Going Back

1,241 words

Inside a guest room, a naked Li Huowang sat in a wooden tub. With his only remaining arm, he gripped the triangular spike, taking deep breaths as he prepared himself for what came next.

“Hah… Hah… Hah…” Li Huowang breathed slowly, calming the tension in his heart.

Once he was fully settled, Li Huowang stuffed a folded cloth into his mouth, then raised the triangular spike.

Blood flowed from the wound into the bathwater, dyeing a large patch red.

Li Huowang’s forehead veins bulged, but he ignored the pain that nearly made him black out. Trembling, he kept digging.

He finally found his stomach. He wanted to stab a hole through it, to see what was inside.

But then Li Huowang suddenly realized he only had one hand now—he couldn’t possibly manage this maneuver.

Just as he was agonizing over whether to call someone for help, a pair of hands with long, black, pointed fingernails slid past his skin, reaching around from behind his waist.

“Thanks,” Li Huowang said, shaking as he raised the triangular spike.

The Second Spirit’s hands began to exert gentle pressure. The contents of his stomach were slowly squeezed out. Aside from some mushy food, there was no Black Tai Sui, no Danyangzi’s half-face. He was gone.

Seeing this, Li Huowang smiled. He had guessed right. That day in the cave, to deceive him, those Zuowandao people really had killed the living Danyangzi.

Then, to toy with him, they had hidden the ascended Danyangzi so well that even Abbess Jingxin hadn’t been able to detect him.

Those liars had wanted to watch him, step by step and completely unsuspecting, be replaced by Danyangzi—to experience the fun of that kind of trick.

But it had also helped him, inadvertently. The Abbess had said before that the reason they hadn’t been able to eliminate Danyangzi was because a part of him was still alive.

Now the living part of Danyangzi was completely dead. As long as he returned to Anci Nunnery and found the Abbess, he could finish Danyangzi off for good.

The bloodstained triangular spike fell into the water. Trembling, Li Huowang picked up the jar of wound powder beside him and poured it toward the gash in his abdomen.

At that moment, the hand with the black nails flipped quickly. Two thread-ends with red string were pinched between her fingers, then stabbed into the flesh at Li Huowang’s wound.

The red thread crisscrossed rapidly, sewing the wound shut. The pain was so intense that Li Huowang nearly bit through the cloth in his mouth.

“Thank you,” Li Huowang said, turning his head to look behind him. No one was there anymore.

His face somewhat pale, Li Huowang climbed out of the tub and began to dress.

“Daoist, this time you’re going back… is it really just to settle things with your master? What about those liars? Are you going to deal with them? You have to, right? Can’t let them keep tricking people. If they keep at it, how many more will suffer? Acting on heaven’s behalf is a good deed, too.”

Hearing this, a flash of hatred passed through Li Huowang’s eyes. He couldn’t be bothered to answer, just kept putting on his clothes.

Of course, he hadn’t forgotten about those disguised Zuowandao from the Ao-Jing Sect.

Every time he thought of the two junior brothers who had died because of them, and all the things they had done to him…

Li Huowang wanted to tear out their hearts and dig out their bones. Even setting aside Jiang Yingzi’s dying wish, he wasn’t done with them. This matter was almost as important as resolving Danyangzi.

“But they’re really powerful, Daoist. Can you beat them?” The monk’s expression was full of worry.

“I have my ways. Can you just shut up for once?!”

Five Zuowandao. With his own strength alone, he couldn’t handle them. But during the journey, Li Huowang had thought it over carefully and realized he didn’t have to fight alone.

First, from the fact that Jiang Yingzi had also been deceived by the Zuowandao, it was clear that the Zuowandao used deception to control the Ao-Jing Sect among those mountains.

The lower-ranking Ao-Jing Sect members, led by Shou San, had also been deceived by the Ao-Jing Sect. As long as he found a way to make them realize they had been tricked, they could become his allies.

Second, Abbess Jingxin’s son was also a Heart-Element, just like him. Why had he ended up the way he was now?

Obviously, it had something to do with those Zuowandao. If he told her the truth, the Abbess would surely be more than willing to avenge her son.

But first, he needed to get rid of Danyangzi as quickly as possible.

Fully dressed, Li Huowang pulled out the translation of the True Sutra of the Fire Vestments and struggled to read the text on it. The number of characters he could recognize was shrinking.

Before, Li Huowang had always thought his literacy was being taken away by Danyangzi. Now that he thought back on it, he realized that wasn’t the case at all. It was simply because Danyangzi hadn’t died yet.

“Based on how many characters I can still recognize, I should be able to make it back to Siqi before Danyangzi completely assimilates me.” Li Huowang closed the book and stepped outside.

The moment he walked out, he saw everyone looking at him with deep concern.

“I need to go back to Anci Nunnery to ask the Abbess something.” That was Li Huowang’s explanation to everyone for returning to Siqi.

After going to Anci Nunnery several times, everyone clearly knew there was something wrong with what Li Huowang was saying. But they didn’t ask any questions.

Maybe they had other thoughts in their minds, but for now, they could only follow. They didn’t dare raise any objections.

On the one hand, Li Huowang had saved all their lives. On the other, there was the growing, terrifying pressure he exuded that everyone could feel.

“Gao Zhijian, is your head alright?” Li Huowang, clutching his abdomen, looked up at the big man whose head was wrapped in bandages.

“N-no… no…”

“Good. Rest well. Eat something nice for a while, build up your strength.”

Li Huowang was also very surprised that Gao Zhijian was still alive. He had clearly seen that iron die bury itself into his temple.

