North Wind

1,304 words

Chapter 434: North Wind

Feeling the soft skin in his grasp, Li Huowang's heart pounded with wild excitement. After searching for so long, he had finally found them!

This person was the key to escaping his hallucinations! The one he dreamed of, day and night, every single day!

His mind was a chaotic storm, yet his body remained eerily calm.

In such a turbulent situation, even the Die was unable to notice Li Huowang's actions. At this moment, they were all locked in combat with the Grand Scholar of Great Liang and the Supervisory Heavenly Office.

And so, as the two of them reached the edge of the battlefield, only the Heart-Element, North Wind, sensed something wrong. “Wait! Who are you! How can there be nine Red Centers?”

Just as Li Huowang was about to explain, North Wind suddenly jerked her head up, and their eyes met.

“Just let me explain,” Li Huowang began, opening his mouth. But then he realized with a shock that the voice coming out of him was female, and the hand he was using to support himself was his own body. He and North Wind had swapped.

Looking at Li Huowang trapped within her own body, North Wind’s face twisted into a smug grin. “Oh my, look who it is. If it isn’t Red Center! What’s the matter, tired of being Red Center and want to play North Wind for a while? Sure, sure, I’m fine with that.”

Li Huowang stared at his stolen body, but his face showed no panic. “You didn’t think I’d be ready for you to pull that trick, did you? Forgot to tell you, this body isn’t just mine anymore. Suisui! Now! She’s already switched over!”

North Wind’s heart lurched. She instinctively tried to move, but a searing pain stopped her. The feeling was so intense, as if her pain perception had been amplified several times over, to the point where it was almost unbearable.

But it wasn’t over. Li Sui’s tentacles shot out from her seven apertures, wrapping around her eyes, blocking her mouth, emerging from her nostrils, stripping North Wind of her five senses with blinding speed. All of this had been planned out long ago.

Since he had already learned from the Supervisory Heavenly Office that the Heart-Element, North Wind, was an expert at body-swapping, how could Li Huowang not be prepared?

A silent thunderbolt crashed down right beside Li Huowang as he hoisted North Wind over his shoulder and charged away from the fight.

In the midst of all the chaos, no one noticed. Li Huowang soon escaped the range of the battlefield. The sounds of conflict behind him grew even more intense, but he no longer cared. He had already gotten what he came for.

Pausing at a gilded corner, Li Huowang caught his breath, looking at the Heart-Element North Wind, who now occupied his own body. “Alright, Suisui. Pull the tentacles out of her ears and mouth! I need to talk to her!”

At these words, the wriggling tentacles emerging from the depths of her throat twisted and retracted back inside.

Li Huowang looked at his own body. After calming his racing heart for a moment, he spoke. “I don’t care what the Zuowandao is making such a big show about. You give me what I want, and I’ll let you go right away.”

Hearing this, North Wind’s face showed not a trace of concern. Instead, she laughed in admiration. “Impressive. To dare fish in troubled waters while the Supervisory Heavenly Office and the Zuowandao were locked in battle, and to actually succeed. Truly worthy of being Red Center.”

Li Huowang pulled a small shovel from his lapel, grabbed his own hand, and pushed it directly under the nail along the cuticle.

With a tearing sound of flesh and blood, the thin nail was pried loose. North Wind seemed to want to endure it, but the pain still made her index finger tremble, cold sweat pouring from her brow.

“My body has undergone the Dung-Beetle Ascension three times. My pain sensitivity has been amplified many times over. A small scratch on me feels like the agony of a severed arm. We’re both on a tight schedule here, and you definitely don’t want to experience something worse than this, do you?”

As he spoke, Li Huowang’s finger drilled into his own navel, hooked onto a slimy something inside, and pulled.

“Ha ha...” North Wind trembled from the pain, but she forced a smile onto her face. “Ao-Jing Sect? You’re from the Ao-Jing Sect? You have trouble, and instead of begging your Gu-Spirit Bashe, you come looking for us at the Zuowandao?”

Li Huowang swallowed hard. His voice trembled slightly as he spoke. “You’re a Heart-Element, aren’t you? I want to know how you got rid of your identity as a Heart-Element. How you got rid of the hallucinations.”

“Huh?” A hint of surprise crept into North Wind’s voice. “You went through all this trouble to kidnap me, and this is what you want to talk about? Why didn’t you say so earlier? You were chasing me so desperately, I thought it was something important! So you just want a cultivation technique to cultivate the True.”

“There was no need for all this trouble. If you had just asked me directly, I would have told you for sure.”

“What?” Her words made Li Huowang’s brow furrow deeply.

“Ah.” North Wind let out a light sigh, and her tone took on a note of sadness as she began to speak.

“I’m a Heart-Element too, so I naturally understand the suffering we Heart-Elements go through. The pain of not being able to tell the two sides apart—I can empathize with that completely.”

“So, I’m always happy to see any Heart-Element freed from this suffering. Unfortunately, there are so few of us.”

The skin on Li Huowang’s borrowed North Wind face twitched slightly. He didn’t believe a single word of this speech. “Stop wasting time with this nonsense! If you don’t want to suffer, tell me the method right now!”

“Fine, fine, I’ll tell you. Just don’t pull, alright? This is your own body, you know. You’ll be moving back into it soon enough.”

“Alright, here it is. But before you learn this method, there are a few things you need to know. First, why do we Heart-Elements have hallucinations?”

“You don’t need to explain that part. I already know. It’s caused by the innate one-qi inside our bodies.”

