Noose-Son

Chapter 238: Noose-Son

Listening to the two voices coming from somewhere unknown, Li Huowang, who was almost prostrate on the ground, moved his eyes slightly, beginning to ponder the meaning of their words.

“Cultivating the Dao? This one’s a Daoist? He’s debating with another person?”

“Doesn’t seem like the Daoists I remember. At least, the ones I remember don’t cultivate towards ‘The One’.”

While Li Huowang was thinking, the discussion over there continued. The young girl’s voice carried a hint of disdain.

“What kind of ghost-talk is that? Your mother carried you, a fat lump of meat, for ten months, and now you want to throw all that flesh away? Aren’t you tired?”

“No, no, no! Do you think that our emotions, our Three Corpses, and this mortal shell of flesh are our own? Wrong! They all have owners! Even our life and death have owners! It’s all lent to us by Him!”

“Everything has an owner?”

“Right! The pain on our bodies, the smiles on our faces, our past lives, and our future lives. They all have owners!”

“Think about it, if you keep carrying these things that have owners with you all the time, how can that be good? They are all shackles! So we must cast off all these things that have owners!”

“The Great Dao gives rise to fifty, Heaven’s mechanism uses forty-nine, and humanity escapes with the one; only then can we become that One!”

Then, the young girl’s voice asked the question that Li Huowang, eavesdropping, wanted to ask. “And after becoming one?”

“Hehe! After becoming one, we won’t owe anything to anyone. Naturally, we’ll be free. We’ll leap out of the Three Realms and no longer be bound by the Five Elements.”

“What… what are they even talking about? What owners? What One?” Li Huowang, his brow deeply furrowed, tried to grasp their meaning.

“Everything has an owner? The owner of all pain is Bashe? The owner of joy is the Double Joy God?” Li Huowang immediately recalled the great cauldron from before. “So they are making sacrifices to the Lord of Death?”

After thinking for a long time, Li Huowang shook his head forcefully, trying to throw out the messy thoughts.

“No, wait, Li Huowang, don’t let them lead you around. Maybe that’s just what he thinks. What he thinks isn’t necessarily true. Maybe these two are just like Danyangzi, they think they understand everything, but in reality, they don’t understand a damn thing!”

“These aren’t things you should be worrying about right now. What you should be considering is, now that I’m lost and I’ve run into these two, what should I do next to get out of this mess!”

“Should I just step out and talk things through with them?”

This question was the first that came to Li Huowang’s mind. But he just thought about it. Without knowing the other party’s strength, it was too rash.

He turned his head to look at the darkness around him, and another idea quietly surfaced in his heart. “Use my perception to follow them from a distance, and follow them out of here?”

“No, this idea is even worse than the last one!”

Just as Li Huowang was pondering how to use these two to escape, he felt someone tugging at his sleeve. “Bro… Brother Li…!”

“Shh! Don’t talk!”

Li Huowang was inwardly furious. If those two in the distance discovered them, the only chance to escape this place would be lost.

“Brother Li, someone’s holding my arm! But there’s no one on my left!” Sun Baolu’s voice was almost breaking into sobs.

Li Huowang’s heart skipped a beat. He used his left hand to feel his way along Sun Baolu’s clothes, sliding down slowly.

Then he touched a very rough hand.

The moment Li Huowang grabbed it, that hand turned over, seizing Li Huowang and pulling him into the darkness.

With a clang, Li Huowang instantly drew his sword and slashed in that direction.

Sensing something moving beside her, Chun Xiaoman immediately pulled out her fluorescent stone.

Swoosh! The greenish light illuminated their surroundings, but there was nothing unusual. There was nothing there at all.

Just as Li Huowang was staring around, his expression unreadable, a gaunt-cheeked young Daoist in a yellow robe stumbled frantically into the circle of fluorescent light.

He wore a yellow Daoist robe and black cloth shoes, and on his head sat a Daoist crown stamped with a Taiji diagram.

Compared to Danyangzi, this man looked much more like the Daoist Li Huowang remembered.

Seeing each other, both sides froze for a moment, but then the Daoist, showing a mouthful of rotten teeth, said, “Hurry! Fall back! The Noose-Son is about to catch up!”

Li Huowang recognized that voice. It was one of the voices from just now!

His appearance was far younger than his voice.

When he saw the man rush hastily into the darkness, Li Huowang and his group quickly followed.

Whatever this “Noose-Son” he spoke of was, if it was in this godforsaken place, it was definitely something bad.

Compared to that man, Li Huowang’s group was clearly slower, because they still had to drag a few-hundred-jin Black Tai Sui.

Just as Li Huowang was considering whether this Daoist was using them as a shield, the man suddenly ran back.

He pressed his index and middle fingers together, bit them hard, and with the bleeding fingers, began to draw a talisman in the air. “Put out the light, now!”

Looking at the man’s gaunt back, Li Huowang hesitated for a second. Then, giving a look to the others, they all tucked their fluorescent stones into their clothes.

In the pitch black, the Daoist’s chanting reached everyone’s ears.

The chanting was very peculiar. It didn’t sound like a Buddhist sutra or a Daoist incantation. It seemed like a completely different system.

“Om Bu Zha A Bu Jiu Zhen Xie! Ju Lun Tuo Zheng Guang Ji Xie! Miao Ying Tong Ling Tian Jiang Ling Ji Ji Xie!”

When the chanting ended, a feeling of pressure descended. Li Huowang’s entire body broke out in goosebumps. Something indescribable and inexplicable swept over him.

Immediately after, he felt his body temperature rapidly drop.

“Shh~” The Daoist’s hushing sound stopped everyone in their tracks.

Li Huowang felt something furry burrowing between his legs. Sensing its trembling, he realized it was Mantou.

It was afraid. Afraid of something that was drawing near.

Li Huowang felt the ground begin to tremble. Something huge in the darkness was approaching him.

Gradually, the tremor grew closer, so close that through the blurry darkness, Li Huowang could make out some enormous silhouettes.

“Whoosh~” A hot breath blew Li Huowang’s hair. The nauseating stench was unmistakably from some creature’s nose!

Suddenly, a rusted steelyard weight fell from the darkness above, landing in front of Li Huowang. Behind the weight trailed a rope, and that rope was tied to a pair of cloth shoes.

Cloth shoes? Just as Li Huowang realized this, the weight, pulling the shoes, plunged downward.

Shrrk! A female corpse in a red dress, with a long, extended tongue and a terrifyingly miserable death mask, suddenly dropped right in front of Li Huowang.

The two were very close. There was barely an inch between their eyes.