Chapter 389
Chapter 389
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>Translator: Ryuma
>Chapter: 389
>Chapter Title: Apricot Island
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The instant Li Huowang finished saying those guilt-filled words to Yang Na, his taut nerves finally gave out, and he completely passed out.
The footsteps, shouts, and Yang Na's cries in his ears gradually faded away, and everything around him fell into silence.
After an unknown amount of time, Li Huowang slowly woke up. He had been roused by the choking smell of incense.
Blue sky was the only color he saw. After a while, as he came back to his senses, Li Huowang realized he was lying on his back looking up at the sky.
The sound of waves crashing against the hull around him, and the feel of the wooden deck beneath him, made him realize he was back on the boat.
When Li Huowang lowered his raised head, he was shocked by the scene before him, his pupils contracting sharply.
Offerings and an incense burner were placed in front of him, and behind the burner was a row of people kowtowing. What made his hair stand on end even more was that a pair of young boy and girl sat right in the middle of the offerings. They were treating him exactly like a bodhisattva.
Seeing this, Li Huowang flew into a rage, fury surging uncontrollably. He stood up and kicked over the incense burner.
"Are you all idiots? Why do you always pin your hopes on others? And you fucking offer me a boy and girl sacrifice!!"
With that, Li Huowang forcibly yanked the two children with red dots on their foreheads out from the plates.
Li Huowang's sudden outburst scared everyone, who backed away continuously. The ship captain kowtowed nonstop, begging for mercy.
"Dragon King Grandpa, please calm down! Please calm down!"
"Dragon King Grandpa?"
Li Huowang looked down and saw black tentacles wriggling out from various parts of his body, especially his severed arm, which was entirely formed by five intertwined tentacles.
It seemed the people on the boat thought he, covered head to toe in black tentacles without any skin, was possessed by an evil entity.
"Li Sui, retract them. Don't scare them."
At Li Huowang's command, all the tentacles on his body vanished instantly.
After glancing at the wet deck and then at the cloudless sky, Li Huowang had no patience to explain anything to them right now. He ordered the ship captain directly.
"Get up! Set sail for Apricot Island now!"
"Yes, yes, yes! I'm going! I'm going!"
The ship captain didn't dare disobey. Even if this man wasn't the Dragon King Grandpa, he was someone he couldn't afford to provoke.
Pushing through the crowd, Li Huowang went to a quiet corner in the cabin. After taking a slow breath, he looked up at the Monk and asked.
"How did I get back on the boat earlier?"
"Daoist, you crawled out from inside that thing's belly. It was too dark underwater; I couldn't see what it looked like. Oh right, I think there was another living person inside its belly too. I don't know if they got out. Also, its back was covered in eyes."
Listening to the Monk's account, Li Huowang replayed everything he had experienced there.
Just as he had anticipated beforehand, breaking through the window and jumping out meant crawling out of the monster's belly. Flipping over the electrified barbed cage meant escaping the entanglements outside the water. And climbing the watchtower was boarding the deck.
By moving within the hallucination, he had ultimately saved his own life. This was valuable experience. Next time something similar happened, he could use this method to resolve it.
It shouldn't have been so arduous originally, but he didn't know what method that thing in the water had used. It had somehow nullified the Black Tai Sui ability in his abdomen. Fortunately, after many twists and turns, the outcome was still acceptable.
"Daoist, that Li Sui in your belly helped you out quite a bit during that ordeal. Without it, you wouldn't have been able to climb back onto the boat then."
Li Huowang touched his belly, reviewing what had just happened, feeling slightly reassured in his heart.
"Huowang!"
An extremely shrill ringing pierced his ears, and Li Huowang instinctively covered them with his hands.
It was Yang Na's voice. Li Huowang would never mistake it. Recalling her despairing expression, his heart ached like it was being stabbed by a knife.
With a ferocious expression, Li Huowang covered his ears, constantly reassuring himself.
"That side must be a hallucination. There were too many coincidences there. That side is a hallucination! I don't need to care about things there. That side is just a hallucination!"
Li Huowang muttered to himself for a long time, trying hard to push Yang Na's image out of his mind.
When he finally removed the tentacles covering his ears and felt no more ringing, he let out a sigh of lingering fear.
It seemed this auditory hallucination was a lingering effect from before. He needed to be careful with unfamiliar evil entities in the future. They might have the ability to nullify the Black Tai Sui's powers.
"Heh heh... Looking at you like this, you're better off dead than alive."
Ignoring the ridicule from the crimson within, Li Huowang took out the True Scripture of the Fire Robes and silently healed himself.
"No matter how much suffering I endure, it will eventually come to an end. I will have hope to escape this life worse than death! As long as I can force the method to escape the hallucinations out of Beifeng's mouth..."
"Three copper coins."
"Empty bottle."
"Half a coin. I win."
Seeing the leaf cards spread out in Li Huowang's hand, the other three threw down their cards in annoyance.
"How is it you win again? Expert, you didn't use some supernatural power to swap cards, did you?"
"If I really used supernatural powers, I could just rob you outright. Why bother with this roundabout way? Quit talking and pay up since you lost fair and square."
Some blackened fragments of silver and various copper coins, old and new, were all pushed in front of Li Huowang.
Just as Li Huowang was shuffling the cards for another round, a stomping sound came from the deck above.
"The boat's docking! Apricot Island has arrived!"
Hearing this, whether playing or watching, everyone squeezed toward the stairs leading out of the cabin.
When Li Huowang's feet finally stood on Apricot Island's dock, he let out a long breath. He had finally arrived.
However, next, Li Huowang suddenly felt stumped. Although Zhuge Yuan had told him to come find him, the ship captain said Apricot Island was half the size of Jiangnan Circuit. In such a large place, how was he supposed to find Zhuge Yuan?
Li Huowang pondered for a moment, then pulled out a sheet of yellow turmeric paper from his bosom. In the end, finding someone still required divining with this talisman paper.
However, to divine, he definitely needed human bones, which was tricky since he had none prepared.
Though difficult, after thinking for a long time, Li Huowang came up with a substitute method.
First, he sliced open his healing severed arm with a knife. Gritting his teeth, Li Huowang reached into the flesh, grabbed the arm bone, and yanked hard.
With an intense sour pain and sense of emptiness, Li Huowang pulled out his entire bloodied upper arm bone like uprooting a radish.