Li Huowang

The road back was unnervingly silent. Besides the sound of their footsteps, there was nothing else.

Walking through a place like this, everyone’s heart was in their throat.

But they hadn’t gone far when the footsteps suddenly stopped. Li Huowang and the others stared fixedly at the darkness around them, and at the green eyes that suddenly emerged from within that darkness.

They weren’t a pair. They were a crowd. The things in the darkness didn’t do anything—they just stared, with those green eyes, big and small, drilling into them.

To Li Huowang and the others, it felt as if the darkness was breeding a monster covered entirely in eyes.

“Fuck!” Enraged by being toyed with repeatedly, Li Huowang’s expression twisted into something savage. His right hand shot back and yanked hard. The red bamboo slip unfurled in front of him.

He raised his right index finger and brought it close to the razor-sharp edge of the slip.

With another flick of his finger, his fingernail tore free from its bed and spun through the air, dripping blood, into the surrounding darkness.

A moment later, a miserable shriek rang out. One pair of green eyes in the darkness vanished.

Li Huowang didn’t think that was enough. After a third nail went flying, every last pair of eyes in the dark disappeared. The air began to stink of something rotten and bloody.

When they raised their lanterns and walked forward, the light revealed the gory, mangled remains lying before them.

It was only then that Li Huowang and the others understood. Those eyes hadn’t belonged to some evil entity at all. They were just animals from the woods—lynxes, hedgehogs, foxes. All of them. Only now they were all dead, their bodies torn to pieces, not a single one intact.

“Li-shixiong… did we break the rules again? Didn’t they tell us not to mess with these beasts?” Xiaoman’s voice sent a chill down everyone’s spine.

But Li Huowang didn’t think so. He lifted his right foot and stomped down hard, crushing a fox’s skull beneath his heel into a pulpy mess.

“Rules my ass! It’s all a bluff. If these things could take us head-on, why go through all this trouble? Don’t let them lead you by the nose. Back to the courtyard!”

After another half-stick’s worth of time, they saw the lights of the Wu family compound again.

“Li Huowang!”

A shout, as if coming from somewhere impossibly far away, made them all stop in their tracks.

“Who’s there!” Li Huowang spun around, staring into the darkness. Still, there was nothing.

“Keep bluffing, then! The day will come when you can’t bluff anymore! Layue Shiba, I’m telling you! Those eyes of yours are mine!!”

After hurling this threat, he led the others back into the brightly lit Wu family compound.

The goateed village chief who had been lying on the ground was now tied to a pillar. A bowl of cold vegetable soup was picked up from the table and splashed across his face.

“Cough, cough~!” Wu Qing blinked his eyes open, groggy, and the first thing he saw was Li Huowang’s face, twisted with murderous intent. He trembled in fear. “So you’re bandits after all!!”

“Slap!” The blow sent Wu Qing’s face visibly swelling on one side. He was completely stunned.

“Talk! Where is Layue Shiba? What is your connection with it?!”

“What are you talking about? I… I’m telling you, this is Wu Village! Everyone here is named Wu! If you try anything, you’d better think twice!”

Seeing Wu Qing still pretending to know nothing, Li Huowang bared his teeth in a cold grin.

“Old man, I’m trying to be civil first. Layue Shiba is tied to whether I live or die. If you keep your mouth shut to protect it, don’t blame me for getting rough.”

As he spoke, he raised his right hand—still bleeding from where the nails had been torn off—and slapped it down on the instruments of torture spread across the hem of his robe.

“I don’t plan to keep these for myself, you know. When it comes down to it, these things are also keys. Keys that can open anyone’s heart!”

At these words, Bai Lingmiao stepped forward with concern, but Xiaoman grabbed her arm and gave a small shake of her head.

“What… what do you people even want? What Layue Shiba? Qingming Festival just passed, it’s a long way off from the twelfth month! Young man, just let me go. Have pity on an old man, won’t you?” Wu Qing’s face was pale with terror.

Seeing the old man still stubborn, Li Huowang hooked his right finger, and a long awl covered in barbs appeared in his hand.

A cruel smile on his face, Li Huowang gripped the horrific awl and slowly brought it toward Wu Qing’s collarbone.

Wu Qing was panicking now. He yelled frantically, thrashed wildly, but still wouldn’t say a thing about Layue Shiba.

Just as the blade was about to pierce his clothes, a large hand clamped down on Li Huowang’s wrist from behind. “That’s enough. Looks like he really doesn’t know anything.”

“How do you know unless we try? This guy is obviously hiding something. The moment we entered the village, it was nothing but rules and rules. He has to be connected to Layue Shiba!”

“Calm down. The you I knew wouldn’t act like this. Keep going, and you’ll only end up looking more and more like Danyangzi.”

Hearing this, Li Huowang’s heart gave a sudden lurch. Without even noticing it, he really had started to treat others like they were nothing. Just like that scabby-headed man who used people as alchemy ingredients.

He quickly retracted the awl and turned his head. “Thanks for the reminder, Li-shixiong. If you hadn’t said something, I might not have snapped out of it.”

He saw the daoist in the blood-red robe in front of him—himself—give a familiar, faint smile.

“We’re fellow disciples. No need for such formalities. The question now is: without any other leads, what do we do next?”

His brows tightly knit, Li Huowang looked at the old man on the verge of passing out and silently pondered the same question.

Although the heavy hand just now might have been partly Danyangzi’s influence, he also knew it had everything to do with how little time he had left.

If he couldn’t find Layue Shiba, he couldn’t get rid of the Danyangzi attached to him. All he could do was watch himself turn more and more into Danyangzi. He really couldn’t afford to wait.

“Maybe… we wait until dawn and ask the other villagers? Maybe someone else knows.” Gouwa suggested.

“Fine. We’ve all been through a lot tonight. Everyone’s tired. Looks like that’s all we can do for now. When it’s light out, I’ll do the talking.”

Seeing Li Huowang agree, he said nothing more and turned toward the western wing.

When dawn came and he woke up, he found that the other disciples had already left the bedroom.

Stepping outside, he was surprised to find his shimei sitting with the Wu family, drinking congee as if nothing had happened—even after the way he’d treated Wu Qing just last night.

“Come eat. I explained your difficulties to Village Chief Wu. He’s not a petty man.” It was the Li Huowang in the blood-red robe—his own self—speaking to him.