Chapter 178
Chapter 178
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>Translator: Ryuma
>Chapter: 178
>Chapter Title: Carriage
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“Senior Brother Li, what’s wrong with you?”
Seeing his such bizarre reaction, Bai Lingmiao was clearly frightened by Li Huowang.
She hurriedly reached out to touch him, only to be startled by his scalding-hot skin. His flesh burned like fire.
“Senior Brother Li, don’t think about it! I won’t ask anymore, I won’t ask!” Bai Lingmiao, tears streaming down her face in panic, tightly wrapped her arms around Li Huowang.
Hearing Bai Lingmiao’s words, Li Huowang closed his eyes and gritted his teeth, desperately trying to recall.
He strained his mind, piecing together those deliberately buried fragments.
They formed a picture so suffocating that merely imagining it stole his breath—things that should have been forgotten resurfaced.
The picture was both still and moving. He tried to describe it in terms the others could grasp.
“Behind that jade plaque, in that place that might be called White Jade Capital, I saw some things—things I can’t describe. They were enormous... and so very cold!!”
Li Huowang’s voice was hoarse and heavy, his words fragmented and jumbled.
As he spoke, even his body began to tremble uncontrollably again.
“That’s not a place for humans. Anyone who goes there gets taken—taken by them, stripped of what belongs to them. Humans are pieced together by them! When there’s nothing left to take, it’s like with Danyangzi—complete disappearance!”
“Then something in White Jade Capital drew me in! I went! I saw the entire world! I felt it! I felt what it was thinking!!”
Suddenly, besides Bai Lingmiao’s hands, another pair reached from behind, clamping onto Li Huowang’s forehead.
The hands tightened like an iron circlet, and the pressure brought a rare moment of relief to his splitting headache.
At that moment, Li Huowang had no time to wonder whose hands they were. He could only grit his teeth and continue.
“I understood it! You know? I understood what it was thinking!! It can’t be anyone else—only me! Only I can understand it! Because it’s mad!”
Just as he said this, Li Huowang felt the picture in his mind slipping from his control.
Things within the picture began peering back at him.
“I saw its past. It wasn’t... wasn’t like this before! It used to be fine! It’s crying!! It’s screaming!!”
“Who is it?” A chilling female voice came from behind Li Huowang.
Veins throbbed across Li Huowang’s forehead, as if they might burst at any second.
With every ounce of strength, Li Huowang shouted out what was in his head. “The Great Nuo! It’s called the Great Nuo!”
As soon as he said it, the atmosphere inside the carriage turned eerie. Even the warm blankets couldn’t ward off the invading chill.
Faint, indistinct murmurs echoed in everyone’s ears. Outside the carriage came the horses’ whinnies and Mantou’s barks.
Li Huowang knew that wasn’t the Great Nuo. The Great Nuo was mad—it couldn’t notice him. What had noticed him was something else.
“Get lost!” With Li Huowang’s low shout, the surroundings instantly cleared, gradually falling silent.
Drenched in sweat, Li Huowang collapsed to the floor, gasping for air. Bai Lingmiao’s tearful voice rang in his ears.
“Senior Brother Li, I was wrong! I really was! Don’t think about it anymore. As long as you stay by my side forever, I’ll never ask again!”
In the pitch-black carriage, first two hands helped Li Huowang up. Another wiped his forehead with a towel, while a fourth brought a bowl of water, carefully tipping it into his mouth.
Under the repeated soothing of those four hands, Li Huowang’s breathing slowly steadied. The buzzing in his head and the piercing ringing in his ears gradually faded.
Li Huowang looked weakly at the girl before him. “That’s... how it happened...”
Unsure when, Li Huowang drifted into a hazy sleep.
When he awoke again, daylight streamed into the carriage, and his underclothes had been changed.
Staring at the carriage roof overhead, he touched the empty space beside him in the bedding and sighed. He pressed his temples with his hand, rubbing again and again.
The things he’d tried so hard to remember from the night before had mostly dissipated. Some fragments that should have stayed in his mind were now thoroughly blurred.
Yet even in their vagueness, Li Huowang had gleaned some truths.
Zhengde Temple, which worshipped the fleshy Great Buddha. The filthy, slothful, greedy Anci Nunnery. The Sitting Oblivion Daoists who toyed with both people and gods. The shamans who traded lives for their rites.
Every supernatural ability in this place carried a strangeness.
Not to mention the evils like the eighteenth of the twelfth month, the Wandering Lord, the Great Matron, and the Joy God.
Before, he’d thought he’d crossed into a world that was simply chaotic by nature.
But now, it was clear that wasn’t the case. The root problem was that the world itself was wrong.
It was sick, just like him. Otherwise, it shouldn’t be like this—it should be... more normal.
“What in the world is going on with this place?” Li Huowang murmured to himself.
“It’s called the Great Nuo? Related to those Nuo opera performers? According to Lv Zhuangyuan, Nuo opera is ancient—the ancestor of all other plays.”
“It sounds like those Nuo performers are worshipping the Great Nuo, but...”
Li Huowang recalled the people who’d attacked him after the Sitting Oblivion Daoists deceived them. They hadn’t matched their supposed mighty backing—not even as strong as common bandits.
“Sigh.” Li Huowang sighed. He was done trying to figure it out.
Whatever had happened to the Great Nuo had nothing to do with him.
What this mere mortal needed to focus on was something far more relevant.
Why was he still alive? That was Li Huowang’s new question.
He’d delved deep into that terrifying, bizarre White Jade Capital—a place where humans shouldn’t exist.
Not only had he not dissipated like Danyangzi, he’d survived.
“Is this another ability of the Heart Elemental? Or did the Bahui I saw save me?”
Li Huowang guessed wildly. He wanted answers, but they weren’t easy to find.
Surviving was good, of course, but Li Huowang feared trouble would follow such fortune.
As he pondered, Li Huowang sat up again and pulled his clothes from the chest beneath the bedding, starting to dress.
When he climbed out of the carriage, he spotted Bai Lingmiao by the distant riverbank. The morning breeze gently lifted her white hair, rippling like waves.
She focused intently on washing clothes, her profile illuminated by the dawn light—so elegant and ethereal.
Watching the girl who’d shared every hardship with him, something stirred in Li Huowang’s heart.
“No matter how I survived, since someone’s with me, life goes on. Good thing it’s finally over.”
(End of chapter)