The Mad Retreat

Chapter 417: The Mad Retreat

“Hahaha! You want this Six Luminary Almanac too? Ha! Dream on! Such a fine treasure belongs to us Zuowandao!” Li Huowang jeered at the other officers of the Supervisory Heavenly Office.

As he spoke, the hallucination of Red Center beside him clapped and laughed wildly as if it were New Year’s Eve. Never, whether alive or dead, had she been so elated.

At the sight of the huge red “Center” character plastered across Li Huowang’s face, every combatant in the field froze. All eyes fixed on him, and on the Supervisory Overseer in his hand.

The Heavenly Office officers who had been besieging Zhuge Yuan were the most stunned. Never had they imagined that this supposed ally was actually a Zuowandao impostor—and one who had just murdered an Overseer.

The next instant, nearly every officer abandoned their pursuit of Zhuge Yuan and charged at Li Huowang instead. The Overseer was dead. If they wanted to avoid imprisonment and punishment from the Office, they had to capture this man to redeem themselves.

“Dad… they’re coming… charging at you…”

In the pitch darkness, Li Huowang heard Li Sui’s voice in his mind. “Don’t panic. Squeeze out your eyeballs and guide me!”

Li Huowang raised the blood-stained old almanac high and followed Li Sui’s direction, leaping and bounding toward the distant city wall.

In this twisted, insane world, anything could happen. An Overseer was one of the top authorities of the Heavenly Office; he might not be so easy to kill. But Li Huowang didn’t care about success or failure. All he had done was to make a statement on behalf of the Zuowandao.

He had never been able to get along with the Heavenly Office anyway. His true objective was still that Heart-Element, North Wind!

Since North Wind was still in the capital and hadn’t left, then for his own goal, the Office and the Zuowandao had to fight. Even if they wouldn’t, he would fan the flames himself!

He had been fooled by the Zuowandao so many times. Why shouldn’t he exploit them in return?

And Li Huowang wasn’t worried at all that the Heavenly Office would go check with the Zuowandao whether there really was an extra “Red Center.” The Zuowandao were like the boy who cried wolf. After crying wolf once, twice, even if they spoke the truth, no one would believe them anymore.

Now that the Overseer had been killed by “Red Center,” the Zuowandao were caught with their hands in the cookie jar. They couldn’t talk their way out of this one. This tactic, too, Li Huowang had learned from them.

Leaping across the tiles of rooftops, Li Huowang leaned forward with knees plastered with talismans, laughing wildly as he ran, gritting his teeth against the searing pain on his face. He occasionally threw taunts back over his shoulder.

The flames were already fanned. All he had to do now was shake off the Office’s pursuit and switch back to his real identity, Ear Nine.

Just as he cleared one roof, a killing intent that seemed to come from nowhere made every hair on his body stand on end.

Suddenly, his body moved on its own, twisting violently in midair. Blind Li Huowang could only feel a gust of wind wrapping around something, grazing past him.

“Dad, there’s someone on the wall with a big staff swinging at us.” Li Sui had helped him dodge the attack.

“Don’t panic. The wall isn’t far. We’ll be out soon!” Li Huowang was about to say more when he suddenly felt a very strange aura surge up behind him, locking tightly onto him.

This bizarre change made his heart clench. “Li Sui, what is it? What’s happening behind me?”

“Dad… the man you just killed… he stood up again. He’s staring at your head.”

“What?! The Overseer isn’t dead?! No! He’s definitely dead to the core. Whatever is in his body now, it’s not the original him!”

Even in an ordinary person, the variety of tricks was far greater than Li Huowang could imagine.

Right now, he couldn’t figure out through Li Sui’s description what that thing actually was. The only thing he knew for sure was that this wasn’t over yet!

“Go!” Li Huowang blindly manipulated his body into a phase-shift, turning invisible, and sprinted with all his might toward the capital’s gate.

As he ran, he suddenly felt a chill on the top of his head. Then came the sound of something dropping to the ground. The aura locked onto him vanished.

In this moment of crisis, Li Huowang couldn’t afford to think. As long as his body could still move, he kept retreating like a madman.

“Come on, boys! Let’s go help our Red Center boss!”

“Boss Red Center, don’t you worry! We’ll avenge you!”

“Boss Red Center, you gotta get that almanac out of here!”

Hearing the indignant shouts of the Zuowandao behind him, Li Huowang couldn’t help but sneer inwardly. “You tricksters. Never thought you’d be the ones getting tricked, did you?”

Whether it was because the Zuowandao were effectively holding the rear, the pressure around him dropped sharply. Soon, he reached the city gate.

The heavy gate was closed, but that didn’t stop Li Huowang. He swung his bronze coin sword and cut through it as easily as paper.

After considerable effort, when he finally brushed his hand through dense leaves, a surge of wild joy filled his heart. He had made it out of the city!

“Li Sui! Keep a sharp eye! Any pursuers behind us?” he asked silently.

“No… it looks like they’ve all been held back by those men in iron clothes.”

Even hearing the best possible answer, Li Huowang did not relax his vigilance. He kept flipping and twisting through the forest, sometimes turning invisible, sometimes diving into water.

Several hours later, only when his body had been utterly drained of strength did he finally slow down. Drenched in sweat, he sat on a rock to recover.

“Things must be absolute chaos in the capital right now. They’ll clamp down on security twice as hard,” he thought. “I’ll wait outside for a while, then go back.”

“But I can’t wait too long, or I’ll miss the war between the Heavenly Office and the Zuowandao.”

Just as these thoughts ran through his mind, a rustling sound of dead leaves came from his left.

Li Huowang was about to listen more closely when he heard a terrified scream.

“A GHOST!!”

But after that single scream, which startled birds into flight, there was no further sound. This left Li Huowang, who had been ready to fight for his life, somewhat baffled.

“Li Sui, who made that sound?” he asked in his mind.

“An old man. He’s carrying a lot of wood. He fell to the ground and isn’t moving.”

Puzzled, Li Huowang felt his way over. Soon, his hand touched an old man in hempen clothes. The deep wrinkles on his face showed his advanced age.

The firewood on his back and the notched sickle in his hand suggested the old man was just an ordinary person, up the mountain to chop wood.

The pulse at his neck was still beating. He had probably just fainted from fright, not died of it.

Li Huowang suddenly realized: the man must have been scared by his “Red Center” face. Of course. What ordinary villager wouldn’t be terrified by such a ghastly sight?

With that thought, he pulled a dagger from his torture kit, ready to rearrange his features back to normal.

But as he reached both hands toward his head, he found only empty space where his head should have been. Li Sui’s tentacles were waving there, the ones wrapped around two eyeballs bobbing up and down.

“Where’s my head?” The question leapt unbidden into Li Huowang’s mind.