Warmth

As time passed, Li Huowang watched the dwindling fire. He pulled off his worn leather shoes, wiped the moisture from their surface, and tossed them in.

With the addition of the shoes, the flames surged anew, the temperature climbing so sharply that Li Huowang had to lean back.

Yet strangely, even as he shifted away, he didn't feel any less heat—instead, it grew more intense.

Having been on the verge of freezing moments before, he was now drenched in sweat from the oppressive warmth.

“Strange… Why is it this hot?” Li Huowang began stripping off his soaking clothes. As he did, wisps of black smoke curled from his body.

“Whoosh—” When he exhaled, tiny specks of dark red embers sprayed from his mouth.

“Too hot! Way too hot!” He stood, reaching to pull off his shirt.

But in that instant, he saw the small campfire before him surge outward, engulfing him completely.

“AHHHHH!” Li Huowang collapsed to his knees, the agonizing pain nearly scattering his will.

“What the—” He jerked his head up and was instantly met with a mountain of flame.

Fire. Fire everywhere, not an inch of empty space. The entire expanse of reeds had been ignited.

Through the layers of dancing flames, he saw people running and screaming, only to stop moving and collapse, becoming fuel for the spreading blaze.

On the other side of the hallucination, Li Huowang had only burnt plastic. Here, he had sacrificed the skin of his entire body and performed the ritual from the Thousand Greats Record.

“No—no, no, no!” Panicked, he rose and charged toward them.

But as Li Huowang drew close, it seemed his own blazing flames intensified whatever they touched. Everyone he approached was reduced to a charred corpse in seconds.

He watched, helpless, as a woman collapsed before him. Her curled fingers pointed weakly toward Niuxin Mountain. “Little one…”

“How could this happen?! I held back so much! Why did it end like this?!” Hysterical, Li Huowang clenched his blackened fists and pounded the earth.

He didn't know when the towering inferno finally stopped. When he came back to his senses, everything around him was scorched earth, and he was crouched there like a steaming statue, unmoving.

His body ached terribly, but that pain was nothing compared to the weight in his heart.

He had just lost his family. And he would have to personally deliver this heart-shattering pain to Bai Lingmiao—the woman who had been so good to him.

“Tsk, tsk, tsk,” the wooden mask crept over, looking around at the desolation with a mix of awe and shock.

Seeing the dark red copper-coin mask on Li Huowang's face, he approached cautiously. “Hey, brother! Still alive?”

As Li Huowang raised his head slightly, fine black ash trickled from his neck.

Seeing this, the wooden mask let out a relieved breath. He quickly came over and helped Li Huowang walk across the blackened wasteland.

“Look, it was just a small job from the Supervisory Heavenly Office. Why'd you have to risk your life over it?”

“You must be new, right? Let me tell you—when you can tell a job's a losing proposition at first glance, hold back!”

“Besides, they were just ordinary White Lotus followers. Did you really need to pull out all the stops? Are all you Ao-Jing Sect folks this hot-tempered?”

Li Huowang showed no reaction to the man's words. He walked forward in silence.

“My name's Liu Zongyuan, from the Moon Gate. What's yours?”

“What, cat got your tongue? You practicing that vow of silence like those monks?”

Just as they were leaving the scorched area, Li Huowang remembered something and touched the wound on his stomach.

The spear that had pierced him earlier was now a charred stick of charcoal, lodged like a cork in his belly.

He hooked the edges with his fingers and pulled gently. A walnut-sized hole appeared in his blackened abdomen.

He extended a blackened finger, reaching inside.

“Ouch, ouch,” Liu Zongyuan winced, his back teeth aching at the sight.

But just as Li Huowang's finger was about to go in, a withered, cracked tentacle trembled out from the dark hole, wrapping around his knuckle. Then a heterochromatic eye with double pupils flickered briefly in the cavity.

“Hey—! You're a weird one, aren't you? What's that thing in your belly? I never heard the Ao-Jing Sect had something like that.”

Li Huowang glanced at Liu Zongyuan and finally spoke. “Nascent Soul.”

“Nascent Soul? I thought Nascent Souls were supposed to hang by your neck. Why's yours stuck in your gut? Aren't you worried it'll turn into shit?”

Li Huowang ignored him and kept walking.

“Hey, brother, the job's done, everything's over. Why the long face?”

Hearing this, a bitter smile spread across Li Huowang's face. “Done. Yeah, that's right. Completely finished.”

“What, you're feeling sorry for them? Brother, you think the other villages around Niuxin Mountain just disappeared on their own? They killed far more people than you did. You were doing Heaven's work.”

Li Huowang took his hand off the man's shoulder and stood still. “You go on ahead. Our paths split here.”

“Split here?” Liu Zongyuan stopped, staring in surprise at the charred figure before him. “Look at you. Where can you even go? You smell roasted—hope a tiger doesn't snack on you halfway.”

“That's my business. Go.” Li Huowang sat down heavily, his movements slow and clumsy.

Liu Zongyuan scratched the back of his head, thought for a moment, then turned toward the nearby woods.

But after a few steps, he sighed, turned back, and stood before Li Huowang again. “Fine, fine. Save a man all the way, send a Buddha to the West. Close your eyes.”

“What?” Li Huowang looked up at his wooden mask, smeared with rouge at the cheeks.

“Just close them. If I wanted to screw you over, I wouldn't have to lift a finger. You sit here with no one to care for you—you'd be dead in days.”

Li Huowang raised his blackened hands and covered his charred, lidless eyes.

“Shh, shh, shh.” He could feel something moving over his body—soft, a little fuzzy, like a writing brush.

After about the time it takes two incense sticks to burn, he heard the voice again. “All right, put your hands down.”

When Li Huowang lowered his hands, he saw that the burned skin had returned.

But upon closer inspection, he realized it wasn't his skin at all—it was a layer of pink paper.

The specific shade reminded him vaguely of the paper effigies burned before graves.

Not just the skin; he was now wearing a paper robe, too, the same style as those paper figures.

Even more astonishingly, this wasn't just a disguise. The searing pain from his skinless body had vanished.

“Stay away from water. Remember to keep out of the rain. If it gets soaked, it won't work.”

“Which sect are you from? That skill is remarkable.” Li Huowang looked at the wooden mask.

“I told you—Moon Gate. This is our sect's Sticking Technique. Aside from Sticking, we've got Setting, Joining, Passing, Moongazing, Separating, Chasing, and Opening.”

Seeing Li Huowang frozen there, Liu Zongyuan chuckled. “Don't get it? Hah—that's the point. Our sect's secrets aren't for outsiders. You still haven't told me your name.”

“Erjiu.”

“Right then. See you around, Erjiu.” Liu Zongyuan turned and vanished into the forest like a monkey.

Li Huowang lowered his head and touched the papery skin again. With a bit of pressure, he picked a hole in it.

The piercing pain stirred nothing in his heart. He didn't get up. He sat where he was, turning his head to look toward Niuxin Mountain.

Deep despair filled his eyes. “I just wiped out the entire Bai family. When I go back… how am I supposed to tell her?”