A Thread

1,278 words

Chapter 253: A Thread

"If you want to wield this sword! You'll have to learn the Luojiao Sect's Celestial Capital Seal, fellow Daoist! I know it—if you want to learn, I can teach you."

Li Huowang felt no surprise at these words. Instead, he wore a half-smile as he looked at the man. "Let me guess—learning a Luojiao technique would take you quite a few days, wouldn't it?"

"And to learn it, you'd need me alive. As long as you keep stalling, you stay alive. Am I right?"

Seeing his little trick exposed, the fear on the malformed doll-head's face faded by half. It split its mouth, showing rows of rotten teeth, and forced a fawning grin toward Li Huowang.

"Nobody wants to die, right? How about this—Han Fu's dead anyway. Pry me off and put me on yourself. A Nascent Soul's a Nascent Soul, it doesn't matter whose. I can be your Nascent Soul!"

"Abbot Li, you don't know this—a Luojiao Nascent Soul is a fine thing. With two Nascent Souls, you've got two minds in cultivation! When you're refining qi into spirit, I can help—"

"But why would I negotiate with you?"

Li Huowang cut him off. He picked up the iron ladle and aimed it at the single eye on the creature's face.

"Now. Tell me this 'Celestial Capital Seal' of yours. How about it?"

"If you want to play games with me? Fine. I've got plenty of time. We can play all you like."

By the time Li Huowang walked slowly out of the tent—his hem sticky with flecks of meat, the smell of blood thick on him—it was already early morning. He held a stack of goatskins covered in writing. This was the so-called Celestial Capital Seal.

He had also asked the thing about other techniques and talismans that Han Fu had known. But after verifying—and torturing it until it was barely recognizable—he could only reluctantly conclude that this Nascent Soul genuinely didn't know anything else. All it knew was how to use the Seven Star Sword.

Li Huowang felt a pang of regret. If he'd gotten hold of some Luojiao talismans, he wouldn't have to rely on the Thousand Greats Record for everything. That thing hurt too damn much.

Still, this was a decent bonus at best—nice to have, but not essential. What mattered far more was what this Nascent Soul had told him about the Supervisory Heavenly Office.

Because that was the key to escaping the Heart-Element's bewilderment once and for all.

Exhausted in both body and mind, he ducked back into the tent and took the towel Bai Lingmiao offered him, wiping his face roughly.

He didn't even take off his shoes. He just collapsed onto the bed.

Bai Lingmiao reached down, gently pulled off his shoes and socks, and covered him with the blanket before stepping out.

Li Huowang had been up all night, and he was bone-tired. But when he closed his eyes, sleep refused to come. His mind churned with the Nascent Soul's words.

Growing more and more restless, he finally sat up and forced himself to think it through.

"North Wind is a Heart-Element who escaped bewilderment. To judge whether that's true or not, without other leads… I can only go through the Supervisory Heavenly Office—the Zuowandao's sworn enemy."

"But the problem is obvious: how do I get information on North Wind from the Supervisory Heavenly Office? I'm a Heart-Element, for crying out loud."

The Supervisory Heavenly Office was a massive bureaucracy. He knew damned well what would happen if they caught wind of him.

Li Huowang stayed in bed for a long time, right up until Bai Lingmiao called him for dinner. He still had no clear plan.

Seeing his troubled expression, Bai Lingmiao clutched her bowl and spoke hesitantly. "Brother Li… since the Supervisory Heavenly Office fights the Zuowandao, and you fight the Zuowandao too… aren't you on the same side? Why not just go to them directly?"

"If a complete stranger walked up to the Supervisory Heavenly Office's front gate and asked for Zuowandao intelligence, what do you think they'd do? Beating me and throwing me out would be the mildest outcome."

Li Huowang sighed, took the bowl from her, and started eating without tasting a bite.

"But… you are on the same side, aren't you? Couldn't you just explain?"

"You think it's like making friends as a child? It's not that simple, Miaomiao. They recruited a Luojiao disciple as a pawn without batting an eye. That should tell you their methods aren't exactly clean."

Li Huowang stopped mid-sentence. His eyes lit up.

"That's it. Our identities are a problem now—but identities can be changed."

"As long as I hide my Heart-Element nature, I could join the Supervisory Heavenly Office."

The more he thought about it, the more excited he grew. He even picked Bai Lingmiao up and spun her around. The more he turned it over in his head, the more it looked like a plan that solved multiple problems at once.

"Even if North Wind isn't a Heart-Element who escaped bewilderment, I can still use the Supervisory Heavenly Office to find another way out!"

"And as long as I keep my Heart-Element identity hidden, I'll have a powerful backer! I can use their authority to mask who I really am! No more random people testing me whenever they feel like it!"

"On top of that, their organization is so loose they don't even require a meeting with a handler—perfect for someone with my troublesome identity!"

Seeing Li Huowang smile made Bai Lingmiao smile too. As long as Brother Li was happy, she was happy.

Li Huowang looked at her delicate face, felt a stir in his chest, and leaned in to kiss her.

In the midst of their heavy breathing, a black-painted fingernail gently flicked the lamp wick. The leather tent plunged into darkness.

