The Key

1,235 words

Chapter 435: The Key

Li Huowang, now trapped within Bei Feng’s body, stared grimly at the Bei Feng trapped within him.

That person’s words had just thrown Li Huowang’s mind into chaos. The Zuowandao’s Siming ruled over not just falsehood, but also truth?

To escape the Heart-Element hallucination, he would have to seek help from the Zuowandao’s Siming, the Doumu Taiyin Taiyang??

But after only a brief moment of confusion, Li Huowang’s extensive experience dealing with the Zuowandao yanked him back. “No! I don’t believe you! You’re lying to me! You want me to get in touch with Doumu so you can trick me into joining the Zuowandao!”

Compared to Bei Feng’s rambling nonsense, Li Huowang felt his own argument was far more convincing, far more logical.

Bei Feng let out another soft sigh. “Believe it or not, what difference does it make? There are fifty Heavenly Daos, and the Siming control forty-three of them. Having mastery over two Daos isn’t just limited to our Doumu Taiyin Taiyang. You didn’t know that? Your master is a real piece of work.”

Even though Bei Feng was the one trapped, he was the one holding the conversational reins.

Li Huowang’s brow furrowed as he stared at her. In that moment, he felt more like the one who was trapped.

Is he pretending to be caught? Just to feed me wrong information?

He hated this feeling. He had to seize back control. Fortunately, he had a way. A saw, still bearing some blood scabs, was clenched in Li Huowang’s hand as he thrust it towards Bei Feng.

Accompanied by heart-rending screams, Li Huowang watched his own body gradually break apart before him. Bei Feng fainted from the pain several times, but each time Li Huowang woke him back up.

After several rounds, Li Huowang tossed the barbed hook, dripping with scraps of flesh, to the ground. He leaned forward, looking Bei Feng in the eyes, and spoke one word at a time. “Now I want the real way to get rid of the hallucinations!”

Bei Feng, weak from the torture, spoke with a pained, halting voice. “What do you want me to say! I’m telling the truth!”

When he saw Li Huowang reaching for the remaining instruments of torture, he quickly changed his tune.

“Wait! If you think it’s fake and don’t want to cultivate truth, then I’ll think of a way for you. Why don’t you just take this body of mine? This body has no hallucinations, and it’s young. Isn’t that better than your own, riddled with holes as it is?”

Hearing this, Li Huowang looked down at his current body. The more he looked, the more the fire in him burned. “This is a woman’s body! I don’t want someone else’s body! I just want my own!”

“Ai, what difference is there between a man and a woman? They’re all people. Why be so rigid? Compared to those hallucinations that torment you, does being a man or a woman really matter that much?”

As the other person mocked him, a restless Li Huowang stopped laughing. He looked coldly at Bei Feng. “You’re still lying to me, aren’t you? That whole spiel about the Yin-Yang Heavenly Dao is fake, right?”

“You’ve never practiced the cultivation of truth at all! If you had succeeded, and could easily use the Heart-Element's innate primordial qi to turn falsehood into truth, you would have fought back when I was torturing you just now. You used some other method to suppress the hallucinations, not cultivation!”

Bei Feng looked utterly speechless at this accusation. “What in the world are you talking about? Who told you that practicing the cultivation of truth makes you all-powerful? Does manna just fall from the sky? That person is definitely a liar! Don’t listen to them!”

Hearing this, Li Huowang decided to stop wasting time with him. Anything he got out of this guy from now on had a high chance of being a lie. Continuing to question him would only be a waste of breath.

But since this guy was a Heart-Element and had managed to get rid of his hallucinations, he definitely had a method inside him. He was like a treasure chest right now. Now that he’d found the chest, all he needed was the right key to open it.

Li Huowang took a gourd of wine from his belt and, pinching Bei Feng’s neck, forced it down his throat.

“What are you—?” Before Bei Feng could finish his sentence, he went limp, his body collapsing.

I know myself. I know what my weakness is. My body doesn’t just have enhanced pain; all my senses are heightened.

