Chapter 245
Chapter 245
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>Translator: Ryuma
>Chapter: 245
>Chapter Title: Treatment
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Lying on the soft grass, utterly exhausted and gasping for breath, Li Huowang looked at the Black Tai Sui wriggling in the distance and grinned with joy.
It had been so long since Yang Na had given him that chocolate—truly the first time in ages he'd felt this happy.
Though his entire body ached like hell and he was drained of all strength, this trip underground had been a grueling ordeal, but in the end, he'd achieved his goal.
With the Black Tai Sui, he could finally bid farewell to those hallucinations. No more wavering between reality and illusion. He could escape the bewilderment of being a heart elemental.
"They all say that eating Black Tai Sui won't let it stay down for long—that it'll just keep growing bigger inside your belly."
"I refuse to believe it! If I have to, when it's grown enough, I'll just slice open my stomach, dig out the Black Tai Sui inside, and swallow it again!"
As Li Huowang pondered the odds of that plan working, he suddenly noticed that everyone else's expressions were off.
They'd clearly escaped with their lives, yet here they stood, looking like they'd seen a ghost. And with him injured like this, not one of them even came over to help.
"Don't just stand there—keep pulling on the chain. The other end's tied to Han Fu. That little head of his is somehow still alive. Drag him up here. I need to pry some information out of him."
Li Huowang spoke up, but for once, no one paid him any mind.
"What's wrong with all of you?"
Li Huowang pushed himself up with one hand on the soft grass and crawled toward them, but everyone instinctively took a step back.
"Senior Brother Li? Are you... really Senior Brother Li?"
Bai Lingmiao's hands clutched to her chest as tears streamed down her face, her eyes filled with terror as she stared at the thing before her.
She didn't need to say it—Li Huowang already sensed something was wrong with his body. He raised his hands and examined them with the single eye growing from below his ear, stunned.
As he twitched his fingers slightly, he saw the two fingers fused at his elbow twitch in response.
"How is this possible?! What the—"
Li Huowang propped himself up on those malformed hands and flipped over.
Bathed in moonlight, when he caught sight of his own body, even he nearly screamed in horror.
He could scarcely believe this jumbled mess of flesh and blood was him!
Compared to Sun Baolu's body before, this was child's play. His current form had organs twisted and flipped every which way, left and right inverted, with white tassels interspersed throughout, swaying faintly. It bore no resemblance to a human at all!
"It was that white tassel's doing! After it dragged me down there, that's when I turned into this."
Li Huowang grabbed a white tassel from his body and watched in shock as the fingers gripping it began to twist slowly.
"Am I even human anymore?"
The question flashed through Li Huowang's chaotic mind. His trembling hand reached toward his unrecognizable face—his features had completely shifted, no longer in their proper places.
"How is this possible? This is too outrageous! Is this... really a normal world?"
Li Huowang shuddered violently.
"No, Li Huowang, calm down. It's not a big deal. Yeah, not a big deal at all."
He turned to the others, his grotesquely terrifying face twisting into a confident smile.
"It's fine. Everyone, don't panic. We can definitely fix this."
With that, Li Huowang hooked a dagger with his deformed right hand and plunged it straight into his face.
Under everyone's incredulous gazes, he carved out a deep gash.
Li Huowang seized the edge of the split by his ear. With a furious roar, he wrenched it upward to where it belonged.
But in the next instant, the repositioned ear flopped uselessly to the ground.
Seeing his ear on the ground, Li Huowang laughed even more delightedly.
"Yeah! This works too. My body's healing is strong. I just need to cut off all the messed-up parts and let them regrow properly."
"It's just being a limbless trunk for a few days. No big deal."
As Li Huowang raised the dagger toward his eye, Gouwa shuffled forward trembling, gesticulating wildly from a safe distance.
"Senior Brother Li, don't do this! Better to live poorly than die well, right? And you've still got hands and feet..."
Halfway through, Gouwa trailed off, at a loss for words. Senior Brother Li's state was too horrific—even he couldn't bear to look.
If it were him in this state, he'd rather just drop dead.
Li Huowang paused with the knife, staring blankly at his inverted pinky finger. A thought suddenly struck him.
"Wait! If this white tassel can turn me into this monstrosity, doesn't that mean it can turn me back too?"
His eye lit up. He looked at the white tassel fused to his hand, grabbed a bundle, and placed it over his eye.
The white tassel writhed, twisting Li Huowang's fingers further.
"Quit squirming, damn it!"
Li Huowang slammed the tassel to the ground and pressed it back against his face.
Gradually, he felt his vision shifting. Under the tassel's influence, it began sliding downward.
Li Huowang dug three fingers into his eyeball and slowly nudged it toward where it should be. But no matter how he tried, it wouldn't stay.
"Slash!"
A deep incision split from the corner of his eye. Li Huowang gripped his now bloodshot eye and forced it a bit closer.
"Is this about right?"
Panting heavily, Li Huowang asked the others.
Once they nodded in unison, he started repositioning the other organs.
After painstakingly getting the features on his face roughly back in place—nearly passing out from the pain—Li Huowang looked around at the others and rasped,
"What are you all standing around for? Get over here and help!"
His words jolted them into action. Everyone rushed forward to assist in repositioning Li Huowang's other organs.
It wasn't easy. The white tassels could help move things, but never quite accurately.
At those moments, they had to resort to the knife to correct it.
As Gouwa carefully shifted Li Huowang's left ear, his hand shook—and it plopped to the ground.
In a panic, he scooped it up, glanced around furtively, spat on it, and tremblingly pressed it back toward Li Huowang's head.
A hand landed on his shoulder, startling him. He turned to see Bai Lingmiao holding needle and thread.
"Give it here. I'll sew it back on."
Gouwa let out a huge sigh of relief and handed it over.
This ordeal was torture rivaling the worst cruelties. Perhaps it was the joy of obtaining the Black Tai Sui fueling him, or maybe Li Huowang was simply inured to pain.
By the time his jumbled body was barely pieced back into a human shape, dawn had broken—but Li Huowang's screams still rang out strong and clear.
(End of chapter)