An Ally

1,313 words

Chapter 14: An Ally

No sooner had Li Huowang swallowed the pill than he felt a warmth kindling in his dantian, a fire that burned hotter and hotter by the moment.

It burned so fiercely that he couldn't even spare a thought for the nausea and revulsion churning in his gut.

"Xuan Yang, go back and rest. The medicine is potent; it'll take some time to fully absorb."

"Yes, Master."

Li Huowang stumbled back to his quarters, gripping the doorframe as he doubled over in dry heaves. All he could bring up was a little clear fluid. The pill had been completely absorbed.

Crack. Crack. Every joint in his body popped and creaked. His limbs began to twitch uncontrollably.

The fire in his dantian had already spread along his meridians to his arms and legs. He felt like he was wearing a thick winter coat in the middle of summer—his whole body felt cooked through.

The heat fogged his mind. Lying on his bed, watching the ceiling spin above him, he replayed everything that had just happened. He saw again the looks of terror and despair on every face in the medicine shed.

He had become Danyangzi's sickening accomplice. He had done to others what was being done to him.

That man might be illiterate, but he was far from stupid. Against absolute power, anything Li Huowang tried would be useless.

I have to kill him. I have to find a way to kill him! he roared inside his own skull.

His right hand unconsciously gripped the edge of the stone bed. As that last thought echoed in his mind, the veins on the back of his hand bulged.

Crack. A chunk of the hard stone bed broke off in his grip.

The sudden change caught Li Huowang off guard. He stared at his hand, then at the piece of rock he was holding. Understanding dawned. It was the pill's effect.

It wasn't just strength. Everything felt different. He even thought his eyes could see farther now. That pill had given him a sense of being reborn.

But the moment he remembered how he had gotten this power, the nausea hit him again.

"Brother Li? Are you alright?" Bai Lingmiao's head peeked cautiously around the doorway.

Li Huowang looked up at her, his expression complicated. For a moment, he didn't know what to say.

Bai Lingmiao stepped forward. "Brother Li, you really don't have to blame yourself. We all know your hands were tied. If… if Master orders me to go in next time, don't trade me out for someone else. We're all headed to the same place anyway."

Li Huowang didn't want to talk about that. Seeing the blood on her forehead, he pulled out one of the pills he had made earlier and held it out. "Here. Eat this. It'll stop the bleeding."

Bai Lingmiao looked at the pill in his hand and shook her head in terror. "I don't want pills. I will never take another pill."

Li Huowang gave a dry laugh and tossed the pill aside onto the ground. "Yeah. All medicine has side effects. Better not to take it."

Bai Lingmiao bit her lip. After a moment of thought, she asked, "Brother Li… are you planning to go against the Master?"

Li Huowang's face changed. He shot a nervous glance at the doorway, then rushed over to shut the door.

"It's okay. The Master can't hear us right now. He uses the 'Wandering Lord' to keep watch, and every market day, the Wandering Lord has to go back to the market."

"The Wandering Lord? What's that?" Li Huowang asked, confused. It was the first time he had heard the term.

"The Wandering Lord is the Wandering Lord. You can't see it or touch it. My grandfather told me only high-level cultivators can command them."

"Oh?" Li Huowang's heart stirred. He filed this piece of information away. It was crucial for him.

"When is market day?"

Bai Lingmiao looked at him strangely. "Market day is on the first and fifteenth of the month. Brother Li, how can you not even know that? Didn't your parents ever take you to market?"

Li Huowang shook his head. The memories in his mind—whether real or illusory—told him he had only ever lived in a city. He had never been to a rural market gathering.

"Brother Li, let's get back to business. Are you really planning to go against the Master?"

Li Huowang's expression hardened. "Of course I am. I'd drink his blood and eat his flesh if I could!"

Bai Lingmiao took a deep breath and nodded firmly. "Then count me in, Brother. I want to help with this too!"

Li Huowang looked at the girl before him, at the determination in her eyes. Maybe Bai Lingmiao wasn't as weak as he had thought.

"Alright. You're in," he agreed. He really did need allies right now.

He thought for a long moment, then spoke gravely. "We're not enough, just the two of us. First, go keep an eye on the medicine shed. See if anyone else is nursing a grudge."

Other people might not dare to oppose Danyangzi, but the human ingredients in the medicine shed were all marked for death. Some of them had to be bitter about it. It was a fundamental contradiction, and among them, there had to be people he could win over.

"Mm." Bai Lingmiao nodded and turned to leave.

Li Huowang sat for a while, then picked up the round jade pendant tied at his waist. He thought of that senior disciple who had failed to escape.

"Xuan Yang… Xuan Yang… back then, did you and the others gather together the same way? I hope I don't end up like you."

In the days that followed, Li Huowang threw himself wholeheartedly into life at Qingfeng Temple. He kept the medicine shed organized and orderly, managing both the people and the supplies with precision.

Seeing such a cooperative disciple, Danyangzi naturally had to reward him. He taught Li Huowang about all sorts of basic pills, as if he truly intended to train him as a student.

These common medicines weren't very effective. At best, they let Li Huowang treat a mild cold or a minor external wound.

And Li Huowang didn't know if it was just Danyangzi's pills or if all pills in this world worked this way, but there was a limit to their use. If you took too much, the cure became poison.

There were also taboos. You couldn't mix them. Mixing them was a quick way to court disaster.

It would be more accurate to say Li Huowang was now a competent poisoner rather than a lousy doctor.

The pills themselves weren't the key point. The key was that through this contact, Li Huowang's relationship with Danyangzi gradually warmed.

