Butchery

1,201 words

Chapter 73: Butchery

“This is impossible! Absolutely impossible!! How could he still be alive?!”

Gazing at the thing emerging from the water before him, Yuan Er couldn’t help but cry out. No one had ever escaped the Lord of the River. Yet here was a man who had just done it. He recognized him. The man in front of him was the very red-robed Daoist who had cost him dozens of his brothers!

Before they could even figure out what was happening, he saw the bizarre Daoist slowly raise his head, leaving a trail of bloody footprints as he walked straight toward them.

“Kill him! Kill him now!! Hurry! Don’t let him ring that bell!” Yuan Er’s voice was tight with anxiety. Even though it was just one man against their hundreds, Yuan Er felt an inexplicable urge to turn and run.

A series of whooshing sounds rang out. Dozens of arrowheads glinting coldly flew toward the Daoist, yet not a single one found its mark.

With a tearing sound, a man’s body was ripped apart, piece by piece, right before everyone’s eyes.

The river bandits initially tried to surround him, but soon, the increasingly gruesome scene caused their hot blood to run cold. This scene, comparable to the eighteen layers of hell, slowly replaced the anger and hatred in their eyes with pure terror. Finally, they could take no more. Their legs trembling, they began to flee. Not even Yuan Er’s commands could make them stay for a single moment. They were utterly terrified.

Once these men completely lost their will to resist and turned their backs to Li Huowang, the reed island descended into a sheer massacre.

“Grandfather! Grandfather, think of something, quick!” Yuan Er was completely panicked as he watched his own younger brother being torn apart alive. Only now did he realize what a terrifying existence he had provoked.

The previously awe-inspiring old man was also panicked. Flustered, he clasped his hands together and mumbled something toward the dark, reddish lake water. But this chanting didn’t last long. When he saw a mass of flesh, the size of a large boat, float to the surface from the lake’s depths, the old man felt his vision go dark, and his body began to topple backward. That was the Lord of the River, the entity their ancestors had worshipped for generations. That Daoist had actually killed it!

Seeing this, Yuan Er’s heart shuddered. Without a word, he hoisted his grandfather onto his back and sprinted toward the stockade. Ignoring the cries and screams behind him, Yuan Er clenched his teeth and ran as fast as he could.

Li Huowang watched as Danyangzi methodically killed the river bandits, one by one. With each death, the red before his eyes deepened, until finally it was so red he couldn’t see the path ahead.

At first, Li Huowang had no intention of stopping it. But when Danyangzi grabbed another person, he couldn’t hold it in any longer.

“That’s enough! Stop killing!”

At Li Huowang’s shout, Danyangzi was holding a man with a red dot painted on his forehead. He slowly turned around, his blood-soaked face twisting into a cruel smile. “And why, boy…?”

Li Huowang opened his mouth to say something, but as he turned his head to look at the pitch-black lake and thought of his missing companions, he suddenly found he had no argument left.

The pain in his heart threatened to consume everything. He clutched his throbbing head and screamed in agony: “Why! Why can they kill our people, but I can’t kill them?!”

When he came back to his senses, Danyangzi was gone. He himself now stood in Danyangzi’s place.

Before him was a fat woman. Sobbing, she cradled a man whose skull was caved in on one side, wailing in despair. The man was clearly her husband.

“Kill her! If you’re going to kill, don’t stop! And if you kill, wipe out the whole family!” A voice thundered in his ears out of nowhere.

With a twitching at the corner of his eye, Li Huowang grabbed the hilt of the sword hanging around his neck and slowly drew it. Then, with a fierce swing, a white arc flashed, and the wretched sobbing abruptly ceased.

In that moment of action, a strange sensation shot from the base of his spine up into his skull. This feeling dispelled the despair and pain in his heart.

“Heh. Hehe.” Unable to suppress the manic grin spreading across his face, Li Huowang gripped his sword and walked, step by bloody step, toward the reed stockade.

Before long, a storm of blood and gore swept through the settlement.

Watching face after different face being casually torn apart, watching life after vivid life wither and fall, Li Huowang laughed. The more people he killed, the louder his laughter became, a laughter he could no longer contain.

The sound of blades cutting into flesh rang out incessantly. The yellow reeds of the island were gradually painted red.

As night fell completely, the screams across the island slowly subsided.

Inside the Yuan family’s ancestral hall, Li Huowang, drenched in blood, raised his bloodied sword and advanced step by step toward a thin, young boy.

There was no sound anywhere else. This boy was likely the last person on the island.

Faced with this blood-soaked killer, the boy was completely broken. Urine streaming down his legs, he flailed his hands wildly and babbled incoherently.

Just as Li Huowang slowly raised his longsword, a familiar voice came from behind him.

When he turned his head numbly, he saw Bai Lingmiao, soaked through, standing by the door, shivering as she held a piece of glowing fluorescent stone.

The moment he saw her, the killing intent in his heart and that strange sensation in the back of his mind receded like an ebbing tide. “You’re not dead?”

As soon as he spoke, Li Huowang realized his voice had changed. His usually clear, open voice had become incredibly hoarse and rasping.

