Chapter 541
Chapter 541
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>Translator: Ryuma
>Chapter: 541
>Chapter Title: Gankou
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Chapter 541: Gankou
Qiu Chisbao held the child in her arms, constantly swallowing her saliva as she eyed the red-robed Daoist gnawing on his dry rations with longing in her eyes. Her voice carried a near-pleading tone.
“Please, have mercy, exalted one. Could you give me just a little to eat? It’s been three days since I last had a meal. I’m starving.”
Seeing the pitiful woman beside him, Li Huowang pulled another steamed bun from his robes. But upon noticing it was thoroughly soaked in blood, turning it into a blood bun, he tossed it aside.
Qiu Chisbao’s eyes lit up in an instant. She pounced on it like a starving tiger, trying to scoop up the blood bun from the ground and shove it into her mouth.
But it was all in vain. The blood bun on the ground passed right through her palms again and again—she could never pick it up.
Qiu Chisbao looked up at Li Huowang before her with utter despair on her face. Her voice was wretched as she spoke.
“What are you doing?! You threw away that bun yourself, so why won’t you let me pick it up?! One big bun like that could save a life!”
“Wahhh! I’m used to hunger, I don’t mind starving! But if I starve, I won’t produce milk, and my son will die of hunger! Don’t you have even a shred of conscience?!”
She shouted as she bit her finger and placed it into the swaddling cloth.
Watching Qiu Chisbao wail in despair beside him, Li Huowang sighed in irritation and stood, walking eastward.
It had been so long since a new hallucination had appeared that Li Huowang had almost forgotten about this troublesome special ability of his as a heart elemental.
“What in the world is going on? Why has she become one of my hallucinations?”
“So many people have died in front of me. Why did it have to be this madwoman?”
This question was one Li Huowang was destined never to get an answer to. Even Zhuge Yuan didn’t know.
“You have no right to stop me from eating! You villain!”
Qiu Chisbao gripped the rusty cleaver and charged viciously right up to Li Huowang’s face, stabbing it into his left eye socket.
As Li Huowang kept walking, his body overlapped with hers and eventually emerged from behind her.
He had tried talking to her a few times at first, but Li Huowang soon gave up on communicating with the woman.
Whether he told her that she was already dead, that her child was already dead, or that she had become a hallucination, she wouldn’t listen to any of it.
This woman named Qiu Chisbao was utterly mad. Even as a hallucination, she remained a lunatic.
Li Huowang, who suffered from the same affliction, could understand her, but that didn’t change the fact that she was forever trapped in her own world.
Fortunately, it wasn’t hard to quiet her down.
Li Huowang took out his last portion of dry rations and tossed it into Qiu Chisbao’s arms. She instantly settled down in excitement, devouring the bun voraciously.
As she ate, she glared viciously at the other hallucinations around her, as if terrified they might snatch her food.
“Peng Longteng, Jinshan Zhao, Zhuge Yuan, the Monk, Qiu Chisbao. Sitting Oblivion Daoists, Jiang Yingzi.”
Li Huowang mentally tallied the pattern behind these people becoming his hallucinations.
It seemed that these people had died right by his side when his emotions were in extreme turmoil, which was why they had become his hallucinations.
To prevent more hallucinations from appearing, he would have to avoid letting similar situations happen again in the future.
But after thinking it over, Li Huowang realized that while some patterns applied to certain hallucinations, they didn’t fit others.
For instance, he still hadn’t figured out whether the Monk’s true form was dead or alive.
Moreover, these people weren’t all close to him. This woman who had just appeared hadn’t exchanged a single word with him while alive, yet she had still become one of his hallucinations.
“Could it be… there are multiple ways for someone to become my hallucination?”
Li Huowang muttered to himself.
“Brother Li, don’t worry about these trivial matters right now. Let’s find the Supreme Gullet first. Once we do, we can head back quickly. Great Qi is unstable these days. It’s dangerous for you to stay here.”
Hearing Zhuge Yuan say this, Li Huowang nodded and reined in his thoughts.
He was right. The dice were the real pressing issue right now. What did it matter if he had one more or one less hallucination among so many? When you owe too much debt, you stop worrying; when you have too many lice, you stop itching.
Perhaps once his cultivation technique reached great completion, he could simply make all these people real and send them away from him.
“No, no… no.”
Jinshan Zhao’s words drew Li Huowang’s gaze to him.
At the moment, Jinshan Zhao was propping himself up on the ground with illusory hands, grinning at Li Huowang.
“Good… good… good!”
Jinshan Zhao said a few “goods,” then dragged his halved body over to Qiu Chisbao. He lightly patted her calf, silently comforting her.
Li Huowang said nothing and quickened his pace, running in the direction Zhuge Yuan had indicated.
The sun overhead gradually shifted westward. As Li Huowang drew closer to the so-called Supreme Gullet, his expression grew increasingly grave.
The flayed tree trunks around him grew sparser and sparser. Li Huowang followed a dry riverbed onward until, as dusk fell, a massive sinkhole finally appeared at the riverbed’s end.
Peering down into the sinkhole from the edge, he saw what seemed to be an unfathomably deep pool hidden at its very bottom, likely due to the drought.
Seeing Zhuge Yuan beside him, Li Huowang furrowed his brow and asked,
“Is this the Supreme Gullet?”
“No, because it’s currently the hour of Zi, the Supreme Gullet is concealed within these waters. After Zi hour passes, it will be elsewhere.”
“It even has a time requirement, just like alchemy.”
Li Huowang wasted no time. He grabbed a large rock from nearby and charged forward, leaping toward the pool in the sinkhole with Li Sui.
With two splashes, Li Huowang and Li Sui hit the water’s surface. Before he could take a deep breath, the rock in his arms dragged him downward.
The water in the deep pool was frigid, numbing Li Huowang’s limbs. Darkness surrounded him on all sides. Suddenly, he felt something slimy brush past the back of his neck, but he had no idea what it was.
Gritting his teeth, Li Huowang freed one hand and pulled out a piece of fluorescent stone from his robes.
As the eerie green glow illuminated the surroundings, the darkness—and whatever lurked within it—retreated swiftly.
Li Huowang, still clutching the rock, continued sinking. This pool was deeper than he had imagined.
He gestured to Zhuge Yuan beside him with a questioning look. Zhuge Yuan spoke amid the icy, bone-chilling waters of the pool.
“Don’t panic, Brother Li. Relax. The Supreme Gullet’s hiding place is extraordinarily concealed—even evil spirits can’t find it—so there’s no danger at all.”
Hearing this, Li Huowang finally relaxed and continued his descent.
In the pitch-black, freezing waters of the pool, there were no other sounds except for Qiu Chisbao’s screams echoing incessantly.
“Aaahhh!! I’m drowning! I’m drowning!!”
She thrashed desperately toward the shrinking surface above, holding the swaddling cloth high with both hands, trying to get it as close to the surface as possible.