The Hole in the Sky

Li Huowang, bereft of all pain, stared blankly at everything around him. With his amalgamated senses, he could feel the Yin and Yang, which had previously merged, splitting apart.

It wasn't because Yang had failed to arrive, but because Yin had come alive. Only living things could feel pain. When the previously dead Heart-Turbid let out an agonizing scream, he came alive right along with the screaming stones and trees.

Li Huowang staggered, trying to take a step, but his weakened body instinctively pitched forward. Several writhing black tentacles reached out, propping themselves against the ground like pillars.

"Dad," Li Sui said, then opened the wound on Li Huowang's chest and quickly slithered back inside.

Li Huowang opened his mouth, trembling as if he wanted to say something, but there was only a horrifying, bloody hole where his mouth should be. No sound could come out.

His right hand, its nails torn away, lifted and trembled as it pointed south. He could feel a fissure there.

Bai Lingmiao instantly understood what he meant. She quickly grabbed the Thousand Greats Record from the ground and followed the Second Spirit, who was carrying Li Huowang on her back, heading south.

As they walked, everything around them suddenly flipped upside down. The three of them felt a lightness in their bodies as they plummeted straight down toward the cracked black dome below.

When they passed through the gap, an intensely blinding sunlight forced everyone to close their eyes. Inside, it had always been dark. Outside, it was already dawn. They were out!

Watching the yellow earth below rapidly rushing up to meet them, the Second Spirit swiftly turned, curling her body around Li Huowang and Bai Lingmiao, shielding them in her embrace.

BANG!

A violent tremor rang out. Li Huowang's fused senses gradually returned to their proper places. Bashe's gaze on him slowly faded. The lost sense of pain began to return as well.

"Huowang! Are you alright? Stay with me!" Li Huowang heard a familiar voice. When he opened his eyes, he saw Bai Lingmiao's face and Yang Na's face perfectly overlapped.

They were merging together, as if becoming a single person. Both opened their mouths and spoke at the same time.

In that moment, the two sides had overlapped to the point where Li Huowang couldn't tell if this was reality or a hallucination.

"Huowang!" Bai Lingmiao, frantic with worry, gently patted his cheek with her slender hand, but there was no reaction.

Her anxiety growing, she grabbed her drumstick and urgently struck the leather drum at her waist, preparing to summon her Great-Grandmother Bai to heal his wounds.

Suddenly, Li Huowang's hand grabbed her wrist. He shook his head slightly. In this moment, he had distinguished it. This was reality. The person in front of him was Bai Lingmiao. There was no Yang Na here at all.

With effort, he turned over onto his stomach. As he panted heavily, bits of meat and blood slipped from the bloody hole of his mouth and dripped onto the ground.

Summoning every ounce of strength, he lifted his head. He looked around and saw the Thousand Greats Record lying on the ground in the distance, covered in mud. He then pushed himself, crawling toward it with immense effort.

Seeing what he wanted, Bai Lingmiao quickly ran over, picked up the still-dripping red bamboo slip, and brought it to him.

Trembling, Li Huowang reached out a hand and, as if opening a gift box, unrolled the Thousand Greats Record. The bloody tongue and the entire throat lay before them.

Weakly, Li Huowang tilted his head back, mouth wide open. He held the long, vertical strip of flesh and let it drop straight down into the hideous, bloody hole of his mouth.

In an instant, fine, slender tentacles emerged from within his mouth, coiling around his tongue and organs, adjusting their positions and binding them back into place.

"You're alright, you're alright. You scared me to death, woman!" Bai Lingmiao pulled him into her arms, her voice trembling.

Thinking back on everything he had experienced in the hallucination, a faint, strained smile appeared on Li Huowang's face. He reached his arms around her, controlling his cold, new tongue as he spoke. "Why... did you... cough suddenly start early?"

He hadn't even killed Yang Na in the hallucination yet. Bai Lingmiao had gone ahead and started the Dung-Beetle Ascension.

"Didn't you say to do it when it hurt the most? I saw you were about to pass out. What, did I do something wrong?"

Li Huowang shook his head slightly. "No... just right..." Yang Na was hurt, but she wasn't dead.

"Thank you... Miao Miao," he murmured, kissing her on the neck.

Her early intervention had saved Yang Na. If he had followed his own plan, that knife would have been plunged in. Li Huowang didn't understand why he cared so much about a hallucination, but the thought that Yang Na was still alive made him happier than anything.

He understood now. Bashe only wanted pain, not death. Death was for other Simings. Perhaps it was for the giant white bone Bodhisattva he had seen, or something else.

He didn't need to kill Yang Na. The moment he made up his mind to kill her, the heart-wrenching pain was already enough to fuel the Dung-Beetle Ascension.

"Yang Na... I'm sorry..." Li Huowang murmured absently to the empty air. "I left a scar on your chest. Call yourself an ambulance."

Hearing his words, Bai Lingmiao's brow furrowed slightly, but she said nothing. She helped him up with great effort and walked to the side, intending to get away from this damned place first.

Only now did Li Huowang have the chance to look around. But as far as his eyes could see, there was only dirt. It was completely different from where they had been before.

"Where are we? Did we not make it out?" His heart sinking, Li Huowang struggled to lift his gaze, finally spotting some familiar green woods.

But the trees were very tall, up on a cliff that was far away. Li Huowang was sure there hadn't been a cliff anywhere nearby, or even such a high mountain.

"A cliff? Why is there a cliff here?" When he turned around and saw towering cliffs on all sides, he suddenly realized. That wasn't a cliff.

That was the normal ground level. He was in a depression. They were in an incredibly huge basin.

When the living Heart-Turbid and the dead Heart-Turbid had touched, they hadn't just hidden them. They had dug three feet down and scooped out everything within several miles.

"Huowang, look! What is that in the sky?!"

Li Huowang strained to look up. Above his head, in the cloudless sky, there was a patch inexplicably missing. That was where they had fallen from. Inside it was the pitch-black night sky, full of cracks.

"So this is the power of a Heart-Turbid..." Li Huowang's mouth fell open in sheer shock. "What the hell is a Heart-Turbid? How can a living and a dead Heart-Turbid touching each other make it so they can even hide the sky!"