Bashe Descends Again

Chapter 97: Bashe Descends Again

The pain was like a knife twisting in his heart. And the gaping wound in his abdomen made Li Huowang tremble violently.

Yet despite the agony—both emotional and physical—reaching its peak, Li Huowang’s face was smiling.

He smiled at the things running out of the bamboo grove. Among them, he recognized one. It was his own face, except that other Li Huowang had large, blood-red eyes.

“Crack, crack, crack!” Li Huowang ground his teeth.

Then, with a wet tearing sound, his small and large intestines were yanked out by the barbed hooks, the fleshy “bridge” swinging in midair.

“AAAAHHHH!!!” Driven nearly mad by the pain, Li Huowang raised the long awl in his hand and slammed it into the bamboo slip that glowed with an eerie red light.

Clang! Clang! Sinister black sparks flew in all directions.

Li Huowang’s features began to melt and merge together again. But this time, with the intense pain acting as an anchor, his perception was much sharper. He could sense things more clearly.

Once again, he perceived Bashe, there in the impossibly high and deep void above. He saw the intoxicating aura emanating from that vast body.

But Bashe was still Bashe. It still hadn’t noticed him. Yet through the sacrifice of his dual, extreme agony, Li Huowang had taken from it what he wanted. It was a very strange feeling.

Under Bashe’s aura, the pain in Li Huowang’s body and mind began to transform into something else.

The next moment, a terrifying aura of utter despair radiated from Li Huowang—a power that absolutely did not belong to the mortal realm.

As if under immense atmospheric pressure, everything around Li Huowang groaned and bent away from him, leaning to one side.

Li Huowang raised his right hand, the twin awls held loosely. He made a light, casual slash.

It was as if space itself had been torn open. Bamboo stalks, leaves, and every living thing within them were sliced cleanly in two.

From the half-rotted head of the little girl, tiny, finger-sized figures crawled out. They all had faces identical to hers.

They tried to flee, but after only a few steps, they collapsed and died on the spot.

The Layue Shiba creature was not among them. But Li Huowang, his features now a completely blended mass, could clearly sense its location.

It was fleeing east. It was afraid. All five of its heads were afraid. Li Huowang could even feel the deepest thoughts in its heart.

Hearing the sound of terror coming from those red eyes, Li Huowang smiled. He raised the long awl again and drove it viciously back into his own abdomen.

In an instant, everything within a radius around Li Huowang shared in the ultimate pain. Even the bamboo and the stones on the ground felt it.

They began to grow more twisted and deformed, more horrifying. They even let out desperate, agonized screams because of the pain.

Among these things, of course, was the distant Layue Shiba.

The Layue Shiba did not originally possess the organs to feel pain. But now, Li Huowang had granted it the ability to feel it.

In that moment, all it felt was deep, profound regret. Why had it provoked this man?

But that was only a single instant before it was overwhelmed by the violent torrent of pain and despairingly committed suicide at full speed.

When everything was finally still, Li Huowang’s swaying body slowly tilted to the right.

Everything hurt now. Everywhere. But Li Huowang smiled. He didn’t know why he was doing it, but he smiled anyway.

“With wounds this bad, I should die, right? Hahaha!”

He could feel his internal organs spilling out of the hole in his stomach, but he made no move to push them back in.

“Dying is good! If I’m dead, I won’t hurt anymore. I’m so tired… But why did it have to be me…? Actually… I don’t want to die… I want to feel… like other people…”

As his life slipped away, Li Huowang’s mind grew hazy. Everything was a beat too slow.

His melted features began to separate, as if they were about to return to their proper places.

In that instant of re-alignment, Li Huowang felt as though Bashe, high above, had glanced at him.

The next second, his vision went black, and he knew nothing more.

He didn’t know how long it was. Through the haze, Li Huowang heard the sound of drums. And footsteps. And even the sound of a nurse snapping open an ampule. The noise was maddening.

“So loud! Shut up!”

Li Huowang’s eyes flew open. He stared blankly at the IV pole and the cart in front of him.

He stared for a long time before his mind caught up. He wasn’t dead. He was in the hallucination.

Looking at the beeping machines around him, Li Huowang understood. This was the ICU.

He wasn’t dead. Was he happy? Li Huowang didn’t feel much happiness. Instead, he felt a hint of regret.

“Why am I still alive?” he pondered.

“Doctor! Patient in bed 12 is awake!” a nurse’s shout rang out.

Ignoring the surprise in her voice, Li Huowang silently calculated his condition in the other world.

Hearing the door open, Li Huowang slowly closed his eyes, sealing himself off from the outside world. He waited quietly for this hallucination to pass.

Then he heard a familiar voice. It was Li Xiangguo, his attending psychiatrist from the mental hospital.

“Xiao Li, I know you’re awake. Open your eyes. How about we have a chat?”

Li Huowang didn’t move. He didn’t want to have any contact with this place right now.

“Yang Na has a new boyfriend.”

Li Huowang’s eyes snapped open. He found himself staring at the doctor, who had his arms crossed and a smug grin on his face.

He was about to ball his fist and smash that smiling face into pulp, but he realized his right hand was cuffed to the hospital bed.

“Don’t get so worked up. Yang Na doesn’t have a new boyfriend. See? When it comes to important things, you still react. Why are you so resistant?”

Dressed in his white coat, the doctor pulled up a stool and sat down by Li Huowang’s headboard. “Let me take a guess… You went and treated that place as real again, didn’t you?”

As Li Huowang’s breathing became rapid, the monitors beside him began to alarm. But in the end, he said nothing. He just closed his eyes again.

“Xiao Li, let’s skip the pleasantries this time. Since you believe that place is real, how about we talk about it? Ask yourself honestly: between that world and our world here, which one feels like a normal world?”