Chapter 478
Chapter 478
-----------------------------------------------------------------
>Translator: Ryuma
>Chapter: 478
>Chapter Title: Spirit Fiend
>-----------------------------------------------------------------
Chapter 478: Spirit Fiend
When Li Huowang saw the exceptionally pained expression on Zhuge Yuan's face, he understood that this friend must mean a great deal to him.
Zhuge Yuan was an extremely loyal man, willing to stick his neck out for his friends. Forcing him to kill one with his own hands—it was easy to imagine the turmoil in his heart right now.
At this moment, Zhuge Yuan spoke up again. “After my friend was possessed by the spirit fiend, he could not only use the techniques and divine abilities he’d learned before, but they were also amplified by the spirit fiend, making them even more powerful.”
“Brother Li, the Heaven Surveillance Division keeps talking about how strong spirit fiends are, but be careful—these things don’t play by the rules. The opponent you’re facing might be the spirit fiend one second and something else the next.”
“It’s constantly switching what it possesses. That’s what makes spirit fiends so dangerous. You have to cut it down the instant it can’t react.”
“If you encounter a spirit fiend, make sure you have absolute certainty before making your move. If it captures you alive, it’s worse than death. Spirit fiend—emphasis on the ‘fiend,’ not the ‘spirit.’”
Just as Zhuge Yuan finished speaking, he suddenly stopped. At his feet lay a mummified monkey, its mouth gaping wide, limbs twisted in all directions, belly ripped open with its rotten innards splayed out on the ground like a flower.
“Brother Zhuge, from what you’ve said, it looks like we’ve found the culprit this time?” Zhuge Yuan nodded solemnly.
Li Huowang mustered all his caution and slowly advanced deeper into the peach blossom grove. The number of grotesquely tortured and deformed corpses on the ground was increasing—not just animals, but humans too, all in horrific states of death.
“Shh! Quiet! I think I hear something!” Li Huowang’s words halted the monk’s chanting of sutras.
He dropped to the ground, pressing his ear to the earth, focusing intently. “That’s… breathing?”
“Huff… huff…” Rhythmic exhalations transmitted through the ground into Li Huowang’s ears.
Li Huowang gripped his sword hilt tightly and slowly edged toward the source of the sound.
As the noise grew louder, Li Huowang parted some branches, and the sight before him made his eyes tremble.
In a clearing not far away, a massive expanse of flesh, bones, and organs lay sprawled on the ground like a small lake.
“Huff… huff…” With each breath, the pile of flesh expanded and contracted, strands of red drifting down from the sky and burrowing into the gaps.
Li Huowang traced the red upward and realized it was the sunset glow in the sky—this thing was eating the evening clouds.
“Is this the spirit fiend?” As the thought crossed Li Huowang’s mind, a rat scurried across the flesh pile and into a shriveled corpse nearby, where it began to gnaw.
Suddenly, the pile of flesh shuddered. It rapidly gathered, forcibly reassembling into a doe the size of a small house.
This giant deer with six legs had enormous plum-blossom antlers like two peach trees on its head. Its fur was like a rotting rainbow—dull yet multicolored.
Li Huowang knew it was a doe because a dead fawn dangled from its underbelly, as if frozen in the moment of a difficult birth.
“Brother Zhuge, what’s the spirit fiend parasitizing this time?” Li Huowang whispered, eyeing the distant giant deer.
“Yingzhao. Common folk prefer to call it the nine-colored deer.”
Nine-colored deer? Li Huowang stared at the rotting rainbow fur on the massive deer.
Suddenly, the distant spirit fiend moved. Its body blurred with afterimages as it charged toward the corpse housing the rat.
It could have crushed the rat underfoot in one stomp, but instead, it pinned the tail with a plum-blossom-shaped hoof before grinding the other hoof viciously back and forth over the rat’s hind legs.
The rat shrieked in agony, but the nine-colored deer showed no sign of stopping. It threw its head back and bellowed in delight.
Once the rat’s limbs were thoroughly pulverized into mush, the nine-colored deer lifted a hoof onto the rat’s chest and slowly pressed down.
Only after the rat had vomited up all its innards onto the ground did the nine-colored deer dissolve contentedly back into a pile of flesh.
Li Huowang furrowed his brow and swallowed hard. In the lowest voice possible, he said, “Brother Zhuge, was this thing driven mad, or does it just love torture like this?”
“Spirit fiend—heaven and earth treat all things as straw dogs. This is the sin of heaven and earth. Its very existence is a mistake.” Zhuge Yuan seemed to recall something, his face growing even grimmer.
“Then what’s the nine-colored deer’s pattern, Brother Zhuge?” Regardless of what it truly was, Li Huowang was preparing to strike.
“It eats the glow and weaponizes it too. Watch its body—those glows shoot out from there.”
“Got it.” Li Huowang crouched like a hunting leopard, jaw clenched tight.
The distant spirit fiend seemed to sense something. Some bones and flesh assembled into a deer form, peering around at the surrounding peach grove.
Suddenly, a Red Dragon mahjong tile tumbled through the air and landed steadily on a peach tree. As the spirit fiend turned its head toward it, Li Huowang burst from behind the tree. His copper coin sword whipped out like a lash, slashing fiercely at its body.
With a sharp *crack*, the struck flesh erupted in black smoke, withering like falling petals.
It worked, but the evil-banishing sword hadn’t slain it in one blow.
The ambushed spirit fiend shrieked. This time, it didn’t reform into a deer but surged toward Li Huowang like a tidal wave of flesh.
Though it enveloped him entirely in an instant, Li Huowang emerged unscathed—it had been merely an illusory projection.
“Kill!” The razor-sharp Purple Tassel Sword cleaved into the nine-colored deer, carving a massive gash.
Seeing the wound heal rapidly, Zhuge Yuan called out from the side.
“Brother Li, this won’t work! This mortal flesh is just its shell. You need to find the spirit fiend inside to do real damage!”
At that moment, a beam of red glow shot from the nine-colored deer. Li Huowang blocked it with his sword, deflecting it into the air to sweep down a swath of peach trees nearby.
“What does the spirit fiend look like!” Li Huowang swiftly retreated, putting distance between them.
“You can’t see it. No living person bearing the Ten Emotions and Eight Sufferings can see its true form.”
“If I can’t see it, then I won’t!”
A savage grin twisted Li Huowang’s face. He tore off his red Daoist robe and struck a fire starter against his body.
(End of chapter)