Chapter 443
Chapter 443
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>Translator: Ryuma
>Chapter: 443
>Chapter Title: Red Middle
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“History? The past? Great Qi and Great Liang?”
Li Huowang listened in stunned disbelief. Zhuge Yuan saying something like this was even more shocking than him being Red Middle. “Is that possible? Something that’s already set in stone, you say it can just be changed like that?”
“What’s so impossible about it? Great Qi’s histories were falsely usurped by Great Liang. Why can’t your past be altered as well?”
This was exactly what Li Huowang feared. Though Zhuge Yuan had never harmed him, not everything he knew was necessarily true.
Li Huowang was just about to say something more when another thought struck him. If all this was real, then didn’t that mean he wasn’t Red Middle after all? Everything in that other world was real?
“But...” Li Huowang’s mind suddenly froze as he thought this. “If I really am Red Middle, then that side must be fake.
Yes, that’s right. But my past clearly wasn’t Red Middle. So is that world now real or fake?”
“Brother Li? Brother Li, are you alright?” Seeing Li Huowang frozen in place, Zhuge Yuan asked with some concern.
“I’m fine. Let him be. You’re new here, so you might not know, but this kid often zones out like this, lost in his own fog.” The Sitting Oblivion Dao hallucination teased from the side.
But the moment he spoke, Li Huowang immediately cut in. “Brother Zhuge, is everything you said true? Can a person’s past really be changed?”
After all, this was far too earth-shattering. For someone’s predetermined past to actually change—what kind of existence could pull that off?
Zhuge Yuan nodded. “An ordinary person naturally couldn’t, but think about it—who was at your side back then? Doumu.”
As the Sovereign who controlled yin and yang, the heavenly dao, pulling off something this bizarre seemed perfectly logical. But there was one thing Li Huowang couldn’t figure out. “Brother Zhuge, then why would it do that?”
“I wouldn’t even be surprised if it had just killed me outright, but why go to all that trouble to stuff a Red Middle past into me?”
Even a Sovereign had to have a reason for its actions, right? Could it be like the Sitting Oblivion Dao, implanting a Red Middle past just for kicks? But there was nothing fun about it.
This question seemed to stump Zhuge Yuan as well. After pondering for a moment, he shook his head slightly. “I don’t know, but no matter how you look at it, you can’t possibly be Red Middle. If you were, I would’ve spotted it the moment I saw you at the Temple of Buddha’s Bones.”
Indeed, Zhuge Yuan could identify the Sitting Oblivion Dao, and when he’d scoured the extra memories in Li Huowang’s mind, Li Huowang didn’t seem to have any otherworldly disguise that could fool him.
“Brother Li.” Zhuge Yuan spoke gravely, his expression turning deadly serious.
“Set aside the fake cultivation for now. This Red Middle past is your top priority at the moment. I don’t believe there’s no danger at all here. Doumu going to such lengths must have some purpose.”
“No, no, no. Now that I know the Red Middle past is fake, this thing that’s mostly harmless can wait.”
Li Huowang cut him off as he flipped himself back onto his horse, his eyes gleaming.
“In my Red Middle memories, I’ve seen true cultivation techniques! Real ones! No matter what comes next, I have to get my hands on them first!”
“Oh? Red Middle really had them? Where?” Zhuge Yuan was equally surprised.
“He hid them in a very secretive place. That’s exactly where I’m headed to retrieve them.”
To keep others from finding them, Red Middle had stashed them far away. After several hundred li of travel, Li Huowang led his horse with Mantou in tow, slowly walking along the street of a small town in Great Liang’s Jiangnan Circuit.
The weather was damp and chilly today, with biting winds, and it was nighttime to boot. Yet there were plenty of people along the roadside, gathered in white circles burning yellow paper, mostly at crossroads.
Only then did Li Huowang realize it was already Qingming. It had been over a year since he’d come to this world.
As he walked, angry cursing gradually drifted over from the distance.
“Strike your villain head, may you run out of breath, day after day banging your skull;
Strike your villain face, may your whole family go mad, forever cheap and lowly;
Strike your villain eyes, may you forever crash into walls, day after day getting cut down;
Strike your villain ears, may you shit rotten sludge daily, wiping it with your fingers;
Strike your villain mouth, may your breath smell like farts, front door getting reamed.”
Li Huowang looked toward the voice and saw an old woman who looked to be in her seventies or eighties, sitting on a little wooden stool. She gripped her shoe as a mallet, furiously smacking a yellow paper effigy the size of a palm on the ground.
Hearing the horse’s hooves, the old woman didn’t look up right away. She kept smacking as she called out her price. “One villain-beating session, two hundred cash. Don’t think it’s expensive—mine works better than anywhere else! Don’t believe me? Go ask around!”
Li Huowang stared at the hairy mole on her chin and said, “No villain-beating, how about mahjong instead? One from me, one from you, plus your daughter-in-law. The three of us can play.”
The old woman froze for a moment. When she looked up and saw Li Huowang’s face, her mean-looking features slackened in shock before instantly breaking into a smile. “Sure! Absolutely! Let’s go!”
At the old woman’s enthusiastic invitation, Li Huowang soon sat down at the mahjong table with her and her plump daughter-in-law.
The three of them stared at the last empty seat, as if waiting for something.
“Slap.” Li Huowang slammed a Red Middle tile right in the center of the table. “Still one short. Why don’t you two write it out?”
“Alright!” The mother- and daughter-in-law duo quickly pulled out brush, ink, paper, and stone. They hung a large sheet of rice paper in the air, one writing on the front, the other on the back.
The black ink soaked through the paper, blending together where they met—and that was the true cultivation technique Red Middle had hidden.
No matter where it was left, others could find it if they looked hard enough. So Li Huowang had hidden it in the most secretive place of all: someone else’s memory.
“Sit cross-legged to calm the mind, relaxed and still as nature. Lips lightly closed, breath slow and drawn out. Hands firmly clasped, eyes gazing levelly ahead. Gather the divine light, reach to the heavenly heart.”
Li Huowang’s hands trembled slightly as he read the words. To him, this flimsy sheet of paper weighed a thousand catties. He never would’ve imagined that the true cultivation technique he’d dreamed of would finally be his.
With barely a moment’s hesitation, Li Huowang crossed his legs, clasped his hands tight, and prepared to start cultivating right then and there.
“Brother Li, hold on a moment. This might be yet another step Doumu anticipated. Since it planted this cultivation technique in your memories, isn’t it just waiting for you to cultivate it?”
His words made Li Huowang freeze instantly, staring at the technique in his hands with a complicated expression. “You’re saying there’s a risk in cultivating this?”
“Not necessarily, but you should think it through carefully. Don’t forget—you’re not Red Middle. You’re Li Huowang. That past isn’t yours.”
(End of Chapter)