But later, when the others were cleaning up the battlefield, they had found he was still breathing. Then, with Bai Lingmiao invoking Grand Old Man Bai’s help, he had actually woken up.

He had been drowned before, and now this. Li Huowang found it hard to believe it was all coincidence.

But he had seen far stranger things in this place. After asking Gao Zhijian himself—who didn’t even know how it had happened—Li Huowang stopped pressing.

No matter what, being alive was better than being dead.

Still, he was alive, but that iron die was still buried in his head. Li Huowang didn’t dare hope for more than that.

“Did you buy the new cart? I’ll go take a look. Don’t need help, I can walk.”

Watching Li Huowang’s receding back, Gouwa, who hadn’t dared to breathe loudly, shuddered violently. He turned to Zhao Wu and said cautiously, “Hey… am I the only one who thinks Senior Brother Li is starting to look more and more like Baldy Tou?”

(Chapter End)

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Reading Guide Decoding

Self-Surgery, Silence, and the Cost of Survival

Cultural / Xianxia Notes

The Self-Surgery Scene as Confirmation Ritual
In Chinese folk-medical and martial traditions, “opening the body” to find an internal cause (like a parasitic worm or a “poison core”) is a recurring trope—almost always carried out by a third party, not by the patient themselves. Li Huowang doing it solo, with nothing but a spike and a cloth, underlines his absolute isolation. There is no healer here; only himself, his tools, and the alien entity (the Second Spirit) helping from behind. It is a brutal inversion of the orderly, ritualized surgery scenes found in medical classics like the Huangdi Neijing—here, the body is not a temple to be healed, but a cage to be searched.

The Fading Literacy Metaphor
Li Huowang’s loss of literacy is explicitly tied to Danyangzi’s lingering influence—not a physical debuff but an erosion of self. In a world where written texts (Heavenly Scripture, True Sutra of the Fire Vestments) hold real power, losing the ability to read is doubly crippling: it cuts him off from knowledge and from his own identity. This is a characteristically Dao Gui Yi Xian touch—spiritual corruption manifests not as a glowing aura but as something as mundane and terrifying as forgetting how to read.

The “Five Zuowandao” as Unresolved Threat
Li Huowang’s plan to ally with the Ao-Jing Sect’s lower ranks and enlist Abbess Jingxin is a classic jianghu (martial rivers and lakes) strategy: turn the deceived against the deceiver. The mention that Jingxin’s son was also a Heart-Element victim ties back to the novel’s core horror—this condition is a curse that destroys everyone it touches, including those with the highest authority. The Abbess is not just an ally; she is a mirror of what Li Huowang could become.

Two-faced woman

A spirit with identical faces on both sides of her head; no back of the skull. She feeds on fear and is vulnerable to Daoist bells and yang substances.

Erbing

A Zuowandao trickster who wears a copper coin mask; she uses illusion, dice talismans, and domino-tile rituals as weapons, and treats murder as performance.

Three Corpses (San Shi)

A core Daoist concept of three internal parasitic demons located in the head, chest, and belly; they represent base instincts that must be 'cut off' for immortality. Peng Zhi is the demon of suspicion in the head.

Chapter Overview

Li Huowang returns from a bloody suicide attempt with proof that Danyangzi is truly dead—but the victory rings hollow. The living part of his parasitic master is gone, yet the cost keeps climbing: he has lost an arm, his literacy is fading, and his already fragile body is now a patchwork of self-inflicted wounds. Worse, the Zuowandao are still out there. This chapter is a quiet, brutal inventory of what remains—and a cold calculation of how to make the next move when you’re running out of pieces on the board.

Key Plot Points

The chapter opens with Li Huowang performing an improvised self-surgery in a bath tub, cutting into his own stomach to confirm Danyangzi has been fully neutralized by the Zuowandao. The Second Spirit helps him—another unsettling reminder of how much he now relies on entities beyond his control. His deduction that the Zuowandao killed the living Danyangzi to toy with him gives his obsession a new, personal edge. He now has a clear target for vengeance, but the five tricksters are powerful and elusive. Li Huowang’s plan to expose them to the Ao-Jing Sect’s lower ranks, and to enlist Abbess Jingxin—whose son was also a Heart-Element destroyed by Zuowandao—shows a brain still fighting even when the body is giving out. The scene where everyone watches him in silent fear is a subtle but crucial beat: Li Huowang has become something his people are afraid of. Gao Zhijian’s baffling survival (twice now) is noted, but Li Huowang doesn’t dwell on miracles. He has more pressing, bloody work ahead.

Reading Guide

Get ready for a silent chapter—no big fights, no revelations, just a man alone with his wounds and his hate. The meat here is all internal: Li Huowang is surviving, but readers need to watch how his survival instinct is reshaping him. He’s not a hero anymore; he’s a tactician who will use anyone and anything (the Second Spirit’s hands, the Abbess’s grief, the Ao-Jing followers’ anger) as pieces on a board. The chapter ends on a haunting note: Gouwa’s whispered observation that Li Huowang is starting to look like Baldy Tou. That’s the real horror here—not the scars, not the body count, but the slow, quiet erosion of the man himself.

The Erosion of Self: Li Huowang’s Shifting Voice

This chapter deserves a special note on Li Huowang’s internal monologue. He is no longer just paranoid or calculating; there is a flat, professional coldness to his thoughts. When he thanks the Second Spirit, it is curt and functional. When he dismisses the monk’s moralizing, it is with a sharp “Can you just shut up?” When he lies to his group about why he’s returning to Siqi, he does so without hesitation or guilt. The old Li Huowang—the one who doubted, who agonized, who felt—is being replaced by a predator who only cares about the next move. That is the most terrifying transformation of all.