Chapter 605
Chapter 605
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>Translator: Ryuma
>Chapter: 605
>Chapter Title: Eight Immortals
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In the dim and empty ship cabin, the dark brown root-carved Eight Immortals before Li Huowang had twisted, knotted wooden bodies that looked utterly eerie under the fluorescent green glow.
Compared to Iron Crutch Li and Lü Dongbin, the appearances of the other Immortals were even more horrifying, one more terrifying than the last. While sharing the same roots, each had its own bizarre traits. For instance, He Xiangu’s neck was twisted like a braid.
Han Zhongli, bare-chested and exposed, not only had one side large and the other small, but the number was off as well. They dangled like rotting slabs of fat, looking exceptionally repulsive.
The pitch-black cabin was deathly quiet. Facing these things, Li Huowang heard nothing but his own breathing.
Staring at the wooden Eight Immortals surrounding his body, Li Huowang knew that in this utterly deranged world, anything touched by the word “immortal” was bad news.
“Li Sui, let’s go! Find Fighting Matron’s heart anchor and end this quick!” With that, Li Huowang activated displacement invisibility once more, swiftly passing by these root carvings and heading off into the distance.
But the moment he stepped out from the cluster of root carvings, a spine-chilling scrape of wood against wood erupted suddenly from behind him.
Li Huowang whipped around in an instant, only to see the eight root carvings lined up in a perfect row, staring at him with their myriad freakish eyes—they could move!
With a “pa,” a fluorescent stone Li Huowang had thrown to the ground burst, its glow instantly fading.
And that was merely the beginning. As one fluorescent stone after another burst and dimmed, the eight root-carved Immortals before Li Huowang’s eyes gradually sank into the roiling darkness.
Even with his sharp eyesight, Li Huowang could only make out objects very close by in these conditions.
In the darkness, accompanied by the sound of Han Xiangzi’s flute, strange voices—some male, some female—echoed forth.
“The superior man does not contend, the petty man loves to contend. The man of highest virtue does not insist on virtue, the man of inferior virtue insists upon it. Clingers to it are not named as moral.”
Afterward, layer upon layer of low chuckles—male and female, old and young—arose from the darkness.
Hearing the laughter, Li Huowang clenched his teeth and swung his right hand, gripping the spine sword, hard toward the Immortals’ former position. A rift to Da Qi hurtled toward them.
Just as Li Huowang shifted sideways to evade a potential attack from the left, Lü Dongbin’s root carving materialized without warning on his flank.
As Li Huowang moved, the gaping hole in Lü Dongbin’s chest yawned like a bloody maw, waiting for him to dive headlong inside.
At the last possible second, Li Sui’s sucker-covered tentacles shot out from Li Huowang’s body and latched onto the floor, sparing him contact with Lü Dongbin’s form.
“What the hell are these things!” Teeth gritted, Li Huowang hefted both swords and slashed fiercely at the Lü Dongbin before him.
With a crack, Lü Dongbin’s root carving split cleanly in two.
Suddenly, something snagged Li Huowang’s foot, sending his body tumbling leftward—straight toward Han Xiangzi’s twisted bamboo flute, which stood waiting there.
Poised to impale right through his temple the moment he fell.
When he was less than an inch from Han Xiangzi’s flute, someone yanked the figure hard from the darkness, dragging it away from Li Huowang.
“Thud!” Long sword plunged into the deck to steady himself, Li Huowang rose slowly, fury etched on his face.
“Have you rotten chunks of wood had your fun yet!”
The fire striker clinked against Li Huowang’s body, and raging flames erupted, engulfing him entirely. In the next instant, the blaze spread contagiously to the other root-carved semi-immortals, flooding the dark cabin with light.
The root-carved Eight Immortals, which had held still until now, finally stirred. Blazing knots and roots stretched their flame-shrouded bodies as they crawled toward Li Huowang.
Just as Li Huowang readied himself to torch the entire ship, the floorboards split open on their own, and seawater came surging in.
It doused every flame and plunged the space back into darkness.
Where water met fire, endless hisses sounded, sending spasms of pain through Li Huowang’s body. Refusing to let it go to waste amid the seawater, he yanked a rib from his navel and jammed it back into his chest.
In the next moment, every bit of pain on Li Huowang’s body distributed itself to his surroundings, and all went quiet at once.
“Pulling this on me, huh? Fine! I’ll sink this whole damn ship!” Charred black like a drowned ghost, Li Huowang swam to the wooden bulkhead and swung his spine sword in a frenzy.
Rifts tore through, sucking away vast quantities of seawater while riddling the walls with gashes.
As the frigid seawater poured through the breaches, something unexpected happened: the wooden cracks writhed like living flesh and sealed themselves shut in short order.
But that was far from all. Shapes began emerging in the black water—the root-carved Eight Immortals from before.
Having endured the fire once, their already grotesque bodies now wore a layer of charred crust that dispersed like black mist in the seawater, spreading slowly and rendering them even more nightmarish.
Even Lü Dongbin’s body, which Li Huowang had cleaved open earlier, had mended. Now it closed in on Li Huowang alongside the rest.
The Eight Immortals advanced, trailing black mist unfurling from their char, darting toward Li Huowang with monkey-like agility.
Li Huowang’s right hand raised the spine sword to parry He Xiangu’s lotus, while his left drove the purple-tasseled sword into Zhang Guolao’s face. His jaws then gaped wide, unleashing a thicket of tentacles from his throat that wrenched Han Zhongli’s head clean off.
Behind him, Li Sui wielded the copper coin sword in kind. Even ambushed underwater, Li Huowang held his own.
Yet the Eight Immortals proved devilishly resilient. Severing heads or limbs wasn’t enough—they had to be ground into splinters to stay down.
Handling them was no great challenge, but Li Huowang was running out of breath.
The grueling exertion, compounded by the ocean depths, set his lungs ablaze. Agony twisted his features, veins throbbing on his forehead.
Instinct screamed for him to surface, but pinned beneath the massive ship and tangled with these abominations, escape was impossible.
Oxygen starvation clouded his mind with hallucinations.
“Gasp~!” Dagger clamped in his teeth, Li Huowang broke the surface and gulped air ravenously. After several deep breaths, he dove once more into the depths.
Fresh lungsful of air snapped Li Huowang alert, vigor surging through him anew.