The Liar

Li Huowang, nearly blacking out from the pain, charged forward. His long sword came down heavily, slicing a large strip of skin clean off Erbing’s face, revealing the bloody, pulpy mess beneath.

He grabbed her by the neck and hoisted her entire body into the air, shouting at the others locked in combat. “Stop fighting!! Look at this~! She’s the one from Zuowandao! You’ve all been tricked by her!”

What greeted Li Huowang was a crossbow bolt slamming into his gut. They were completely lost in bloodlust.

Even if it had been a misunderstanding before, the bodies on the ground had already made that misunderstanding impossible to undo. Whether it had been true before or not, it was true now.

Li Huowang hurled Erbing to the ground with force. He stomped down, methodically crushing the bones in her hands, then strode toward the thick of the battlefield. “Xiaoman, keep an eye on her!”

Watching Li Huowang slaughter his way through the crowd, Erbing let out a low chuckle.

Xiaoman’s sword was instantly at her throat. “You’re still laughing, like this? There’ll be plenty of time for you to cry!”

Erbing only laughed louder. Her face flickered rapidly through several visages before settling on a new one.

“Oh, my~ If not now, then when? Using my own life as a toy—now that’s a fun game.”

Meanwhile, Jiang Yingzi, standing to one side, was not staring at Li Huowang with her usual hatred.

Instead, her expression was complicated as she fixed her gaze on Erbing’s face. Just now, among those shifting faces, she had seen the face of Yan Jianxi, the Great Elder.

In the end, the other side retreated. Not because they recognized Erbing’s deception, but because their losses were too heavy, and their formation finally broke.

As the sky slowly lightened, the sounds of horse hooves and camel bells faded into the distance, leaving behind a field of corpses and a few ownerless camels.

The sun crept up over the horizon of the Gobi, painting the blood on the ground—and the blood on everyone’s bodies—an even harsher red.

Li Huowang, covered in wounds, stood like a statue in a pool of blood.

Neither side had been wrong. But under Zuowandao’s deception, they had been driven to an irreversible point.

Jiang Yingzi watched everything unfold. She seemed panicked, lost in thought.

“Hahaha~ Good! Kill well!” Erbing, now reduced to a human stump, laughed loudly.

Her voice drew Li Huowang’s attention. He laughed along with her. Tossing his sword aside, he turned and staggered toward her.

He crammed a healing pill roughly into Erbing’s mouth, then turned to Xiaoman. “Go get the wound medicine we bought in town.”

“What?” Xiaoman thought she had misheard.

“Did you not hear what I said?! Get the wound medicine! Now!!”

Once the medicine was there, Li Huowang carefully sprinkled it over the intestines that were spilling out from the wound in Erbing’s abdomen.

He spread out the torture implements in front of her. The hems of his robes were soaked through with blood. “Are you going to talk?” he asked, his voice quiet.

Erbing looked genuinely surprised. “Did you ask me something?”

He flipped over her limp right hand—her bones already shattered. He slid a small, iron spade under her fingernail and pried upward.

He pried off five fingernails in quick succession. He looked at her again, his breathing heavy. “Are you going to talk?”

“What exactly do you want me to say?”

“ARE YOU GOING TO TALK?!” Li Huowang’s one arm shot forward, his finger stabbing viciously into her eye socket.

Erbing screamed. With a wet pop, Li Huowang crushed her lively eye in his grip. “GODDAMN IT, ARE YOU GOING TO TALK?!”

“Senior Brother Li… are you alright?” Bai Lingmiao approached cautiously, a hint of fear in her voice.

Li Huowang took a deep breath and stood up. He turned to face her, his voice suddenly gentle. “I’m fine. Go check on the others. If anyone’s hurt badly, use the spirit-dance to treat them.”

The moment Bai Lingmiao left, Li Huowang stomped down on Erbing’s exposed intestines. His voice exploded again, thick with hatred and fury. “ARE YOU GOING TO TALK OR NOT!?”

He didn’t actually want her to say anything. He just wanted to make her pay. She was the reason this whole disaster had happened. And she was going to pay for it.

The torture implements he’d had forged earlier usually only saw a few of them used. The rest had served no purpose.

But now, they finally had a use.

And as each one was stained red with blood, Erbing was transformed from a seductive beauty into a pillar of mangled flesh.

The pain, deep enough to reach the marrow, made Erbing pass out and wake up several times.

But even under the worst torture, she never once begged for Li Huowang’s mercy.

She looked at him with her one remaining eye, her face a mess of blood and flesh. A glimmer of amusement flickered in her gaze. She laughed. She laughed even louder.

The more he tortured her, the louder her laughter became.

Staring down at the barely-breathing Erbing, Li Huowang’s breath came in ragged gasps. He had completely lost his patience. He raised his long sword, aiming for her chest.

“Li Huowang, wait. Can you ask her a question for me?”

The sudden voice made him stop. He turned. It wasn’t one of his fellow disciples. It was a hallucination. Jiang Yingzi.

Her expression was full of struggle. She seemed afraid of something, yet also full of expectation.

“Can you ask her if the massacre four years ago was the work of Zuowandao?”

Before he could even process the strangeness of his hallucination, the information she gave him sent a shockwave through his entire being.

Li Huowang’s pupils shrank to pinpricks. Strange speculations began bubbling up in his mind.

When he relayed Jiang Yingzi’s question to Erbing, she laughed again.

“Hehehe~ So it really wasn’t you? Come on, have some confidence. You’re a Heart-Element! Killing tens of thousands of people should be a piece of cake for you!”

The moment she finished speaking, her last eye was crushed.

“IT WAS YOU! The massacre four years ago—YOU DID IT!! YOU FRAMED ME FOR IT!”

As Li Huowang’s roar echoed across the plain, Jiang Yingzi’s body beside him began to flicker. She was crying.

Dragging her broken body over to Li Huowang, she sobbed. “Li Huowang, I was wrong. It was Zuowandao who killed my family, not you. We were both fooled by them.”

Before he could say anything, she wiped her tears and spoke, her voice trembling. “Li Huowang, I know it’s a lot to ask, but… can you avenge my family? If you do, I’ll tell you something crucial.”

He was about to ask what, but then he caught himself. “Why am I talking to a hallucination?”

“I’m a hallucination. The monk is a hallucination. But Danyangzi is not! He’s real!”

“The elders of the Ao-Jing Sect were replaced by Zuowandao long ago. You were tricked by them! They never got rid of Danyangzi for you—they just hid him deeper! Your personality is still being influenced by him!”

As soon as she finished speaking, her broken body slowly faded away. “I’m sorry…”