Danyangzi

Danyangzi

“Thunder?” The five enormous Buddhas, including Jiandun, looked up simultaneously. Then they realized that the half-moon that had been visible moments ago was nowhere to be found.

The entire sky was shrouded in dark clouds, churning and roiling, from which came a sound—something like thunder, but absolutely not thunder.

“Cough, cough.” Feeling his breath grow labored, Li Huowang dry-heaved twice before stumbling to the ground.

Lying there, he looked up into the black clouds and finally saw his master again. He looked just as hideous as before.

Bloody black feathers covered his skin, thick and wet. Where a head should have been, the flesh had split open, sprouting three faces of different ages.

And besides the organs that were naturally his, the swollen, bulging body now bore extras—things that were entirely inhuman.

A nightmare of glossy black shapes, vertical pupils like pus, everted entrails slick with filth, twisted, aberrant tentacles—all of this chaos was wrapped together by a single, flowing white ribbon that floated in the air, trailing an immortal grace.

And these nauseating things were not fixed. They shifted constantly, morphing into things even more hair-raising.

Before he could watch much longer, Li Huowang’s eyes began to bleed. His forehead was covered in bulging veins, and his whole head swelled to the size of an old longevity-star’s.

“No… I can’t look anymore…” Utterly drained, Li Huowang quickly averted his gaze. It helped a little.

But not enough. The continuous blood loss was draining him just as fast.

With a trembling hand, he reached to his waist, pulled out a few hemostatic Moistening Blood Pills, and threw them into his mouth, swallowing.

The flow of blood in his body slowed. The bleeding visibly lessened.

But it wasn’t enough. He dug out more pills—ones he had refined himself at Qingfeng Temple, meant to fortify the root and nourish the foundation—and shoved them into his mouth.

A sudden wet, tearing sound of flesh made Li Huowang’s eyes snap upward.

His master had already begun to act. The grotesque Danyangzi was now clinging to the giant Buddha’s head like a lizard. He opened all three mouths and easily tore off one of the Buddha’s plump ears.

A furious roar erupted from the Buddha. The fleshy palms covering his skin curved into claws and swiped at Danyangzi.

But Danyangzi’s body suddenly swelled—all the misshapen, aberrant organs expanded at once—and he tore every single one of those fleshy hands clean off.

Then, Danyangzi’s three mouths grabbed the edges of the wounds and yanked. A gaping, blood-spurting hole was ripped open. Without hesitation, he shoved all three heads inside.

“AHHH!!” The Buddha let out a despairing scream. His massive hands clawed frantically at his own skin, trying to dig out whatever was burrowing in. But it was futile. His plump body began to collapse inward, shriveling.

In a few breaths, he fell heavily, blood streaming from all seven apertures. Then his swollen belly bloomed open like a flower in full blossom.

When Danyangzi emerged, drenched in blood, before the remaining Buddhas, Jiandun’s expression was grim. He did not dare to underestimate the thing. He immediately produced a sutra bound in human skin.

“Om—Ma—Ni—Pad—Me—Hum—” As Jiandun sat cross-legged and chanted the Six-Syllable Mantra, the blood-red characters on the sutra vanished from the page and reappeared on Danyangzi’s body.

The organs covered by the sutra characters began to tremble uncontrollably. They started to proliferate.

But the proliferation lasted only a moment before it reversed, shrinking faster and faster, until Danyangzi had completely disappeared from where he stood.

Sweat beaded on Jiandun’s forehead. He let out a small sigh of relief. Good thing he had prepared a countermeasure, or this would have been truly troublesome.

He began to chant the Six-Syllable Mantra in reverse. The human-skin sutra in his hands began to re-form its characters.

Seeing that not a single character was missing, Jiandun was about to close the book when it suddenly exploded in his hands. The scriptures scattered everywhere, and the terrible Danyangzi burst out from inside.

No one had expected this. As Jiandun’s jaw dropped in instinctive shock, Danyangzi’s three heads twisted together like a drill and plunged straight down his throat.

A tearing sound. Jiandun’s neck swelled instantly to the thickness of his own head. And that was only the beginning.

As he felt an unbearable, piercing pain, the despairing Jiandun heard a sound coming from inside his own body—the sound of chewing!

“NO!!” With a final, unwilling cry, Danyangzi burst through his chest cavity and emerged. All three mouths pulled in unison.

The remaining three Buddhas tried to struggle, but it was futile. After a few brief sounds, the snapping of bones and the tearing of flesh took over.

Half an incense stick later, the seven Buddhas were gone. Only the steaming pool of blood remained on the ground.

Just as Li Huowang’s gaze fell on the blood-drenched Danyangzi, the figure turned around. The three faces, from different stages of life, all twisted into a knowing, terrible smile at the same time. “My boy…”

A soft puff sounded. Danyangzi’s body dissolved like smoke and clouds.

Time passed slowly. The moonlight reappeared in the sky, draping everything on the forest path in a layer of silver gauze. Everything had settled.

Li Huowang clutched his neck and struggled to sit up. He looked at the others, still trapped inside the ring of tree trunks. By now, they were nearly scared out of their minds, huddled together like terrified statues.

As if he knew exactly what they were thinking, Li Huowang quickly explained in a weak voice, “Don’t be afraid! None of you! Danyangzi is really dead. He won’t be using you as ingredients anymore.”

But his words did not lessen their terror in the slightest. The little Daoists had already started crying.

In the end, it was Bai Lingmiao—the one closest to him—who spoke. Her face was even paler than before. “Brother Li… what? What Danyangzi? We didn’t see anything.”

Li Huowang swallowed with difficulty. “You couldn’t see Danyangzi? The one who killed those Buddhas just now? Was he invisible to you?”

For a moment, more suspicions crowded into Li Huowang’s mind.

Just then, Gouwa, who was hiding behind the big man, began to tremble violently. He didn’t dare to look at Li Huowang. He could only squeeze his eyes shut and shout, his voice cracking with sobs. “Brother Li!! There’s no Danyangzi at all! It was you the whole time! Only you!”

“What?” Li Huowang, ignoring the pain, reached up to touch his own face. His fingers came away sticky with some viscous liquid.

He kept feeling downward. He also found that both corners of his mouth had been torn open into long gashes, as if he had just opened his mouth very, very wide.

But none of that was the main point. The main thing now was that he felt very full. Very, very full.