Chapter 550
Chapter 550
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>Translator: Ryuma
>Chapter: 550
>Chapter Title: The Xu Generation
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“Bang bang bang bang~” Heavy, erratic footsteps kept transmitting into Li Huowang’s ears through the soil. The sheer density of them made his expression grow even graver.
He’d been in Great Qi for some time now, yet he’d never sensed such a massive disturbance before. Whatever this was, it wasn’t something to take lightly.
“No matter what this commotion is, I have to get around it first!” With that thought, Li Huowang shut his eyes, stood without hesitation, and bolted in the completely opposite direction.
Li Sui’s tentacles emerged from inside his body, probing rapidly in all directions like a blind man’s cane.
“Daoist, you can open your eyes now. There’s no filth around us.”
Hearing the monk’s words, Li Huowang cracked open one eye and realized he’d somehow ended up in a desolate graveyard.
Under the heavenly calamity, the entire burial ground looked far from peaceful. Some things in the distance had crawled up and were shambling about aimlessly.
Li Huowang had no time to dwell on the eerie surroundings. He dropped back to the ground at once and listened intently once more.
Only when he sensed the sounds fading into inaudibility did Li Huowang finally let out a slight breath of relief.
He wasn’t here in Great Qi deliberately to slay evil spirits. Things were getting more dangerous by the day, so he needed to find the Shangji Irrigation Gate and get out as soon as possible.
Pulling himself together, Li Huowang dashed in the direction Zhuge Yuan had pointed earlier, thinking to himself, “Brother Zhuge, how far is it to the Shangji Irrigation Gate? I’m afraid we don’t have much time.”
But after asking, Li Huowang got no response from Zhuge Yuan. Even after repeating the question three or four times, Zhuge Yuan—who was standing with one hand behind his back, silently gazing at the chaotic graveyard—finally reacted.
“Not far. We’re almost there.” Zhuge Yuan’s voice was low as he finished speaking, then fell silent again, staring at the corpses strewn haphazardly around.
In that moment, Li Huowang felt like he could understand what was in Zhuge Yuan’s heart.
In the past, as a storyteller, he’d wanted everyone to know about Great Qi—Great Qi had been his world. But now that Great Qi had turned into this hellish state, his heart must be aching terribly.
What made it worse was that Li Huowang didn’t even know how to comfort him right now. The situation in Great Qi looked bleak; who knew what even more terrifying consequences lay ahead?
Of course, such grand matters of the realm weren’t for Li Huowang to worry about. He could barely handle his own troubles.
Just as he prepared to press on—whoosh—a baleful gust swept in, numbing half his body in an instant.
“Again?!” Li Huowang snatched the copper coin sword from Li Sui’s tentacles and slashed fiercely toward the baleful wind. A massive swath of darkness was cleaved apart by the clinking coins, revealing a sheet of human skin hovering in the air directly before him.
Seeing Li Huowang still able to move, the human skin spread open in midair and lunged at him like a giant eagle.
As Li Huowang tightened his grip on the sword hilt, ready to cleave the skin in two, it suddenly went limp and drifted softly to the ground.
“Hm?” Utterly baffled, Li Huowang used his copper coin sword to lift the skin. “Why’d it suddenly stop moving?”
Seeing that the skin was truly dead and not faking it, Li Huowang flicked his wrist to shake it off the sword.
As the pale sheet of skin shifted aside, a bizarre human face appeared before Li Huowang.
It was a woman’s face with a red heart dot on her brow, her eyes unblinking in the darkness, making her look utterly grotesque.
But that alone wouldn’t have startled Li Huowang. What truly did was that her rouged face had split open, revealing sheets of deathly pale rice paper beneath the skin, covered in wild cursive calligraphy.
“Is that you?” The woman stared fixedly at Li Huowang, her voice thin as she uttered those ambiguous words.
Li Huowang had no intention of wasting breath on such a thing. He gripped his spinebone sword tight and swung at the freakish face without hesitation.
“It’s you! It really is you! Are you alright?”
The entire face jerked sharply to the left, dodging the rift almost flush against the crack.
A chunk of sickly green fluorescent stone was hurled over as well. As the green glow illuminated the darkness, Li Huowang finally saw the woman’s body clearly.
The only human-like part on her was that face. Besides it, all that remained was a massive, hulking quadruped body crawling on the ground, covered in dark brown short fur.
Fiery red mane sprouted from her three-clawed paws and lion-like tail, swaying side to side with every occasional shudder of her body.
A rusty breastplate engraved with a blue-faced, fanged demon hung from chains across her chest, making her appearance even more savage and terrifying.
“What the hell is this thing?!” Li Huowang’s face darkened. Just from its looks, he could tell this wasn’t like the ordinary evil spirits he’d dealt with before.
“What do you want?! We can talk!!” But his overture got no response.
“What’s going on? Could she only mimic speech and not understand it?”
As the thought crossed Li Huowang’s mind, the creature charged. Three razor-sharp claws whistled through the air toward him.
Li Huowang’s body snapped back, shifting a full zhang in an instant to evade. The corpse on the ground took the hit in his stead.
Then Li Huowang witnessed something horrifying: the half-rotted middle-aged corpse visibly aged at an accelerating rate until it became a withered old man.
Li Huowang swung hard; the spinebone sword carved through a rift, but the foe dodged effortlessly.
“Brother Li, be careful. This is a Xu Year.”
“Xu Year?”
“That’s right. Not a Wan Year—a Xu Year. Avoid any physical contact with her, or she’ll steal your lifespan.”
Untouchable and unhittable, Li Huowang’s situation turned perilous in a flash.
He’d originally planned to use a rift to retreat to Great Liang first, but it was as if the Xu Year could foresee it—every time he slashed a rift ahead, she’d rush over to disrupt it immediately.
Under her relentless pressure, Li Huowang could only keep retreating.
As she lunged again, Li Huowang’s expression hardened. He seized two ribs from his navel and plunged them viciously backward into his own chest.
Seeing the Xu Year rear up on her forelegs with a roar, a bloodthirsty gleam lit Li Huowang’s face. “So you do feel pain!”
Seizing the pause, Li Huowang whipped out a dagger, sliced open his Daoist robe, and peeled off a sheet of bloody human skin in one fluid motion, slapping it over the Xu Year’s face.
As she thrashed wildly, her blurred features pressed through the skin. Shaking her head frantically did nothing to dislodge it.