This is all strong liquor. It should keep him unconscious for a long time. Let him stay quiet for a while.

But just as Bei Feng slumped to the ground, his body slowly pushed itself back up again. However, the way his limbs moved was bizarre, like a marionette in a puppet show, pulled by unseen strings.

A double-pupiled eyeball burrowed its way out from his navel. Bei Feng was unconscious. The one now controlling Li Huowang’s body was Li Sui.

For Li Sui, who had already spread her tentacles throughout all of Li Huowang’s body, this was very easy. In a way, if things had gone according to plan, she was supposed to take over Li Huowang’s body like this anyway.

“Suisui, follow me!” Li Huowang pulled the Thousand Greats Record and other weapons from his back, slung them over his body, and cautiously felt his way back towards the original path.

“Dad, where are we going?”

“We’re going to find Zhuge Yuan! His magical tool can restrain Bei Feng and force him to tell the truth. Besides, I want to pull Zhuge Yuan out of that quagmire. I can’t rest easy leaving him in this chaotic battle!”

When Li Huowang carefully slipped back through the golden wall and returned to his original position, he was shocked to see a distant flame.

The tree is on fire. That tree, made entirely of gold, is actually on fire. Molten gold flowed like living tentacles, spreading everywhere.

The entire, perfectly flat surface of golden bricks had become a landscape of jagged, treacherous rocks. The terrain had completely changed, forming a funnel-like depression.

Armored warriors lay scattered about, their bodies strewn across the ground. It seemed that during his absence, the Great Liang military had come to the emperor’s aid.

The eye in the sky was lower now. The churning black clouds wrapped around the base of the massive eyeball like the brain of a monster, almost pressing down to the ground!

Seeing the blurry figures in the distance, Li Huowang took a deep breath and rushed towards them.

When he saw Zhuge Yuan calmly wielding his Judge’s Brush amid the chaos of the battlefield, he breathed a small sigh of relief.

Good. Zhuge Yuan is very strong. He can protect himself even in this incredibly chaotic situation.

Besides, Zhuge Yuan wasn’t at the very center of the battle. Pulling him out shouldn’t attract too much attention.

Dodging bolts of earthly fire and heavenly thunder, along with a hail of flying dominoes and mahjong tiles, Li Huowang finally reached him. As he did, the surrounding chaos instantly cleared. He had entered Great Qi.

Zhuge Yuan looked at Li Huowang’s face in shock, his Judge’s Brush already aiming. “Bei Feng?!”

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Reading Guide Decoding

Pain, Lies, and a Burning Golden Tree

Cultural / Xianxia Notes

The Nuances of a Heart-Element (心素): This chapter deepens our understanding of what it means to be a Heart-Element. Bei Feng’s claim that he isn’t a powerful combatant despite being a Heart-Element is a crucial detail. In many xianxia, a unique constitution equals raw, untapped power. But in Dao Gui Yi Xian, the Heart-Element is more of an ontological condition than a stat-boosting class. They are living “what-if” machines whose capacity to blur the line between reality and fiction can be used for destruction, creation, or, in Bei Feng’s case, a desperate need for stability. It’s a curse before it’s a blessing, and its power isn’t a muscle you flex; it’s a wound you manage.

Doumu Taiyin Taiyang (斗姥太阴太阳): This is a crucial name-drop. Doumu is already established as a deity in the Dao-Twisted World (the Yin-Yang Doumu). By adding “Taiyin” (Great Yin) and “Taiyang” (Great Sun), Bei Feng is framing a specific aspect of her. In Chinese cosmology, Taiyin and Taiyang represent the primordial essence of Yin and Yang, from which all other dualities spring. Claiming that a single Siming controls both extremes—the foundation of truth and falsehood—is a horrifyingly plausible piece of lore. It suggests the very fabric of reality in this world is not a single thread but a woven lie held together by a single, terrifying mind.

