The Ox-Head Gate

Chapter 174: The Ox-Head Gate

“Master, how does your disciple’s body suit you?”

Looking at the Li Huowang before him, Danyangzi’s eyes were filled with extreme hatred.

“You! This treacherous disciple who betrays his master and destroys his sect! You did all of this!”

Danyangzi roared, struggling to his feet, raising his sword as he charged at Li Huowang.

But as the two passed each other, they simply passed through one another.

As Danyangzi turned back in shock, Li Huowang stood there, a faint smile on his face. “Please forgive me, Master. I forgot to tell you — your disciple is an illusion now. You cannot kill me.”

Li Huowang then pointed a hand at the others around them. “Oh, and you can’t kill them either. They’re illusions too. They’ll follow you, always, forever and ever, following you.”

As the horrified Danyangzi slowly turned, looking at the illusions around him, they began to close in.

Their smiling faces seemed to pile up into walls, trapping him tightly, leaving him nowhere to escape, tormenting him every moment.

“What… what is this thing?!” Danyangzi raised his sword, wildly slashing in all directions.

In the past, no matter what problem Danyangzi encountered, he always solved it by taking, by cheating, by stealing.

It had always worked. It solved the vast majority of problems. But now, the methods he had used his entire life no longer worked.

“Master, this is what it means to be a xinsu. Since you want this body, you’d better enjoy it.”

As Li Huowang said this, he too began to laugh along with the other illusions around him, the laughter filled with the same contempt and derision.

“Oh, Master, be sure to share the experience with the true self! Joy shared is joy doubled, right? Hahaha!”

Seeing Li Huowang’s petty triumph, Danyangzi’s teeth ground together with envy and hatred.

He threw his sword to the ground with force. “You think you’ve won? Keep dreaming! This Daoist won’t sever these san shi after all! Just wait and see how the enraged true self will deal with you!”

With a shush, the laughter of all the illusions in the scene instantly ceased, and they all looked over in unison.

Danyangzi raised his right hand and slapped himself across the face. “I am not Danyangzi! I am Li Huowang!”

The next moment, the people around him gradually faded. A flicker of confusion began to appear on Danyangzi’s face. “Who am I?”

“Am I Danyangzi? No, I am Li Huowang?”

“No, I’m not Li Huowang, I am Danyangzi?”

“Get out! Don’t try to make me stay here and suffer!! I am Danyangzi! I am not Li Huowang!”

“Get out! I am Li Huowang! I am not Danyangzi!!”

Then the body of the one-armed youth began to writhe in struggle.

The surrounding crowd would appear, then vanish. Sometimes a monk would briefly pop up, then quickly disappear.

As the one-armed youth’s body fell to the ground, writhing like a maggot on the ground, a patch of black clouds drifted down from the sky. On the clouds stood Danyangzi, still wrapped in immortal cloth, his body covered in malformed, bloody flesh.

But he looked a bit haggard now. Not only were many of his malformed organs missing, but his complexion was somewhat dull. It seemed he had expended great effort to shake off the Xi Shen.

Danyangzi slowly descended, stopping before the one-armed man. With a casual gesture of his tentacle-covered hand, the youth floated into the air.

“Which one are you?” Danyangzi suddenly asked.

The one-armed youth struggled desperately for a long time before gradually growing calm.

He opened his eyes again to look at the Danyangzi before him, speaking calmly. “I am Danyangzi. The san shi are severed.”

Hearing this, the three-headed monster wreathed in black clouds showed a satisfied expression.

Its ugly, disgusting body leaned in, and it drew a deep breath from the one-armed youth’s face.

Something drifted from the youth’s seven orifices, drifting onto Danyangzi’s body.

The one-armed youth’s body gradually stiffened, slowly dying.

And at that moment, Danyangzi began to laugh. Now he finally felt that the last bit that had been missing inside him was replenished.

“This Daoist can finally become an immortal!! Hahaha!” Danyangzi laughed wildly, spreading his arms and diving into a roiling patch of black clouds in the sky.

The higher he flew through the clouds, the more excited Danyangzi became. In his seventy-four years of trudging through the mortal world, he had never been this excited.

Passing through the clouds, Danyangzi continued onward, flying toward the heavens beyond the heavens, beyond the distant stars.

As he passed among these stars, Danyangzi saw things — grotesque, terrifying monsters that defied description.

A vast, slick, grey-white body, covered in endless, eternally burning incense, its size freely expanding and contracting.

A nearly eyeless golden pusa, from the front of its indistinct body, constantly extending trembling pink tendrils that seemed to suck something from the air around them. Approaching it, you could even hear the wishes of the worshippers in their hearts.

Then there were formless, faintly glowing, black cranes, tangled together in a mass. Each struggle produced a hoarse, agonized cry.

There were more than these. Among them, Danyangzi saw the Xi Shen, and the immortals, and the predecessors who had once taught him to sever the san shi — all of them wrapped in the ethereal, celestial immortal ribbons.

But now, looking at them, Danyangzi’s eyes were filled with contempt. These were the ones who had failed to find the path to immortality, destined to wander here in a daze until the decay of heaven and man.

He was different from them. He was about to become coeval with heaven and earth, a true immortal.

Quickening his pace, Danyangzi passed through the dots of starlight and finally arrived at a jade plaque that hung suspended between heaven and earth, a chaos of no color.

The jade plaque seemed to be held aloft by something from the utter darkness in the distance. As their formless bodies writhed and flowed forward, the plaque rose and fell.

On this jade plaque were written three large characters. Danyangzi did not recognize the writing, but he could guess. It must surely say Nantian Men.

He might not recognize the others, but the last character, Men, Danyangzi recognized.

Because that Men character looked exactly like a real door.

Three characters, and the last one was Men — you didn’t need to guess. This was definitely the Southern Heavenly Gate.

Circling this jade plaque were many more terrifying monsters, wailing and roaming, as if trying to get in.

“Get out! All of you, get away! Don’t get in the way of this Daoist becoming an immortal!”

Disgusted, he drove away the things blocking his path, and the overjoyed Danyangzi monopolized the entire front of the jade plaque.

Through the plaque, the eager Danyangzi once again saw some indistinct “immortals.”

Immortals with flowing celestial robes, and pusas, and luohans.

Compared to the unmoving zen stillness before, they now seemed to be joyfully dividing and consuming something, and they had almost finished.

Within the jade plaque, it was misty and hazy, hard to see clearly.

“What are they eating? Immortal peaches? Immortal pills?”

The thought that they had something to eat while he had nothing made Danyangzi frantic with impatience. He immediately charged at the jade plaque, trying to break through.

But just as he was about to cross, Danyangzi felt his body hit a hard pane of glass, stopped dead.

“Let me through!! This Daoist has become an immortal! This Daoist is going to the immortal realm!”

Danyangzi floated there, shouting into the darkness.

In the chaotic darkness, Danyangzi saw the two headless, tailless great serpents holding the Southern Heavenly Gate glance at him, then do nothing more.

“The san shi have been severed! I have clearly become an immortal! I am a true immortal now! On what grounds do you refuse to let me in?!”

Danyangzi’s voice was filled with unwillingness as he roared at the jade plaque.

Just then, Danyangzi suddenly found that he could read those three characters.

“Mao zhi Men.”