Chapter 746
Chapter 746
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>Translator: Ryuma
>Chapter: 746
>Chapter Title: Intelligence
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Seeing Li Huowang throwing his head back in laughter, how could Xuanyin not realize he'd been played?
“Does this amuse you?” Xuanyin’s tone turned unusually sharp for once.
“Of course it does. You’re not losing any flesh over it. What’s a little effort to help me cultivate?” Li Huowang clutched his stomach and burst out laughing again.
Seeing Xuanyin not reacting, Li Huowang stood up and wiped his face with his hand. The dice transformed back into Li Huowang’s own face.
“Don’t be so stingy. You scheme against others every day—why get upset when someone pulls one over on you? Tell you what, we’ll call it even for that Earth Dragon business last time.”
No matter how you sliced it, Li Huowang felt like he’d come out ahead this time. With just a wisp of non-gang energy, he’d turned it into a four-tael lever moving a thousand catties—multiplying it over a hundredfold.
Plus, making Xuanyin eat dirt was payback for the Earth Dragon fiasco.
Xuanyin seemed too lazy to engage with Li Huowang’s banter and got straight to the point. “I sought you out this time to tell you that Taishan Stone has talked.”
“Oh?!” Hearing this, Li Huowang wiped the grin off his face and grew serious at once. “Can I take a look?”
“Certainly.” Xuanyin stepped up beside Li Huowang and placed his bony finger on Li Huowang’s shoulder. Everything around them shifted rapidly in an instant.
When Li Huowang came back to his senses, he found himself in a dim, damp prison cell. At first, the lines around him wavered slightly, but they soon solidified into utter realism.
“Hmm? Hmm.” Xuanyin looked around in mild surprise.
“What’s wrong? Danger?” Li Huowang immediately sensed that this hallucination felt different from the ones before.
He reached out to touch the iron bars beside him, feeling the chill and rust with his fingers. Li Huowang looked at Xuanyin in astonishment.
“Xuanyin, you’ve got some moves. You actually pulled me straight from Qingqiu back to Siqi! With a divine ability like this that spans hundreds of miles, you’re a true land immortal. Why didn’t you use it sooner?”
Compared to the national advisor’s sword flight from before, this spatial shift was what truly earned the title of land immortal.
“. . .” After a pause, Xuanyin slowly nodded before speaking. “You know I like to keep my cards close to my chest. I never easily trust others, so that’s why I didn’t tell you about this trick before.”
Li Huowang truly hadn’t expected someone to have the gall to say something like that so brazenly.
“We can chat about that later. Business first—where’s Taishan Stone right now?”
“This way.” Xuanyin led Li Huowang deeper into the prison.
Following the stairs lined with black peach-wood talismans, Li Huowang finally spotted Taishan Stone, submerged in black water swirling with floating talismans.
Compared to his previous chilling aura, he now looked utterly haggard.
His eyes were deeply sunken, his complexion ashen, as if he could drop dead at any moment.
What stood out most was that the man’s skull was cracked open, exposing a bloody cavity to the air.
“Rare guests, rare guests. You’ve both come.” Nearby, Zheng Boqiao glanced at Li Huowang and Xuanyin in surprise.
“Did Siqi’s Supervising Heaven Monitor personally get him to talk? What’d you find out?” Li Huowang cut straight to it.
“You can see for yourself.”
Zheng Boqiao pulled out a blue-and-white porcelain spoon emblazoned with the character for “fortune” and plunged it into the hole in Taishan Stone’s head. Amid a grating scrape against bone, he scooped out a heaping spoonful.
Like eating egg custard, he popped it into his mouth and began refining a pill right there in his own body.
Seeing this, Li Huowang furrowed his brow. “Never mind, I’ll pass. Just tell me.”
Zheng Boqiao blinked, regurgitated the contents from his stomach like a ruminant, chewed briefly, and swallowed it back down.
“Not much useful intel, but we learned from this guy’s brain about a Dharma Cult contingency. If the Siqi front collapses, they plan to pay a steep price to summon an immortal descent.”
“Descent? Who? The Child God?” Li Huowang’s brow creased.
“No, the Child God can’t come down. If it could, it would’ve done so ages ago—it wouldn’t let the Dharma Cult run rampant here.”
“It’s probably not a Sovereign of Fate, but something below them.” Zheng Boqiao chimed in from the side.
Below the Sovereigns of Fate? Li Huowang recalled those things waiting bitterly outside Bai Yujing back then.
“Like the Joy God?” Li Huowang had clashed with one before, and those aberrations were no joke.
“No, the Joy God doesn’t need summoning—it’s already down there. Shout and it comes running. This is something far more powerful.”
“Since Taishan Stone came from Daqi, that’s all he knows. The finer details were probably never shared with them.”
Li Huowang glanced at the contents on the spinning light mirror nearby. If the battle turned sour, then now was as dire as it got.
Da Liang’s armies had reached Siqi’s border. Without reinforcements from the Dharma Cult’s current position, they’d be steadily whittled down.
Li Huowang thought it over and turned to Xuanyin. “If something like that actually descends, do you have a counter ready?”
Xuanyin replied: “We can’t wait for them to summon it before we defend. Now that we know their plan, we should strike first—before they pull it off.”
“Sending in armies would make too much noise and tip them off. Best to send a few exceptional fighters to thwart them quietly.”
“Why look at me? No one else available?” Li Huowang said, displeased.
“The capable must shoulder more. Others will tag along, of course, but only with you can I truly rest easy. Truth be told, you’re stronger than me now.”
“Save the flattery. I can’t spare the time right now. Figure it out yourself.”
It wasn’t that Li Huowang didn’t want to go. Foiling the Dharma Cult’s schemes sounded great, but his cultivation of the False Truth Technique had only just begun. He hadn’t even tested if it could offset the side effects yet.
Without resolving this true-false confusion, heading into battle could lead to any number of unforeseen disasters.
“No rush.” Zheng Boqiao spoke up. “We’ll send our Dharma Cult infiltrators to scout the truth of it first. Let us know when you can go—if the timing works, great; if not, no harm done.”
Li Huowang gave the vacant Taishan Stone one last look and turned to leave the prison. “Xuanyin, remember to bring my daughter back from Siqi.”
Once Li Huowang was gone, the prison fell deathly silent. The two men watched him go, exchanged a smile, then shook their heads helplessly in unison.
“Dealing with him is no picnic.”
“No matter. His fate is unlucky. Once the catastrophe passes, he won’t cross paths with us much longer.”