After a long time, Bai Lingmiao lay on Li Huowang's chest, her thin body rising and falling with his breaths.

"Brother Li, you need to sleep. You haven't slept in two days." Her hand stroked him with tender concern.

Li Huowang kept his arm around her waist, but shook his head.

The first step was always the hardest. At least now he had a thread to follow—he wasn't just bumbling around like a headless fly anymore.

Even if he got absurdly lucky and somehow stumbled into North Wind, the man was one of the Four Joys of the Zuowandao. His strength was bound to be extraordinary. He might very well end up dead in an encounter like that.

His first priority: reach Liang and find a way to contact the Supervisory Heavenly Office. Besides confirming whether North Wind was real, he also needed to determine North Wind's true strength from them.

If the man was far stronger than him, then he'd have to level up his own power fast if he wanted a shot at getting the method to end his bewilderment!

"Level up" was easy to say. But as someone with no master, no sect, no one to teach him, Li Huowang had no path for hard training even if he wanted to.

Besides, all these twisted sects and their vile cultivation methods… even if one was handed to him on a plate, who's to say he could survive it?

Seeing the knot between his brows tighten again, Bai Lingmiao pressed herself against him and gently smoothed it with her soft fingers. "Brother Li. Sleep. You can't think through everything in one night. Sleep."

Under her gentle caress, Li Huowang—who had not slept for two days and two nights—slowly closed his eyes and gradually lost consciousness.

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Reading Guide Decoding

Li Huowang's Master Plan

Cultural / Xianxia Notes

This chapter introduces the Celestial Capital Seal (仙都兹摄印), a technique from the Luojiao Sect (罗教). Historically, the Luojiao—or Luo Sect—was a real Chinese folk religious movement founded by Luo Qing in the Ming Dynasty, blending Chan Buddhist, Daoist, and Pure Land elements into a syncretic salvation tradition. In the context of this novel, however, their techniques are pure dirty goods: dark, practical, and tied to the grimy underworld of rogue cultivators and shadowy organizations. Think of it as the "unlicensed sorcery" of the Dao-Twisted World. Also worth noting: the idea of a Nascent Soul being removed from its original body and grafted onto another is a grotesque inversion of the standard xianxia trope. Normally, a Nascent Soul is the proud crystallization of a cultivator's life's work—here, it's a terrified, bargaining parasite that can be scooped out with a ladle.

Chapter Overview

Get ready, fellow seekers of twisted truths—this chapter is a breather, but don't let the quiet fool you. Li Huowang finally has a plan. After squeezing the Luojiao Nascent Soul dry through a long, bloody night, he's got a lead on how to tackle his Heart-Element curse: join the Supervisory Heavenly Office. It's one of those rare pause-and-think chapters where the horror isn't happening to him—it's being engineered by him. There's even a tender moment between him and Bai Lingmiao, which feels almost too warm for this world. But don't relax. A plan this good in the Dao-Twisted World? That's usually when the floor drops out.

Key Plot Points

The interrogation of the Luojiao Nascent Soul yields the Celestial Capital Seal technique, a method to wield the Seven Star Sword.
Li Huowang confirms the Nascent Soul knows nothing else of value—no talismans, no other Luojiao arts. Just this single prize.
The Nascent Soul had also dropped a bombshell hint: there is a Heart-Element named "North Wind" who escaped bewilderment, and the key to verifying this lies with the Zuowandao's archenemy, the Supervisory Heavenly Office.
Li Huowang rejects the simple "just explain who you are" approach—he knows a massive bureaucracy like the Supervisory Heavenly Office doesn't play nice with strangers.
Instead, he formulates a layered plan: hide his Heart-Element identity, infiltrate the Supervisory Heavenly Office, use their intelligence to track North Wind, and simultaneously gain a powerful institutional backer.
The chapter ends with Bai Lingmiao gently coaxing a two-days-awake Li Huowang to sleep, a rare pocket of softness before the next storm.

Reading Guide

This chapter is all about strategy—and for once, it's not just reactionary survival. Li Huowang's decision to infiltrate the Supervisory Heavenly Office shows he's finally learning to play the long game: hide, observe, gather intel, and only then strike. It's the kind of giddy, manic plotting we rarely see from a protagonist constantly on the back foot. But keep that ball of tension in your gut—every time Li Huowang gets excited about a plan, the universe seems to take it personally. Also, that quiet, warm moment with Bai Lingmiao? The more tenderness the Dao-Twisted World shows, the more likely it's saving up for a catastrophic payback. Savor the calm, but stay on your guard.

The Supervisory Heavenly Office: Friend or Foe?

The Office is the novel's first major introduction of a government-sanctioned supernatural enforcer. Unlike the fragmented, secretive sects we've seen so far, this is institutional power with a political spine. The chapter hints that their methods are pragmatic to the point of ruthlessness—recruiting Luojiao disciples as disposable chess pieces is standard procedure. Li Huowang's instinct to approach them not as an ally but as a infiltrator is exactly the right call. In a world where every institution is rotten, the one that looks most "official" might just be the most dangerous of all.