The Vase-Girl's Truth

Chapter 16: The Head

With Zheng Kun's violent outburst, two of Li Huowang's ribs were snapped, and his body was left covered in several black-and-blue pits of bruising. Fortunately, this wasn't too serious. With the help of the medicinal pills, he could barely manage to treat these minor wounds.

Compared to his injuries, he cared more about his scheme.

Right on the first day of the lunar month, Li Huowang took advantage of another conflict with him to "accidentally" let slip the information about the "Wandering Lord" that he had learned from Bai Lingmiao.

When he saw the flicker of change in the other man's expression, Li Huowang's heart leaped with joy.

Truth be told, he had no idea what the man would do with this information. He was just trying his luck—he had nothing else to do anyway, so he figured he'd cast a line and see what he caught. Now it seemed he had succeeded. The man definitely had his own selfish motives.

Days and nights blurred together inside the limestone cave. The first day of the lunar month arrived quickly. This was Danyangzi's best time for refining alchemy. He would be in the alchemy hall for the entire morning, and it also happened to be when the "Wandering Lord" was absent.

The entire Qingfeng Temple wasn't huge, but it wasn't small either. Having lived here for so long, Li Huowang had long since figured out Zheng Kun's daily routine. Yet he did nothing. He just sat quietly in the Main Unity Hall, legs crossed.

"Did I guess wrong? Is the bastard not that greedy?" Li Huowang lay on his bed, thinking about where his calculations had gone wrong.

Fifteen days passed. The first day of the second lunar month came, and Zheng Kun still hadn't made a move.

Just as Li Huowang was beginning to think he had miscalculated, on the fifteenth day of the second month, the Main Unity Hall—where Zheng Kun usually went—was empty. He had finally been unable to hold back.

The moment he saw Danyangzi open his furnace, Li Huowang hurried toward Danyangzi's dwelling according to his original plan.

Just as he was about to reach the cave entrance, Li Huowang suddenly stopped in his tracks. He saw Zheng Kun standing guard in the distance. He hadn't gone inside.

Watching him carefully observing from the entrance, Li Huowang immediately understood. Someone else had served as the scout for him. The bastard was keeping watch. His paranoia was even heavier than Li Huowang had imagined.

About half a shichen later, Li Huowang saw Xuan Yin sneakily emerge from inside.

Zheng Kun glanced at him, pulled out a black talisman, and stuck it on both their knees. They vanished as swiftly as the wind.

The door was only left slightly ajar, like a trap tempting someone to enter.

Seeing that the other man had already acted as his pathfinder, Li Huowang knew that even if there had been traps prepared inside the room, Zheng Kun had probably already removed them. He slowly crept closer. This was his chance.

Danyangzi's dwelling was quite spacious, but it was extremely messy and very dirty. Inside, the room reeked of dead rats—a truly foul stench.

Despite the squalid environment, Li Huowang immediately spotted the most clearly valuable object in the room: a stone slab covered by a net woven from black-threaded copper coins.

Without a doubt, that stone slab was the "Heavenly Scripture" that Danyangzi spoke of. He carefully walked over and studied its contents through the black netting.

Zheng Kun must have come to steal the immortal cultivation method. But judging by the scene, he hadn't succeeded.

Li Huowang tried his best to decipher the contents of the Heavenly Scripture. The text was extremely obscure and difficult to understand. He could barely make out that it was pictographic script, but it seemed to be from an even more ancient dynasty.

Although Chinese characters had undergone the least evolution among written languages over thousands of years, he was still struggling greatly with it.

The more he read, the more wrong Li Huowang felt something was. Didn't Danyangzi say the method of becoming an immortal was to cultivate both internal and external alchemy simultaneously? It looked like the bastard hadn't been following this text at all.

"Blissful Steps, Universal Sound, Gandharva... Obtain the Cloud-Like Spreading Shade of Grace... Wondrous Good Body, Granting All Beings Peace and Liberation..."

And this stuff didn't look anything like a so-called immortal cultivation method. It was a scripture.

" Hee hee." A strange, snickering laugh made the back of Li Huowang's neck go cold. He spun around quickly, but found no one behind him.

On the wall, where a hollow had been dug out, there was only a narrow celadon porcelain vase, about the thickness of a forearm.

"Something's wrong." On edge and terrified, Li Huowang began to retreat the way he came. It seemed Zheng Kun hadn't cleared away all the dangers.

"You're not allowed to move." A sharp, delicate female voice sounded from behind him.

Li Huowang slowly turned his head again. What he saw sent a chill down his spine. At the mouth of that narrow little vase he had just seen, there was now a pale, bone-white little girl's head propped up.

Calling it a little girl, but the color of its skin didn't look quite like a living person. Especially the rouge on both its cheeks—it was a frightful, deep red.

Staring at the tiny, intensely red dot in the center of its forehead, Li Huowang felt more and more creeped out the longer he looked.

In that instant, he also understood. He knew what Danyangzi used to read his Heavenly Scripture for him. It was this thing in front of him.

"You're with the guy from before? Hee hee, you guys are in big trouble. If I shake my bell, my dad will come back." Several small copper bells were tied with red string right onto its little topknot.

Seeing the thing say this, Li Huowang was immediately frantic with anxiety. But in the next second, his expression suddenly calmed down. "Go ahead and call him. Let your dad come back and see that you've been the one tricking him."

When he saw a trace of panic flash across the face of that vase-head, a cold sneer rose in Li Huowang's heart. He had guessed right. He wasn't the only one trying to fool the illiterate, scabby-headed man. This thing—whatever it was—had already been doing it for a long time!

If the upper beam is crooked, the lower beams will be askew. Every single person in Qingfeng Temple had their own hidden agenda!

"I-it's not my fault, okay? Those characters were written way too ugly, I couldn't understand them at all! Dad forced me to read them out loud to him, what else could I do?" The vase-head's face scrunched up in grievance, on the verge of tears.

Seeing the panic that had thoroughly taken over the vase-girl's expression, Li Huowang thought for a moment and quickly made a decision.

"Alright then. Let's make a pact. I'll leave this place right now. You pretend you never saw me, and I'll pretend I don't know anything about you. That's best for everyone."

The vase-head wobbled a bit before finally nodding. "Fine then. Hurry up and go. I'll just pretend you guys were never here."

Li Huowang lifted his foot and began to slowly shuffle toward the door. "Since the Heavenly Scripture is fake, then the alchemy formulas you used to make people into pills were all made up by you."

A simple, foolish grin spread across the vase-head's face. "Yeah. Because those were the only things I remembered. I just pretended those formulas were written on the book and told them to Dad. Don't worry, it won't kill anyone. I don't want Dad to die. I'm just afraid Dad will find out I'm useless and throw me away. Look at me, no hands, no feet—"

Just as the vase-head was speaking with rising excitement, Li Huowang suddenly raised his right hand high. Gripping the jade pendant tightly, he smashed it down onto the vase with all his might.

The round jade pendant, trailing a white afterimage, slammed directly into the vase's body. Cracks appeared. Under the vase-head's terrified panic, it crashed heavily to the floor.

The vase shattered. Its internal organs, wrapped in black prayer beads and mixed with feces and urine, were exposed directly to the air.

"Waaah... Dad!! It hurts! Dad, it hurts so much." The vase-head's cries grew weaker and weaker.

(The End of This Chapter)