The Black Cauldron

Seeing Xuanyang covering Li Huowang's mouth, the others carrying torches rushed up and surrounded him with hostile eyes.

"Not leaving? Then die here today! There's no way we're letting you tip off that scabby-headed bastard!"

Facing his life-or-death predicament, Li Huowang didn't panic at all. He rolled his eyes in exasperation, silently cursed the plot direction of this hallucination, then closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

When he opened his eyes again, he found himself strapped to a hospital bed with broad leather restraints, the fellow disciples around him gone.

"Auntie Wang, I'm awake. Can you loosen me?" Li Huowang called out to the night-shift nurse through the microphone by his bed. He desperately wanted to see if the jade pendant was still in his clothes.

But after shouting for a while, there was no response. Li Huowang understood: Nurse Wang was binge-watching her Mary Sue drama again during her night shift—she always liked to slack off like that.

Li Huowang looked down at his chest wrapped in the blue-and-white hospital gown and twisted violently, trying to sense through pressure whether there was a jade pendant under there.

But now his body was completely immobilized, and he could neither feel it nor not feel it. After a few attempts, he gave up in frustration.

Yawning, Li Huowang could only lie in bed, praying that Nurse Wang would show some mercy and glance at the monitor after finishing her show.

In the dead of night, even the second floor where severe patients were housed was very quiet. Li Huowang drifted off into a drowsy sleep. When he woke again, he was lying on the cold floor of a cave.

He was still in the same spot, but the people who had tried to escape earlier were all gone.

"Hah, you NPCs think you can deal with me?" Li Huowang pulled the jade pendant from his robe, tossed it lightly in his palm, and tucked it back inside.

Half an incense stick later, he returned to the communal bunk he slept on, lying in the pile of straw patiently waiting for daylight. Just thinking about the value of the jade pendant made him too excited to sleep.

Without a clock, Li Huowang didn't know how much time had passed. When he saw the fellow disciples on both sides beginning to stir awake, he sat up as well.

"Daybreak here, so Auntie Wang should be changing shifts too. Maybe I'll go back now and check? Nurse Ai is much more diligent than she is."

Just as Li Huowang was hesitating, hurried footsteps sounded from the entrance.

A young Daoist in a black robe with his hair tied in a topknot rushed in frantically.

"Everyone, hurry! The master has ordered everyone to assemble at Huian Hall!"

The sudden news left everyone bewildered, but since it was their master's command, they had no reason to refuse.

Soon, in the largest cave they called Huian Hall, all the disciples had gathered. The torchlight clearly illuminated the confusion on every face.

Li Huowang keenly noticed that a few people were missing from the crowd. Besides Xuanyang, several of the scabby-headed master's direct disciples were also gone.

"Oh, they ran off together?" he thought, just enjoying the spectacle. The scene unfolding before him felt like binge-watching a drama.

When an ugly head emerged from the dark tunnel, all the young Daoists except Li Huowang instinctively lowered their heads.

That was their master, Danyangzi.

"Hmph!" A cough made everyone's body tense up.

"Last night, around the second watch, some people tried to escape. Among them were two of my own direct disciples. Your master is deeply pained!"

His words said "deeply pained," but the murderous aura on his face was almost tangible.

"They got caught already? Xuanyang and his bunch are really pathetic." Li Huowang curled his lip.

"As they say, nothing can be accomplished without norms. If you break the rules, you get punished. That is the rule of our Western Mountains Eastern Hua Sect! Everyone follow me."

None of the disciples dared to breathe loudly; they silently trailed behind Danyangzi as he walked forward.

Passing through caves of various sizes and crossing a rushing underground river, they soon arrived in a damp, classroom-sized cave.

Li Huowang saw that everyone who had tried to escape last night was now tied up in a corner.

Looking dispirited, they struggled excitedly upon seeing their master, as if trying to say something, but the rags stuffed in their mouths silenced them.

Danyangzi seemed uninterested in hearing their excuses. With one hand forming a Daoist seal, he pointed forward. "Open!"

The smoothly washed ground of the cave suddenly split open into a large pit, and the escapees instantly fell in.

In the next moment, muffled screams and tearing sounds rose from within the pit, mixed with the ripping of flesh.

Faced with this terrifying scene, many of the young Daoists began to tremble, wishing they could shut their eyes.

"Get closer! This is what happens to those who run!" Danyangzi's words drained all color from everyone's faces.

No one dared disobey their master's command. They pushed and shoved each other to the edge of the pit.

The pit was dark, very dark, pitch black.

It was like a whirlpool, as if trying to suck everyone in.

After careful scrutiny, Li Huowang could make out a large black cauldron at the bottom of the pit. Strange talismans were pressed into the rim.

Something seemed to be moving inside the cauldron, but Li Huowang couldn't make it out clearly. The only sensory information he could receive was the pungent, sickening smell of blood.

Whatever was in that cauldron, it was definitely dangerous.

"In theory, things in the hallucination shouldn't hurt me. That's never happened before."

Even so, his heart was in his throat, ready to retreat back to the hospital at any moment.

"Shwwp!" A writhing black shadow shot out from the pit, wrapped around the junior disciple next to Li Huowang, and yanked him back in.

Everyone was terrified by this. They retreated to the smooth cave walls, and if Danyangzi hadn't been watching, they would have bolted long ago.

Almost everyone present was now filled with dread, trembling as they wondered what that thing was.

But Li Huowang was not among them, because he had been standing closest and had seen clearly.

It was a mass of black matter with a fleshy texture, its slimy, sticky skin covered in clumps of short, quivering black tentacles!

Just from that, Li Huowang was certain that the thing Danyangzi raised in this pit was not a normal creature of this world.

As for what it actually was, Li Huowang couldn't guess and didn't want to go back for another look.

Even though he knew all this came from his own brain, Li Huowang really wanted to understand why he would fabricate something like this.

Taking in the incredibly real surroundings, a terrible suspicion suddenly struck him. "What if this terrifying, twisted world is real?"

The thought made his whole body tremble. He recalled the people who had died earlier—if they were real and not just his delusion, then if he had been grabbed by that thing just now, he would have died too?

Li Huowang was almost crushed by this suffocating fear. He took several deep breaths and immediately used the self-therapy techniques Dr. Li had taught him.

"This is all a hallucination. No matter how real it seems, it's a hallucination. Li Huowang, you must not get lost in these hallucinations again. They are all your own creation. What are you afraid of?"

"Yang Na is still waiting for me. I can't let her down. I can overcome all this! I can!"

After this self-reassurance, his emotions gradually stabilized, enough to face everything before him with a composed demeanor.