The sword wound on his neck had, fortunately but also unfortunately, damaged his vocal cords.

“I can swim. There was a pond in front of my village. I’ve played in the water there since I was little.”

Li Huowang walked over, took off his Daoist robe, now caked with a layer of dried blood, and draped it over Bai Lingmiao’s shoulders.

At that moment, as if waking from a trance, Li Huowang looked around blankly at the carnage. He saw the corpses around him, each bearing a different death wound. Men, women, the old, the young… they were all dead. All killed by his own hand.

Looking at the dead girl still clutching her mother, and the cradle that held no life, the guilt and pain that had vanished before surged back into his heart, crushing him until he could barely breathe.

Li Huowang slowly bent down, picked up a dagger from the ground, clenched his teeth, and drove it deep into the palm of his own hand. He had never understood why Sister Hu, in the cell next to his at the psychiatric hospital, hurt herself. Now he understood.

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Reading Guide Decoding

The Blood Price of Power — Li Huowang Crosses the Line

Cultural / Xianxia Notes

This chapter is a masterclass in using the framework of the "Dao-Twisted World" to deconstruct the standard revenge fantasy. Normally, this would be a cathartic victory. The protagonist has escaped, killed the arc villain's totem (the river god), and is now taking righteous vengeance. Instead, the novel twists it into a horrific loss of self.

The "Eighteen Layers of Hell" (十八层地狱) is a classic Buddhist concept describing the various torturous punishments for sinners in the afterlife. The narrator explicitly compares the scene of Danyangzi's killing to this, signaling that what is happening is not justice, but a damnable act.

The act of self-harm at the chapter's end is a profound character moment. Li Huowang has become persona non grata in his own body. He has committed acts he finds so abhorrent that his only outlet is physical pain, which serves as a grounding mechanism against the mental and spiritual agony. This is a crucial moment of understanding for the reader—the "high" of the killing was not his own; it was the parasite, or the trauma, taking over.

Chapter Overview

Welcome to the breaking point. Chapter 73, "Butchery," is perhaps the single most harrowing installment of Dao Gui Yi Xian so far. This is not a fight scene. This is not a tactical retreat. This is Li Huowang, or rather what has taken control of him, becoming a force of absolute, unfiltered violence. Fresh out of the lake, having apparently killed the Lord of the River, the red-robed Daoist (Danyangzi in control, using Li Huowang's body) turns the Yuan family's reed island into a slaughterhouse. The chapter is a descent into pure, unfiltered horror, but it ends with a chilling moment of clarity. Get ready, because this one leaves a mark.

Key Plot Points

The Impossible Return: Li Huowang/Danyangzi emerges from the lake alive, having somehow killed the river god. The Yuan family and their bandits are terrified, realizing they have provoked something beyond their understanding.
Massacre on the Reed Island: Danyangzi, piloting Li Huowang's body, begins a systematic and gruesome massacre of the bandits. Their aggression quickly turns to terror and then to a desperate, futile flight.
The Loss of Control: Li Huowang is initially a passenger, watching Danyangzi kill. He screams for Danyangzi to stop, but Danyangzi’s question—"Why?"—shakes his moral foundations to the core.
Li Huowang Takes the Helm: The control shifts. Li Huowang finds himself holding the sword, standing over a crying woman whose husband he has just killed. He feels a strange sensation rising in his skull.
The Wiping Out of the Yuan Family: Driven by this new, intoxicating feeling and Danyangzi’s voice whispering bloody advice, Li Huowang continues the massacre himself, laughing maniacally as he does so. He even kills a woman holding her dead husband, silencing her sobs.
The Final Victim: Li Huowang corners a terrified, incontinent teenage boy in the Yuan family ancestral hall, preparing to kill the last person on the island.
The Rescuer: Bai Lingmiao's voice stops him. She is alive, having survived by swimming. The sight of her—terrified but real—breaks the spell. The bloodlust recedes.
The Awakening: Li Huowang comes to his senses, his voice ruined by a sword cut to his throat. He sees the true scale of his atrocity—the dead children, the mothers, the men he has torn apart. The guilt and pain crash back down on him, and he stabs his own hand with a dagger, finally understanding his fellow psychiatric patient’s urge to self-harm.

Reading Guide

If you're here expecting our boy Li Huowang to pull a clever trick and outsmart the enemy, gently lower those expectations. This chapter is about the complete collapse of the fragile wall Li Huowang built between himself and Danyangzi. The "cost" of power isn't just losing a few years of life; it's becoming a monster who would kill a sobbing widow without a second thought. Pay very close attention to the shift in sensation—the "strange feeling" that shoots from his spine to his skull. That is the call of the beast, the intoxicating lure of Danyangzi’s method. And for a moment, Li Huowang loved it. That's the real horror.

Bai Lingmiao's reappearance is a huge relief for the reader, but it serves a darker narrative purpose. She is the only remaining piece of his old self, his humanity. The fact that he can see her and stop is the only evidence we have that Li Huowang is still in there. But the look on his face, the silence, the self-inflicted wound… don't expect him to be fine next chapter. This is a scar that won't heal.