The Three-Way Melee

The chaos of the battle raged on.

“Once the ritual’s duration runs out, I should be dead, right?”

Li Huowang slowly raised his sword. The insects in his abdomen crawled up through his Daoist robe and onto the stump of his lost arm, writhing against his skin.

In a few breaths, he had a new left hand—one made of worms twisting together.

He tested his new hand, nodded in satisfaction, and looked again into the distance at the five Zuowangdao entangled with Danyangzi.

To Li Huowang’s eyes, Danyangzi was still that same horrifying shape, but the faces of the other five had become nothing but bloody mahjong tiles.

The thought that he would soon die brought a strange calm to his heart. He picked up his sword and walked toward them.

As he charged, Li Huowang swung his sword in one clean stroke, chopping off the middle head of Danyangzi.

“Master, don’t panic! Your disciple is here to help!”

The moment Li Huowang ambushed Danyangzi, the Zuowandao in the distance seized the opportunity. All five sat cross-legged in midair, circling the two of them, and chanted. “What is zuowang!”

The sound echoed through the empty cavern, growing louder and louder.

At those words, Li Huowang and Danyangzi simultaneously kicked off each other’s body, diving left and right toward separate Zuowandao members.

A black domino tile flew through the air, speeding toward Li Huowang’s wrist. He was about to dodge when Yao Ji, in the distance, crossed two fingers and snapped them sharply.

In an instant, the black shadow beneath the domino tile switched—the shadow became the tile, and the tile became the shadow.

Caught off guard, the domino tile punched through Li Huowang’s wrist, leaving a clean, square hole.

Without the support of his wrist bones, his hand should have gone limp. But the square hole was quickly filled by worms, and he gripped his sword again, steady and firm.

“Heh, you get what you pay for. Guess the stuff you get from sacrificing your internal organs really is different.” Li Huowang spat, then stomped his feet and charged toward Qi Wan in the distance.

This time, Li Huowang stopped dodging anything they threw at him. He simply let his body take the hits.

Any damage or loss would be replaced by those wriggling worms.

With the power borrowed from Bashe, Li Huowang managed to hold his own.

Li Huowang, Danyangzi, and the Zuowandao—three sides, each with completely different goals—fought in a chaotic melee.

One moment, Li Huowang and Danyangzi teamed up against the Zuowandao. The next, Danyangzi and the Zuowandao ganged up on Li Huowang.

Danyangzi, wielding his blood-and-flesh copper coin sword, was terrifyingly powerful. Even with one head gone, he could still suppress the Zuowandao.

It seemed the Zuowandao were better at manipulating minds than at direct confrontation, as even the five of them were being pushed back by Danyangzi alone.

But Li Huowang also had a part to play.

Though Danyangzi was stronger, the three sides now balanced each other out. No one wanted the other two to win.

Li Huowang’s strategy in this chaos was simple: whoever was weaker, he helped; whoever was stronger, he fought. He had already thrown his life away—no reason not to drag a few more down with him.

If Danyangzi and the Zuowandao could go with him, that would be the best possible ending.

The intense battle ground to a stalemate. Everyone was calculating their own interests.

Taking advantage of Danyangzi’s pressure on the others, Yao Ji quickly moved closer to Li Huowang, his voice tinged with clear urgency. “Boss! Enough playing around! Haven’t you seen this demigod’s strength? If we keep going, we’ll all die!”

“Heh. Calling me ‘boss’ makes you think I’ll let you off? Even if you called me ‘ancestor,’ it wouldn’t do any good!”

Li Huowang grabbed both sides of the wound on his chest and ripped it open.

Blood-red worms exploded from his abdomen, surging toward Yao Ji like an avalanche.

These worms were all under Li Huowang’s control. The slightest touch, and they would instantly burrow beneath the skin, churning the gut and shredding the bowels.

“Hongzhong, boss! Really, stop fighting! Feel what’s under the skin at the back of your neck! See if I’m telling the truth!”

Li Huowang reached back and touched his own neck. Worms burrowed through the skin, pushing out a hard object from underneath.

It was a mahjong tile—the Hongzhong, the Red Center.

A flicker of hesitation crossed Li Huowang’s face. Yao Ji quickly pressed his advantage, his voice frantic. “Your real identity is Hongzhong, one of the three bosses of Zuowandao! It was you yourself who decided you’d played every trick, gotten bored of everything, and thought it wasn’t fun anymore. So you sealed your own consciousness and made us play along with you.”

“Now Erbing has been killed by your game. We can’t keep playing this. We’re all brothers. If we keep at it, it’s going too far. You can’t make us lose our lives just for your own amusement.”

“Is that true?” Li Huowang’s expression was utterly bewildered. He stared at the Hongzhong mahjong tile in his hand.

“Hey! Didn’t you see this tile came from inside your own flesh? Does it still need—”

Before he could finish, Yao Ji felt something was wrong. He looked down. Several worms had somehow burrowed into his calf without him noticing.

The moment his attention shifted to his leg, a cold gleam flashed before him. Li Huowang’s long sword drove straight into his throat.

Staring at Yao Ji before him, Li Huowang’s face twisted into a mocking grin as he played along with the other’s bullshit.

“Ah, right, I remember now. I’m Hongzhong, one of the Three Origins of Zuowandao. And I also remember—you once stole my woman. That’s why I’m settling a personal score now.”

As long as he could confirm someone was from Zuowandao, dealing with them was simple: treat everything that came out of their mouths as shit.

“Boss! I’m telling the truth!” Yao Ji grabbed Li Huowang’s sword with both hands, shouting in desperation.

“The fuck I believe you!”

Li Huowang put all his strength into a single-handed thrust. Yao Ji’s fingers and his square-shaped head flew into the air together.

As the worms from Yao Ji’s body crawled back into Li Huowang’s chest cavity, he turned and charged toward the distant battlefield.

One of the Zuowandao liars was dead. Now it was time to weaken Danyangzi.

“Master! Xuan Yang is here to help you!” Li Huowang raised his sword and rushed toward Danyangzi.

Under the combined assault of Li Huowang and the Zuowandao, with a wet puchi, Danyangzi’s child’s head was lopped off in an instant.

But before Li Huowang could catch his breath, a bloody, malformed infant’s head grew back from the stump of the neck.

Watching this, Yi Wan, who was nearby, quickly turned to Li Huowang. “Your master is a demigod’s body! Wasting time like this is completely useless! Hold him off for us! We’ll take care of him!”

Li Huowang’s answer was a bloody wad of spit.

“Fine! We did mess with you before, but you’ve already killed Erbing and Yao Ji. Isn’t that enough to cool your anger? Two lives should pay for anything, right?”

“And besides, between us outsiders and your master, shouldn’t you hate him a little more?”