Sometimes, Danyangzi would even let Li Huowang assist him while he was concocting.

When Danyangzi accepted yet another boy as a disciple, Li Huowang was no longer the junior member. He had fully integrated into Qingfeng Temple.

Through all this close contact, Li Huowang confirmed his suspicion: Danyangzi really was illiterate. And what was more, he hated it when others could read.

He refused to let any of his disciples surpass him in anything. That was why none of the disciples he took on could read.

This struck Li Huowang as wrong. He remembered what Danyangzi had said to him that first day.

"Because the method to become an immortal is written in the Heavenly Scripture that Lord Lao himself gave to me. Ask yourself, under heaven, who else can become an immortal? He said I can become an immortal, so I will definitely become immortal!"

If Lord Lao had given him a Heavenly Scripture, but none of his disciples could read, and he couldn't read either… then who had read it to him?

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Reading Guide Decoding

Building a Conspiracy from Scratch

Cultural / Xianxia Notes

Dantian (丹田) and Meridians (脉络): In Daoist internal alchemy, the dantian is the body's energy center, located in the lower abdomen. When the pill's "fire" spreads from the dantian along the "meridians," that's standard qi circulation—but in Dao-Twisted World, that fire feels less like enlightenment and more like being slow-roasted from the inside. The body does get stronger; the cost is the knowledge of what was ground up to make that pill.

Market Day (赶集) as a Lunar Calendar Institution: In rural China, market days are traditionally held on fixed dates of the lunar month—often the 1st and 15th. These aren't just economic events; they're social and ritual anchors. The novel weaponizes this: a supernatural entity like the Wandering Lord literally has to clock out and attend market day, giving mortals a small but critical gap in surveillance. It's a delightfully folk-religious detail that turns a mundane rhythm into a survival mechanic.

Alchemy Taboos (丹药忌讳): Li Huowang discovers that basic medicinal pills have strict dosage limits—overdose equals poison, and mixing them is lethal. This reflects the real-world Daoist alchemical principle that medicine and poison are two sides of the same crucible. In the Dao-Twisted World, this adds a layer of grim pragmatism: the same alchemy that makes you stronger can kill you if you're careless, so what you learn can be used for healing or for murder.

Chapter Overview

Get ready for the scheming phase, Daoist friends! Chapter 14 is where Li Huowang stops being a passenger in his own nightmare and starts grabbing the wheel—grudgingly, with a side of existential nausea. After being force-fed a pill that gives him a genuine power-up (stronger, sharper senses, the works), our boy has to deal with the moral hangover of how he got it: by becoming Danyangzi's errand boy in the human-ingredient trade. But wait—Bai Lingmiao, the soft-spoken albino girl we thought was just a victim, walks in with a backbone of steel and offers to join his rebellion. The two of them piece together crucial intel about the temple's surveillance system (a creepy entity called the Wandering Lord that takes days off on market day), and Li Huowang starts building a network of allies among the doomed ingredients. By the end, he's playing the long game—acting the devoted disciple, learning alchemy as a cover for poison-making, and quietly probing the temple's biggest mystery: if Danyangzi and all his disciples are illiterate, who the hell read him that Heavenly Scripture from Lord Lao?

Key Plot Points

The pill works (too well): Li Huowang absorbs a supercharged alchemical pill, gaining increased strength, a more resilient body, and heightened senses—but the source of the power (a human-ingredient sacrifice) nearly chokes him with moral revulsion.
Bai Lingmiao joins the resistance: She finds Li Huowang after the event, absolves him of guilt ("we know your hands were tied"), and volunteers to help take down Danyangzi. Her quiet stubbornness suggests she's more than a damsel in distress.
Crucial intel on the Wandering Lord: Bai Lingmiao reveals that Danyangzi uses a summoned entity called the Wandering Lord to keep watch, but it's absent on market days (the 1st and 15th of each month). This gives the conspirators a window of opportunity.
Li Huowang builds a network: Tasking Bai Lingmiao with scouting the medicine shed for desperate allies, he begins to identify his potential co-conspirators among the human ingredients—people whose only way out is rebellion.
Playing the obedient disciple: Li Huowang throws himself into temple life, organizing the medicine shed and assisting Danyangzi in alchemy, earning trust while secretly learning how to turn medicines into poisons.
The illiteracy puzzle deepens: Close observation confirms Danyangzi is not only illiterate but hostile to literacy among his disciples. This creates a glaring plot hole: if he can't read the Heavenly Scripture Lord Lao supposedly gave him, who read it to him?

Reading Guide

This chapter is a masterclass in quiet setup. No big fight scenes, no flashy supernatural showdowns—just Li Huowang swallowing his disgust and turning into a political animal. The transition from victim to spymaster is handled beautifully: the power-up feels like a curse, the first ally walks in of her own accord, and the entire alliance is built on a piece of calendar trivia (market day) and a gap in a surveillance system. That's good plotting, my friends.

Keep an eye on Bai Lingmiao. Her stepping up to volunteer is a subtle but critical turning point—she's not asking for permission, she's offering a partnership. Li Huowang's internal conflict (getting stronger through atrocity, then immediately weaponizing that strength against the man who made him complicit) is exactly the kind of morally tangled fuel this novel runs on.

And don't sleep on that closing mystery: the illiterate Danyangzi claims to have received a Heavenly Scripture from Lord Lao, but he can't read it and forbids anyone else from learning. So who interpreted it for him? Or is the whole "heavenly mandate" built on a secondhand lie? That question hangs over the chapter like a blade, and knowing this novel, the answer isn't going to be pretty.