Chapter 238
Chapter 238
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>Translator: Ryuma
>Chapter: 238
>Chapter Title: Rope Son
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Listening to the two voices coming from who-knows-where, Li Huowang, who was nearly prostrating on the ground, blinked slightly and began pondering the meaning behind their words.
“Cultivation? This guy’s a Daoist? He’s debating the Dao with someone else?”
“He doesn’t look like the Daoists I remember. At least, the Daoists in my memory don’t cultivate like this.”
As Li Huowang mulled it over, the voices over there continued. The childlike voice carried a hint of disdain.
“What nonsense is this? Your mother carried you for ten months to birth this fat lump of meat, and now you’ve shed it all? Aren’t you tired?”
“No, no! Do you think these seven emotions and three corpses on our bodies, this mortal flesh, are really ours? Wrong! They all have owners! Even our life and death have owners! He lent them all to us!”
“They all have owners?”
“That’s right! The pain on our bodies, the smiles on our faces, our past lives, and our future lives—they all have owners!”
“When you realize that carrying these owned things is no good, that they’re all shackles! So we must cast off everything that has an owner!”
“The Great Dao is fifty, Heaven derives forty-nine, man escapes the one—that way we can become that one!”
Then the child’s voice voiced the question Li Huowang, eavesdropping, wanted to ask. “And after becoming the one?”
“Heh heh! Once you become the one, you owe nothing to anyone, and you’re free. Escaping the Three Realms, beyond the Five Elements.”
“What the hell are they talking about? What has an owner, what’s the one?” Li Huowang furrowed his brows, trying to decipher their meaning.
“They all have owners? The owner of all pain is Ba Hui? The owner of joy is the Joy God?” Li Huowang immediately thought of the giant cauldron from before. “So they’re sacrificing to the owner of death?”
After thinking for a long time, Li Huowang shook his head forcefully, flinging away the jumbled thoughts.
“No, wait. Li Huowang, don’t get dragged into their nonsense. Maybe it’s just what he thinks. What he thinks might not be true. Maybe these two are like Danyangzi, thinking they know it all when they actually know nothing!”
“This isn’t what you should be worrying about right now. You should be thinking about what a lost you should do next after running into these two to escape this place!”
“Should I just stand up and talk it out with them?”
That was the first thing Li Huowang thought of. But even just considering it, with their strength unknown, that would be too reckless.
Glancing back at the surrounding darkness, another idea bubbled up in Li Huowang’s mind. “Use my perception to follow them from afar and escape with them?”
“No, that idea’s even worse than the first!”
As Li Huowang pondered how to use these two to free himself, he felt someone tugging at his sleeve. “Brother Li..!”
“Shh! Quiet!”
Li Huowang was furious right now. If those two in the distance noticed, their only chance to escape this place would be gone.
“Brother Li, someone’s grabbing my arm, but there’s clearly no one to my left!” Sun Baolu was on the verge of tears.
Li Huowang’s heart sank. He slid his left hand along Sun Baolu’s clothes.
He immediately touched a very rough hand.
The instant Li Huowang gripped it, the hand flipped and seized him, yanking him into the darkness.
*Clang!* Li Huowang drew his sword in a flash and slashed fiercely toward it.
Sensing the movement, Chun Xiaoman immediately pulled out the glowstone.
*Whoosh!* The sickly green light illuminated the surroundings, but nothing was abnormal. There was nothing around.
As Li Huowang scanned the surroundings with a grim expression, a young Daoist in yellow robes with sunken cheeks stumbled into the light in a disheveled state.
He wore yellow Daoist robes, black cloth shoes, and a Daoist crown with a Taiji diagram on top.
Compared to Danyangzi, this man looked far more like the Daoists in Li Huowang’s memory.
Seeing each other, both sides froze for a moment, but the Daoist quickly bared his rotten teeth and said: “Run! The Rope Sons are coming right after us!”
Li Huowang recognized the voice—it was one of the two from before!
His appearance was far younger than his voice suggested.
Seeing him charge hurriedly back into the darkness, Li Huowang and the others quickly followed.
Whatever Rope Sons were, in this hellish place, they were surely bad news.
Compared to him, Li Huowang’s group was slower—they had to drag along a several-hundred-jin Black Tai Sui.
Just as Li Huowang wondered if this Daoist was using them as shields, the man suddenly rushed back.
He bit his index and middle fingers together hard, then used the bleeding fingers to draw a talisman in the air. “Hurry and hide the light!”
Looking at his gaunt back, Li Huowang hesitated for a second, then signaled the others. They all stuffed the glowstones into their robes.
In the pitch black, the Daoist’s incantation chant reached everyone’s ears.
This chant was unique—not like Buddhist scriptures or Daoist formulas, but from an entirely different system.
“Om bu zha a bu jiu zhen ta! Ju lun tuo zheng guang ji ta! Miao ying tong ling tian jiang ling ji ji ta!”
As the chant ended, a sense of pressure descended, giving Li Huowang goosebumps all over. Something indescribable brushed past his body.
Then he felt his body temperature dropping rapidly.
“Shh~” The Daoist’s hush stopped everyone in place.
Li Huowang felt something furry worming between his legs. Feeling its trembling, he knew it was Mantou.
It was terrified, scared of something approaching.
Li Huowang felt the ground starting to shake. In the darkness, something huge was drawing near.
The tremors grew closer and closer, until Li Huowang could make out massive silhouettes through the murky dark.
*Huff~* A blast of hot air ruffled Li Huowang’s hair, carrying a nauseating stench—clearly exhaled from some creature’s nostrils!
Suddenly, a rusty scale weight dropped from the darkness above right in front of Li Huowang, trailed by a bundle of ropes tied to a pair of cloth shoes.
Cloth shoes? The moment Li Huowang realized this, the scale weight yanked the shoes downward sharply.
*Swish!* A red-clad female corpse with a stretched-out tongue, looking utterly horrific in death, plummeted right in front of Li Huowang.
They were so close that their eyes were merely an inch apart.
(End of chapter)