Chapter 460
Chapter 460
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>Translator: Ryuma
>Chapter: 460
>Chapter Title: Evil Spirits
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“Clang~~” The purple-tasseled sword brimming with murderous aura was slowly drawn from its scabbard by Li Huowang, its tip steadily pointing at the thing in the corner.
Evil spirits. Ever since arriving in Great Liang, Li Huowang had rarely encountered these things. He truly hadn’t expected to run into one under these circumstances.
Li Huowang’s brows furrowed tightly as he spoke in a low voice.
“Brother Zhuge, it seems this heavenly calamity isn’t just about the darkness. Could these evil spirits be connected to the disaster?”
The grim-faced Zhuge Yuan stood with hands clasped behind his back, gazing at the sky as if recalling something. With no response from Zhuge Yuan, the thing in the corner began to move.
As it slowly turned around, Li Huowang saw a ghastly pale face topped with a pair of bloody sockets.
Its basin-sized maw slowly opened. There were no teeth inside—instead, tiny infant hands covered in corpse spots took their place. As the upper and lower rows clasped together, they formed a spine-chilling grin.
At this horrifying sight, the expression on Li Huowang’s face atop the wall twisted ferociously. His feet slammed down hard as he charged straight toward it.
In this utterly mad world, he had experienced far too much. Things like this no longer stirred the slightest ripple in his heart.
Before he even arrived, his sword struck first. The instantly elongated copper coin sword whistled through the air, slashing fiercely toward the creature’s forehead.
Seeing this, the evil spirit thrust its arms—each several times longer than its body—toward Li Huowang’s flanks from left and right. It seemed intent on luring him in.
However, as Li Huowang’s sword-gripping right hand shook and pulled rapidly, the copper coins in the air twisted and spun. Sword light flashed through the air amid a piercing shriek of agony, cleanly severing both arms into three segments.
With its arms gone, the evil spirit’s massive head rapidly shrank inward. By the time everyone’s clothes fell to the ground, a black shadow darted out from within the silk garments and fled into the darkness.
Glancing at the bizarre, bamboo-jointed-like severed arms on the ground, Li Huowang chose not to pursue, lest it be a diversion. He flicked the black blood from his sword and turned to head back into the Bai family estate.
But after just two steps, at the end of the pitch-black road, a papered window suddenly lit up.
An eerie green light seeped through the wooden frame, flickering on and off as if something inside was moving back and forth. It was definitely not human—everyone from Oxheart Village was inside the Bai estate.
It started with just one house, but soon there were two, then three. As window after window lit up, the entire Oxheart Village took on a hellish, ghostly pallor like the underworld’s Fengdu.
Looking at these glowing windows, Li Huowang’s expression grew increasingly grim. A single evil spirit was no big deal, but this many spelled trouble.
More importantly, he couldn’t be sure if this situation was merely the prelude to something far worse.
“Bang!” Li Huowang slammed the Bai estate gates shut, pulled out a sheet of ginger-yellow paper, and swiftly wrote an evil-warding,sha-suppressing talisman with his own blood before sticking it onto the wooden latch.
Seeing the faces in the courtyard, Li Huowang declared,
“Leave the trouble outside to me! All of you stay put in the estate! No one leaves until the heavenly calamity passes!”
With that, Li Huowang vaulted back onto the wall, gripping his sword as he stared deathly at those windows glowing with dim green light.
“Evil spirits are rare even on ordinary days, yet now they’re popping up like they’re free. Is this just happening in Oxheart Village, or everywhere under heaven? If it’s the latter, then I’m afraid...” Li Huowang’s heart sank deeper and deeper.
“If it’s truly as Brother Li fears, then this heavenly calamity will live up to its name.” Zhuge Yuan’s expression was just as grave.
He held his right hand half-raised, his thumb rapidly tapping against his other finger joints as if performing some divination.
“Sigh, what a pity. Such an entertaining event, and I missed it because I died first.” Faceless Red quipped regretfully beside him.
“Daoist, what the hell is going on? Are a lot of people gonna die?” the Monk asked anxiously.
Li Huowang ignored the babble from his hallucinations, silently watching the outside. If there was any good news, it was that though the windows had lit up, no hostile gazes were directed their way.
Perhaps intimidated by Li Huowang, those things showed no sign of leaving the windows.
“My old heavens! What... what is that?! Master, look behind you!!”
Lv Xiucai’s panicked shout made Li Huowang whip around, only to see a second-floor window had also turned green. They were inside!
What made Li Huowang’s heart burn with urgency was that the window belonged to Bai Lingmiao’s boudoir!
Gritting his teeth, Li Huowang swiftly drew two talismans and slapped them onto his knees.
His feet exploded with force as he kicked off the wall, his agile body launching into the air like a hurled spear, hurtling straight toward that green window.
“Crash!” Wood splintered as Li Huowang, sword in one hand, rolled into the room. He saw two figures—one white, one red—kneeling on the bed, gnawing at something.
From their attire, they were clearly Bai Lingmiao and the Second God!
“Miaomiao?!” Heart pounding, Li Huowang approached from behind and gripped her shoulder, turning her around. His heart jolted.
The once-delicate features of Bai Lingmiao were gone, replaced by a horrifying visage.
Mouth full of barbed fangs, face covered in spikes and green scales, all smeared with foul black blood—there was nothing human left about Bai Lingmiao. She looked like a Frankenstein’s monster stitched from beasts.
Yet in this state, Bai Lingmiao was still laughing, her grotesque maw split nearly to her ears.
“Hahaha~~ Hahaha!!”
“Li Huowang! Hahaha! I don’t want to laugh! But I can’t help it! The immortals are all driven mad with joy! They’re affecting me, and I’m so hungry right now!!”
With that, Bai Lingmiao pounced back onto the bed, savagely tearing into the mangled corpse of whatever evil spirit it had been.
“Crack.” The Second God bit a blood-silk-wrapped bone in two and swallowed it whole without chewing.
Seeing Bai Lingmiao reduced to this feral state, Li Huowang knew this wouldn’t do. He had to calm her down.
He slashed his right hand, and a pai gow tile appeared in his palm.
Pinching the Diamond Seal, Li Huowang pressed the tile to his forehead.
“Sever Ties, Gather Heart!”
When he pulled the tile away, his face peeled off like a mask.
Li Huowang held his own face up and pressed it onto Bai Lingmiao’s.
“Great Peace, Attain the Way!”
As Li Huowang’s face—with the pai gow tile on its forehead—affixed to Bai Lingmiao’s, she instantly froze and stopped laughing.
(End of chapter)