The Hidden Heart-Turbid

Li Huowang turned his head at the sound. Between the gaps in the wall, thick with thorns and creeping ivy, faint characters were barely visible.

The copper-coin sword, now a long whip, lashed out a few times, clearing the entire wall in an instant.

“What am I, and what is my end? Strange.”

“I do not wish to kill them! I only wish to observe them!”

“Turn sideways, and you cannot see me. I wish to do everything!”

“These look like they were written by the Heart-Turbid,” Tuoba Danqing said, studying them closely. “But the handwriting doesn’t seem to belong to a single person.”

“Aiya, Danqing, stop gawking. Give me some of your Gu worms. I need to take them with the Lifespan Pill.”

As he spoke, the Chief Recorder pulled a Lifespan Pill from his bosom and stuffed it into his mouth. The white hairs on his head visibly receded.

“Chief Recorder, sir, you’re nearly at the limit. Taking any more Lifespan Pills will cause trouble.”

“Ai~ Do you think I don’t know that? Let’s just get this task done first. Otherwise, I won’t even live long enough to become a Renxiao.”

Li Huowang ignored the Chief Recorder’s rambling. Enduring the pain, he remained alert to everything around him.

The situation was under control for now. Hopefully, this would end quickly. No more complications.

Heh.

Hearing the sound, Li Huowang lifted his head slightly and instantly found himself face-to-face with a woman covered in filth.

Her hair was long, her face quite delicate. She hung upside down before him, her expression abnormally excited as she met his gaze.

In that brief instant, a subconscious thought flashed through Li Huowang’s mind: “She’s the Heart-Turbid!!”

Without hesitation, Li Huowang’s hand moved with the sword, plunging it straight into her abdomen.

Coughing blood, the Heart-Turbid fell to the ground, her expression one of utter shock as she stared at Li Huowang. She repeated herself over and over.

“You’re fine? You’re actually fine?”

Li Huowang, now fiercely agitated, didn’t care about that anymore. He raised the iron spoon, straddled her, and prepared to gouge out those eyes that could make people disappear.

“Er Jiu! Leave her eyeballs! Don’t gouge them out! Kill her if you have to, but don’t touch her eyes!”

Hearing this, Li Huowang quickly dislocated all her joints. Now, besides being able to move her eyes, she couldn’t do anything else.

Though he didn’t understand exactly what was going on, the Heart-Turbid had delivered herself to his doorstep. There was no way he was letting her go.

He tore a red strip from his Daoist robe, intending to bind the Heart-Turbid’s eyes.

But at that moment, she didn’t struggle at all. Instead, she stared in terror at the various sized characters on the wall.

“No! I didn’t kill them! I don’t know! But I didn’t kill them!”

Only after wrapping her eyes in layer after layer of cloth did Li Huowang finally breathe a sigh of relief. He collapsed to the ground, gasping for air.

After a moment to recover, Li Huowang exchanged looks with the Chief Recorder and the others. Everyone’s expression was extraordinarily strange. This wasn’t what they had guessed.

“Brother Er? How did you manage not to be hidden by the Heart-Turbid? And how did you make her jump right in front of you to be caught?”

Hearing Tuoba Danqing’s question, Li Huowang lowered his head in thought, then looked up to answer. “Maybe I was just lucky.”

He guessed it might have something to do with his identity as a Heart-Element, but that was something he absolutely couldn’t tell them.

As soon as he said this, Tuoba Danqing frowned and stopped asking, muttering to himself: “What does ‘just lucky’ mean?”

But right then, the Heart-Turbid cried out again. “No! I didn’t kill them! I don’t know! But I didn’t kill them!”

When Li Huowang turned his head, his pupils suddenly contracted to pinpricks.

The cloth covering the Heart-Turbid’s eyes had disappeared at some point. She was staring at the words on the wall again.

“No good. Inanimate objects can’t cover a Heart-Turbid’s eyes. We need living things. Li Sui, come out and help!”

Two writhing tentacles burrowed out from the wound on Li Huowang’s abdomen and coiled around the Heart-Turbid’s eyes. Finally, she fell silent.

Seeing that the Heart-Turbid was truly captured, the Chief Recorder walked over excitedly, grabbed Li Huowang’s hands, and shook them vigorously, speaking with deep gratitude. “Er Jiu! You’ve done us a huge favor! From now on, if there’s anything you need, just come to me!”

“Chief Recorder, you flatter me,” Li Huowang replied, understanding the implication. The man was saying he owed him a favor.

Although the process had been somewhat unexpected, since the goal had been achieved, everything was fine.

“Let’s go, everyone. The capital is in a hurry for this,” the Chief Recorder said, sounding more anxious than anyone else.

Li Huowang nodded. He grabbed the Heart-Turbid and hoisted her onto his back, heading outside. Before leaving, he cast a glance at the wall.

“When my wife died, her husband discarded her in the corner of the wall. Why are there so many dead in the corner of the wall?”

Seeing this, a look of surprise crossed Li Huowang’s face. He walked to the corner, pulled aside the straw, and a pile of terrifying, contorted mummies was revealed before him.

“Why are there so many dead people? And all women?” Even the usually calm Shentu Gang showed a flicker of surprise at the sight.

This unexpected find made the others stop as well.

“It’s written on the wall,” Tuoba Danqing said slowly, looking at the characters. “These are all the Heart-Turbid’s wives. And this is just a few. The rest were all made to disappear by her.”

“How very strange. The Heart-Turbid is clearly a woman. How could she have wives?”

“Let’s hurry up. Who cares if she does or not?”

The Chief Recorder seemed impatient. As long as he could bring the Heart-Turbid back safely, he couldn’t care less about its gender.

But this remark immediately put Li Huowang on guard. His heart suddenly lurched. He looked at the others and spoke. “Could there be another Heart-Turbid?”

His words made the atmosphere in the room grow tense.

“Damn it! What’s there to be afraid of? Do you think I’m scared of this bullshit Heart-Turbid? If it wasn’t for the fact this thing hides like a mouse! I could take three of them on my own!” Shentu Gang’s words quickly warmed the others’ expressions.

“He’s right. And if worst comes to worst, we still have our brother Er Jiu. The Heart-Turbid is useless against him.” Tuoba Danqing said with a chuckle, patting Li Huowang’s shoulder in a friendly manner.

The group continued walking out of the village. They made it almost to the village entrance without any further incidents, which gave Li Huowang time to pay attention to Hong Da, who had been unusually quiet.

“What’s wrong, Brother Hong? We just escaped death. Why isn’t there a single smile on your face?”

It was a good thing Hong Da had been thrown out as a shield earlier, otherwise, he might not have made it back.

Hong Da, his lips pale, seemed to try to crack a smile, but he just couldn’t manage it.

“So many people… So many people in there,” he said, his voice hoarse, finally speaking.

“What do you mean, so many people?”

Hong Da’s eyes were fixed, staring directly at the Heart-Turbid on Li Huowang’s back. “The karmic hindrances inside the Heart-Turbid’s mind… they don’t affect others the most. They affect herself.”

“There were many enemies in there, but there were also plenty of this Heart-Turbid’s own family and friends. They told me that when danger came, the Heart-Turbid would hide these people away, hide them inside her own karmic hindrances.”

“She planned to let them out when it was safe. But the Heart-Turbid forgot. She forgot completely.”

“At first, the Heart-Turbid could control it. But as time went on, she couldn’t help but start hiding her own memories. Hiding her own age. Hiding whether she was male or female.”

“You could even say that this Heart-Turbid is a completely different person from one hour to the next!”