Agony

“I can’t tell anymore… I really can’t tell anymore… I really can’t tell…”

Li Huowang knelt in the kindergarten yard, clutching the little girl so tightly his arms trembled, muttering to himself with eyes full of bottomless confusion.

Was this reality or an illusion? True or false? For one terrible moment, he could no longer distinguish.

He had argued with Abbess Jingxin when she said that every Heart-Element was filled with Bewilderment.

But now, watching Sun Xiaoqin kneel on the other side of the fence and beg, he finally understood what she meant.

A Heart-Element is a Heart-Element. No matter which side they choose as real, they are always wrapped in bewilderment.

This was the fate of a Heart-Element. No one escaped it.

Just then, a small hand clutching a little handkerchief reached up from inside his arms.

It gently wiped at his face.

Li Huowang looked down, trembling, and saw the little girl’s cute face. She was concentrating completely on wiping his tears.

“Uncle, don’t cry.”

Looking at her sweet face, it suddenly hit him—this little girl could be a real, living person.

The thought that he had been one inch away from killing such an innocent child flooded him with overwhelming, sickening terror.

What if she’s really Layue Shiba in disguise? Kill her!

The instant the thought surfaced, a wave of revulsion toward himself crashed over him.

“Shut up! Shut up!! Have you ever thought that this child might be a real person?! Is your life really worth more than hers?! She’s at least a normal person! And you?! Li Huowang! You’re a lunatic!! A useless lunatic! What right do you have to trade her life for yours?!”

Li Huowang’s grip on the glass fragment in his hand creaked. Even though the jagged edge had already cut his palm to ribbons, he refused to let go.

His roar startled everyone around him. They scrambled backward.

Inside his head, it felt like two little men were fighting. Hallucination and truth tortured his heart with unbearable pressure, crushing him until he could barely breathe.

For a moment, Li Huowang even thought of death. If he died, he would never have to suffer this torment again.

A lunatic like him had no reason to live. If he died, it would be better for everyone. His mother would have no more burdens. Danyangzi couldn’t use his body to resurrect.

“Everyone, put your guns away. Young man, can I have a word?”

A new voice came from outside the kindergarten.

The speaker was a middle-aged plainclothes officer with a potbelly, holding a megaphone. Li Huowang didn’t know his rank, but the fact that the police actually lowered their pistols suggested he was someone important.

As Li Huowang’s gaze shifted toward him, the man raised his right hand while still holding the megaphone in his left. “Now then, young man, you see—there’s an old saying—”

In the middle of his sentence, the middle-aged man’s raised right index finger bent slightly.

Fwoosh—!

A high-speed sniper round tore out of a half-open window in the distance, arcing straight toward Li Huowang’s brain stem.

In that split second, an extremely peculiar sensation flooded Li Huowang’s body. He tensed and, by pure instinct, jerked his head to the side.

Bang!

Li Huowang’s body shuddered violently. His head snapped back and then slammed hard against the ground.

“Son!!” Sun Xiaoqin’s anguished scream carried across the entire yard.

The back of his skull smashing against the concrete made his whole head ring. Stars exploded behind his eyes.

Am I dying? If I’m already dead, why can I still think?

In that same instant, the bright world around him rapidly darkened. The buildings, the crowd—everything—morphed into dim, misshapen bamboo.

Li Huowang felt a sharp sting on his face. He was bleeding.

But he had no time to worry about that. He could sense that familiar presence. Layue Shiba was still here. It was watching him from somewhere in the bamboo grove.

He looked around. Nothing but bamboo. He was surrounded. His lower body was sunk into a patch of muddy, rotting bamboo leaves.

“Li Huowang~! Li Huowang!!” Voices called out from all sides—Lingmiao’s, Danyangzi’s, even Li Zhi’s.

He had always believed that on this side, his senior and junior disciples were following his orders, attacking Layue Shiba.

But now he saw that wasn’t the case at all. The opposite was true. Somehow, he had been separated and left alone.

Then a familiar voice drifted through the bamboo. “Old bones, you know what they say—‘Seventy-three, eighty-four, Yan Wang doesn’t call, you go yourself.’ You’re eighty-four this year, so why haven’t you gone yet?”

The voice of an old neighbor echoed through the bamboo grove, growing stronger and stronger, beginning to occupy Li Huowang’s mind, trying once again to twist his perception into that of a dying old man.

A rustling sound came from the bamboo thicket. Li Huowang saw the little girl from that night. And the Stove God she had spoken of.

Layue Shiba was not fighting alone. It had allies.

Li Huowang had not recovered from everything that had just happened. His heart ached like it had been stabbed. But facing the threat before him, a smile crept onto his face.

“You know what? It looks like you’ve already won. But the one thing you should never have done—was kill me just now. Do you understand? My heart hurts so much right now.”

His face twisted in agony. He hunched over, trembling, and pressed one hand hard against his chest, clutching it tight. Through gritted teeth, he yelled, “It hurts so much I want to die!”

With that, he pulled the red bamboo slip from his back. The moment it unrolled, Li Huowang felt the extreme anguish in his heart come alive.

And that emotion resonated with the bamboo slip. The pain in his chest, which had been fading after his return, began to strengthen again.

Then the red bamboo slip underwent a wondrous change. It began to take root. The roots burrowed into the bamboo leaves beneath him, dyeing everything a deep blood-red.

Gradually, Li Huowang’s emotions collapsed. The pain in his heart had returned to its peak.

But this was not enough. Roots had grown; now buds had to sprout. The anguish within was sufficient. What remained was the pain of the flesh.

Wailing in utter breakdown, Li Huowang reached both hands toward the instruments of torture hanging at his waist.

Layue Shiba clearly wanted to stop him. But it was already too late.