Chapter 440
Chapter 440
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>Translator: Ryuma
>Chapter: 440
>Chapter Title: Zhuge Yuan
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Seeing Zhuge Yuan desperately fighting for his sake, Li Huowang couldn’t keep wallowing in confusion and doubt about his own identity!
No matter who he was, he owed Zhuge Yuan his life! He couldn’t run away until he paid that debt!
Gritting his teeth, Li Huowang glanced around. When he spotted the Great Liang Emperor and the Celestial Supervisories tangled up with the dice folk, he kicked off with both feet and leaped toward them.
Each time the soles of his shoes were about to hit that liquid ground, Li Huowang would flip his hand, sending a leaf tile shooting out to form a lily pad on the water, giving him a foothold.
Like a dragonfly skimming the water’s surface, he rapidly closed in on them.
The dice folk clearly had no intention of fighting to the death. They were just toying with these people, seemingly waiting for the Fighting Matron to free up a hand and deal with them once and for all.
Li Huowang arrived at the edge of the fray and shouted inside.
“Is there a living Heart Filth placed in the center of this formation?!”
He didn’t expect them to answer. But when he noticed the extremely subtle shift in expression from one of the junior Celestial Supervisories, he drew on years of deceptive experience to instantly analyze the wariness behind it.
He showed wariness at the question, rather than bafflement or confusion. There had to be a living Heart Filth at the center of this formation!
Of course. Yin and yang clashed in opposition. Since they’d used a dead Heart Filth as the eye, how could they not have placed a living one?
Without another word, Li Huowang charged off in all directions. Naturally, the Sitting Oblivion Dao took notice.
One of the dice glanced in surprise at Li Huowang leaping into the distance, then turned to another beside him.
“Huh? What’d you send that Red Middle off to do?”
“How should I know? That’s clearly Great Liang’s Red Middle. One of yours. You’re asking me?”
“Bullshit! Didn’t you see with your own eyes on your ass? That’s your Great Qi’s Red Middle!”
As they bantered, Li Huowang had arrived at a side hall to the east.
There should have been a golden palace here originally, but with all the gold melted away to forge that divine mountain ghost mask, only some empty frames floating on the surface remained.
Li Huowang rushed to the center of the hall and saw only a dead, crystalline white fox at the formation’s eye. Clearly, this wasn’t the thing he was looking for.
He launched himself into the air and whipped his body around hard. One by one, One-of-a-Kind tiles shot out like skipping stones, spinning off in all directions. The eyes on those tiles blinked rapidly, as if alive.
Everything the One-of-a-Kinds saw flooded into Li Huowang’s mind, instantly informing him what lay at the formation’s eye in the other side halls.
After the time it takes to burn half a stick of incense, Li Huowang stood atop a floating log, peering down at an old man shaped like rotting wood buried in the soil. Like the previous Heart Filths, his seven orifices were sewn shut with golden thread. The only difference was the swastika plastered to his chest.
Li Huowang glanced up at Zhuge Yuan plummeting from the sky. He took a deep breath, twisted his body sharply, and yanked the living Heart Filth right out.
The instant it was in his grasp, Li Huowang flipped his right hand without hesitation, producing four White Dragon tiles. He slammed them into the Heart Filth’s back.
“Kang!”
The White Dragons sank into the Heart Filth’s body. A tremendous force sent it rocketing skyward.
But that wasn’t all. While the living Heart Filth hurtled toward the Fighting Matron in the air, Li Huowang quickly located the dead Heart Filth he’d spotted upon first entering the imperial city.
This was the very one he and the Remembrance Minister had found back then.
As two pairs of Nine-of-Plumblossoms slapped into its body, Li Huowang executed an inverted golden hook, slamming his foot into the dead Heart Filth’s back.
Trailing an afterimage, the dead Heart Filth shot upward toward the living one in midair.
Seeing the immense power when the living and dead Heart Filths collided, Li Huowang immediately realized he could use this against the Fighting Matron. Right now, aside from Zhuge Yuan, this was the only thing that could harm her incarnation.
“Brother Zhuge! Get out of the way! The living and dead Heart Filths are about to smash together!”
Zhuge Yuan, veins bulging all over his body, spotted this and let out a breath of relief. With his last strength, he hurled his judge’s brush skyward. His body went limp, falling powerless to the ground.
The moment the tensely watching Li Huowang steadily caught the plummeting Zhuge Yuan, a beam of utterly black light flashed in the sky. The living and dead Heart Filths had collided.
The light appeared swiftly—and vanished just as fast.
When it was gone, Li Huowang looked up to see a massive hole blasted through the Fighting Matron’s body.
Not just her body. It was as if everything inside a gigantic sphere in the sky had been hollowed out.
With such a huge chunk of her body missing, the Fighting Matron grew unstable, flickering between solidity and illusion.
Li Huowang could feel her gaze on him, but now she could no longer drag him up there.
After one final, lingering stare, the Fighting Matron that blanketed the entire sky gradually faded away.
Seeing this, Li Huowang grinned and shouted excitedly.
“Brother Zhuge! Brother Zhuge, we did it! We—”
His excited voice cut off abruptly as he looked down at Zhuge Yuan. He had aged dramatically. His entire body seemed cracked open, on the verge of shattering.
It wasn’t just his body. Through his Sitting Oblivion Dao abilities, Li Huowang could see the Ten Emotions and Eight Sufferings on him. They were in terrible shape, tangled together and turning ashen gray.
Faced with this, Li Huowang felt utterly helpless. He frantically searched through Red Middle’s memories and his own, desperately hunting for any chance to save him.
But though he resisted the idea, reason told him Zhuge Yuan was beyond saving.
Zhuge Yuan’s body was like a bowl with a hole in the bottom, everything inside leaking out steadily.
To hold off the Fighting Matron’s incarnation single-handedly for so long had utterly drained him.
As Li Huowang anxiously rummaged for his turmeric paper, intending to try talismans as a last resort, Zhuge Yuan stopped him.
“Brother Li, don’t waste your effort. I’m not afraid to die, and you needn’t blame yourself. I didn’t do this just for you—it was for all the common folk of the world as well.”
Watching Zhuge Yuan inevitably slipping toward death, tears welled up in Li Huowang’s eyes. He gasped raggedly, furious and distraught.
“This damned place is falling apart! Why do you have to be so noble?! Who’d blame you if you ran?! Did I ask you to save me? I’m Sitting Oblivion Dao! What were you saving?!!”
Zhuge Yuan smiled openheartedly.
“This isn’t nobility. It’s just that I’ve read a few more sage books than most, so I know some things must be done, and some must not. I wouldn’t dare call myself a gentleman, but when a friend is in peril, fleeing alone is something I simply could not do.”
(End of Chapter)