“Oh? You know quite a bit. Alright, then I’ll continue from there. To get rid of the hallucinations, you have to do what I did. You have to completely control that innate one-qi. But of course, you can’t do it by yourself. To do that, you need to borrow the power of the innate one-qi’s true master. Doumu.”

“Wait a minute!” Li Huowang immediately cut her off, his face darkening. “What exactly are you trying to do, dragging me into your Zuowandao’s Siming! Don’t try to trick me! The Doumu of Grand Yin governs falsehood!”

North Wind let out a sigh, a helpless look on her face. “What is true? And what is false? Can you tell the difference? Everyone says we Zuowandao cultivate the False, but they don’t tell you that we also cultivate the True. The Siming Doumu is different from the other Simings. It’s like a twin lotus in a pond: one Doumu of Grand Yin governs falsehood, and one Doumu of Grand Yang governs truth.”

“The Yin-Yang Heavenly Way is different from the other Ways. Other Ways either exist or they don’t. But truth and falsehood are Ways that correspond to each other’s existence. The opposite of true is false. So without truth, there is no falsehood, and without falsehood, there is no truth. Do you understand that or not?”

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Reading Guide Decoding

The Matrix has a Taoist Rewrite

Cultural / Xianxia Notes

Let’s unpack that brain-breaker of a conversation, shall we? This chapter lays out the core philosophy of the entire novel. The whole “Cultivate the False” vs. “Cultivate the True” thing isn’t just a faction slogan—it’s the fundamental rule of this universe. The novel leans heavily on Daoist concepts to create its horror. The “innate one-qi” (先天一炁) is a foundational concept in Daoist cosmology, the primordial energy from which everything arises. Here, it’s the source of a Heart-Element’s madness. Then there’s Doumu (斗姥), the “Mother of the Dipper,” a powerful deity in Daoism often associated with life, the Big Dipper, and cosmic order. But the novel weaponizes the duality inherent in Daoist thought—Yin and Yang, True and False—and attaches it to her. The “twin lotus” (并蒂莲, bìngdìlián) is a beautiful Chinese symbol of two flowers growing from a single stem, representing inseparable love. The novel corrupts this into a symbol of a single deity with two opposing, yet inseparable, faces of reality. This “interdependent opposites” logic is pure Daoism (think of the Taijitu symbol), but applied here as a theological weapon that undermines any claim to an absolute “truth.” North Wind’s argument is devastating because it follows an internally consistent, ancient philosophical logic to a terrifying conclusion: Li Huowang’s only escape might be the very source of his madness.

Heart-Element: North Wind

A rare Heart-Element (心素) member of the Zuowandao whose innate ability allows her to swap bodies with others at a glance.

Chapter Overview

Alright, buckle up, fellow hunters of truth and horror! Chapter 434, “North Wind,” is a masterclass in Li Huowang’s calculated audacity. He’s done playing defense. In the absolute chaos of a three-way clash between the Zuowandao, the Grand Scholar, and the Supervisory Heavenly Office, our boy pulls off a heist the size of a continent. He kidnaps another Heart-Element! And not just any Heart-Element—this one’s a body-swapping nightmare of a Zuowandao. What follows is a brutal interrogation that flips the script on everything Li Huowang thought he knew about his condition, dragging him—and us—deeper into the ontological horror of what is true and what is false. Get ready for flesh-prying pain, a deadpan reveal, and a theological twist that will make your head spin faster than a body swap.

Key Plot Points

Li Huowang successfully identifies and kidnaps the Zuowandao Heart-Element, North Wind, during the chaotic battle, demonstrating his strategic growth and ruthless opportunism.
Before Li Huowang can interrogate North Wind, she uses her innate body-swapping ability to take control of his physically amplified, hyper-sensitive body, a move he was fully prepared for.
Li Huowang reveals his counter-plan: Li Sui had already swapped over into his body with North Wind, and she immediately neutralizes North Wind by using her tendrils to blind, deafen, and mute her from within.
In a safe corner, Li Huowang begins his brutal interrogation, using his own amplified-pain body as a tool of torture, prying off a nail as a demonstration.
When asked how to get rid of the Heart-Element’s hallucinations, North Wind claims she would have freely told him if he had just asked.
North Wind explains the method: to control the innate one-qi, a Heart-Element must borrow power from its true master, the Siming Doumu.
Li Huowang accuses her of lying, stating that the Doumu of Grand Yin governs falsehood, thus it is a Zuowandao deception.
In a final, devastating twist, North Wind counters his certainty with a staggering philosophical revelation: truth and falsehood are two sides of the same coin. The Siming Doumu is like a “twin lotus,” with one flower governing falsehood (Grand Yin) and the other governing truth (Grand Yang). Without one, the other cannot exist.

Reading Guide

This chapter is an emotional and philosophical pivot point. Watch how Li Huowang’s character has evolved. The kid who started this journey terrified and confused is now orchestrating kidnappings in the middle of a god-tier brawl. His methods are cold, brutal, and efficient—evidence of how much this world has changed him. But don't let the torture scene distract you from the real battle here, which is philosophical. North Wind’s final speech isn’t just a plea for mercy; it’s a fully-formed counter-argument to everything Li Huowang believes. The core question of the novel is laid bare: if reality is a matter of perspective, and the opposite of any “truth” is also a valid path, then how do you save yourself? Is Li Huowang’s quest for a single, stable reality even possible? This is the kind of chapter that rewards rereading. Pay close attention to the rhythm of the dialogue—the way North Wind’s tone shifts from smug to casual to philosophical is a masterful performance, leaving Li Huowang (and the reader) with more questions than answers.