to approach.
“Heh heh… Compared to you, am I not a saint?” A familiar voice boomed like thunder in Li Huowang’s ear.
He whipped his head around to see his three-headed Danyangzi standing atop the rubble of the opposite house, watching him.
At the sight of those three heads’ mocking half-smiles, Li Huowang felt as if he’d been plunged into an ice cavern.
The next second, Li Huowang moved. Ignoring Danyangzi on the roof, he slowly turned and walked toward the distant mountains.
It started as a slow walk, then a jog, and finally he clenched his teeth and broke into a run, leaving a trail of blood drops.
“Explain this to me! What the hell is going on!? Why is Danyangzi still here!!”
In the brightly lit cave, surrounded by the watching Sitting Portrait Cultists, the blood-smeared and gasping Li Huowang bellowed at the holes in the wall.
An aged voice came from one of the caves. “Young friend, everything between us is settled. Your master has long scattered to the winds. We see no trace of him on you.”
Just then, Li Huowang’s pupils shrank to pinpricks as he pointed a trembling hand at one cave entrance.
“Then tell me what that is!? What is that!? Are you all blind!? Bullshit about scattering to the winds! His influence over me is stronger now! He can appear anytime! This thing hasn’t been rooted out at all!!”
Then Li Huowang seemed to see something else and sucked in a gasp of cold air. “No! Even Jiang Yingzi’s there! She’s right beside Danyangzi now!”
The words had barely left his mouth when all the Sitting Portrait Cultists around him looked baffled—even Li Huowang himself sensed something off.
Danyangzi could exist because of his cultivation, but what about Jiang Yingzi? She hadn’t cultivated!
Li Huowang’s eyes locked straight on the distant woman—limbless, her flesh a bloody mess—his mind buzzing.
Right now, she was still glaring at him with utter hatred.
“Young friend, we said this upfront: we’d only expel your master and the heart elemental’s bizarre illusions. The rest is beyond us.”
(End of chapter)