Chapter 716
Chapter 716
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>Translator: Ryuma
>Chapter: 716
>Chapter Title: City Wall
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Half of a woman’s corpse lay trembling slightly by the edge of a foul-smelling well, the eyeball that had fallen from her eye socket swaying gently with the tremor.
Suddenly, the woman’s body twitched. After a few breaths, the rats seemed to sense something amiss and scrambled out from inside her body, slick with corrosive fluids, scattering in all directions.
Before long, Li Huowang’s foot, approaching from afar, stepped over the woman’s head as he continued onward.
He furrowed his brows, scanning his surroundings. This was a destroyed town, a scene of devastation with not a single living soul in sight—scorched earth and death were all that remained.
Li Huowang remembered this place. He had stayed here for a night after escaping from Clear Wind Temple.
It had been bustling back then, but now every last person had been slaughtered clean.
This area was close to the front lines. Whether it was the ravages of war or the deceptions of the Dharma Sect, it made no difference to the people of Si Qi.
Judging by the freshness of the corpses, the massacre couldn’t have happened long ago.
“Sui Sui, take a break. We’re almost there.”
Li Huowang sat down on a stool, pulling out dry rations and water to eat.
Li Sui looked sadly at the corpses all around.
“Daddy, so many people died.”
She now understood what death truly meant.
“Yeah. ‘Better to be a dog in peaceful times than a man in chaotic ones’ isn’t just empty words.”
As the monk chanted sutras to ferry their souls, Li Huowang felt no emotion whatsoever. He had seen too many dead bodies on this journey and had long grown numb to it.
In fact, his mind was entirely occupied with his own concerns right now.
“How could this happen? Why did cultivating the truth lead to me cultivating out a Sui Sui?”
This question flashed through Li Huowang’s mind.
Advancing in his truth-cultivation technique was undoubtedly a good thing, but the previous occurrence made his heart sink inexplicably.
He had cultivated this technique for so long, and it had indeed grown more powerful the further he progressed. At the start, even minor changes would cause splitting headaches and nosebleeds.
Now that he had reached the fourth revolution, conjuring things out of thin air came effortlessly.
But was there truly no other hidden danger in this truth-cultivation technique from the Great Matron? A trace of worry began to emerge in Li Huowang’s heart.
Suddenly, he thought of something.
“I asked Ji Zai about this back then!”
“Ji Zai didn’t object, so that’s why I started cultivating it. Could it be...”
Li Huowang’s heart sank further.
Ji Zai was his own Si Ming, but this Si Ming, perpetually lost in confusion and unable to offer any help, surely harbored no ulterior motives of his own?
Yet the Ao Jing Sect’s methods were unusable now. If he didn’t rely on this truth-cultivation ability, he’d be left with nothing but charging in sword-first for close combat.
“No, I can’t trust Ji Zai too much. I still need to keep using the pain offerings from the Great Thousand Record. I can’t let him think he has me cornered.”
Li Huowang quickly settled on his next plan.
He knew too little about Si Mings and didn’t dare trust them completely—not even if this Si Ming was his future self.
He needed to make Ji Zai wary, or he’d end up as a pawn manipulated by others later on.
Just as Li Huowang lifted his water gourd, tilted his head back, and washed down his dry rations, he suddenly spotted a solitary red glow rising on the left horizon, along with churning black wolf smoke.
“I remember that’s...”
As he spoke, Li Huowang thrust his right index finger directly into the swirling light mirror on his left eye.
He soon learned what was happening there. An army was desperately defending a Dharma Sect fortress that was easy to guard but hard to attack.
That place was a strategic military point; there was no way around it. They had to assault it head-on—trying to bypass and circle behind would likely leave their supply lines severed.
After pulling his finger back out, Li Huowang immediately rushed toward it with Li Sui.
After passing through a patch of woods, an intensely brutal battlefield appeared before Li Huowang. Boiling hot golden juice poured down from the city walls. Some massive soldier-cultivators endured their skin blistering and splitting as they leaped up.
Some had already scaled the walls and jumped inside. The area inside and out was a chaotic mess, filled with constant cries of slaughter.
Li Huowang didn’t rashly approach. Instead, he circled the city walls once around.
Spotting a weak point in the unbreached eastern wall, he shifted his body into the ground and stealthily made his way over, invisible.
Upon reaching the wall, Li Huowang didn’t climb over. He pressed his hand against it.
As he closed his eyes and pushed forward with both hands, his entire body squeezed directly into the wall.
When Li Huowang emerged on the other side, he looked back—the wall behind him had returned to normal, showing no trace of change.
“Let’s go!”
A tentacle whipped out from Li Huowang’s body, hooking onto the eaves and yanking him up.
As soon as Li Huowang steadied himself, he was shocked to find that the City God Temple should have been there, but it was gone. A massive statue now sat in the center of the city.
The jet-black statue had its left hand at its abdomen forming the vajra mudra, while its right hand at its chest held a jade vase. Though its face appeared kind and benevolent, Li Huowang couldn’t shake the sense of wrongness no matter how he looked at it.
Whatever this thing was, it absolutely wasn’t the You’er God. And the You’er God in the darkness certainly wasn’t something they could build from mud and bamboo.
“Has the You’er God changed its identity entirely to deceive more people?”
It made sense, though—if it showed its true form, half the potential Dharma Sect recruits would probably run.
“Clack clack clack.”
Li Huowang’s feet rapidly tapped across the tiles as he dashed toward the government office inside the city.
The city was vast, but under these circumstances, he easily located it—only the government office entrance merited stone lions and stone tablets.
“Swish!”
A spear suddenly pierced through the tiles, stabbing into Li Huowang’s sole.
“An ambush? They’ve spotted me!”
Just as Li Huowang moved to react, the spear yanked back.
With a crash, the tiles shattered, and Li Huowang dropped straight through the hole into the room.
He immediately spotted a man standing on stilts, wielding two double-ended spears.
The man stared sinisterly at Li Huowang’s foot, grinning smugly.
“Heh heh heh, you dare raid the camp with such crippled footwork? My spear tip is already coated with—”
Before he could finish, Li Huowang’s body shrank by a full zhang in an instant, and the purple-tasseled sword in his hand plunged straight into the man’s neck.
“I don’t care what you coated it with! I’ll coat your neck first!”
After all he’d been through, Li Huowang knew exactly how to leverage his heart-element ability. No matter what he’d coated it with, if Li Huowang hadn’t heard it, then it was coated with nothing!
Under the man’s incredulous gaze, Li Huowang flicked his wrist. Blood sprayed skyward as he turned without a backward glance and decisively leaped out of the room.
(End of chapter)