Great Liang vs. Great Qi (大梁 vs. 大齐): The sudden appearance of Great Liang’s “martial path” soldiers is a stark reminder that this cosmic battle has massive political implications. It’s not just a supernatural scuffle; it’s an invasion or an assassination attempt on one world’s leadership by the other. This reinforces that the worlds of Great Liang and Great Qi are locked in a conflict that involves their highest authorities, and Zhuge Yuan, as a representative of Great Qi, is a very high-value target.

Judge's Brush (判官笔)

A magical tool used by Zhuge Yuan; its power can compel truth, making it a key counter to the Zuowandao's lies.

Chapter Overview

Alright, buckle up, fellow Daoists, because this chapter is a masterclass in psychological chess played with a hacksaw. Li Huowang has successfully body-swapped with Bei Feng, the Heart-Element member of the Zuowandao, hoping to finally get the answers he needs. But as anyone who’s ever dealt with this sect knows, getting a straight answer from a Zuowandao is like trying to nail jelly to a wall. Bei Feng immediately starts spinning his yarn about the Siming of Yin and Yang, making Li Huowang’s head spin with the terrifying possibility that he must rely on the very source of his torment to cure himself. The entire chapter is a brutal tug-of-war for narrative control, fought with rusty saws and even rustier lies. After a torture session that would make a demon flinch, Li Huowang realizes he can’t trust a single word coming out of his own mouth, so he pivots to a new plan: find the one man whose truth-telling artifact can force Bei Feng to spill the beans. And that search leads him straight back into the mother of all cosmic battlefields.

Key Plot Points

The Interrogation Begins: Trapped in his own body, Li Huowang is the torturer, but Bei Feng is the one manipulating the conversation. Bei Feng drops the bombshell that their Siming, Doumu Taiyin Taiyang, controls both falsehood AND truth, suggesting that Li Huowang must seek her out to cure his hallucinations.
Li Huowang’s Resistance: Despite the chilling logic of Bei Feng’s words, Li Huowang’s gut and his years of bitter experience scream that it’s a trap designed to lure him into the Zuowandao. He accuses Bei Feng of lying about being a weak cultivator of truth.
A Test of Pain: Li Huowang subjects Bei Feng to horrific torture, using his new body’s enhanced senses against him. But even under agony, Bei Feng clings to his story, offering his own young, hallucination-free body as a trade.
The ‘Key’ Strategy: Realizing brute force is useless against a master liar, Li Huowang decides on a different approach. He gets the information not by asking the right questions, but by finding the right tool—Zhuge Yuan’s magical Judge’s Brush.
The Golden Tree Burns: Escaping his mental dungeon, Li Huowang returns to the physical world to find the landscape utterly transformed. The golden tree is on fire, molten gold spreads like a living cancer, the heavenly eye presses down, and the Great Liang military has joined the fray.
A Grateful Reunion: Li Huowang manages to slip through the chaos to find Zhuge Yuan, who is calmly and effectively fighting for his life. Their reunion is cut short by Zhuge Yuan’s immediate, hostile recognition of the body Li Huowang is wearing.

Reading Guide

This chapter is all about the battle for control—of a conversation, of a body, and of a narrative. Watch how Bei Feng, even while being physically destroyed, tries to take the upper hand psychologically. His argument about the Siming of Yin and Yang is dangerous because it feels true. It fits the pattern of the world’s twisted logic. Li Huowang’s salvation, however, lies in his greatest strength: his profound, trauma-born paranoia. He doesn’t accept the elegant lie; he trusts the ugly mess that is reality as he knows it.

The chapter’s title, “The Key,” is perfectly chosen. Li Huowang is not looking for a new answer from Bei Feng. He stops trying to pick the lock with questions. Instead, he decides to find the right tool for the lock, and that tool is Zhuge Yuan. This shows a mature tactical shift: when you can’t beat the enemy on their own terms, change the game. The brutal, intimate violence of the interrogation gives way to a grand, awe-inspiring scene of cosmic warfare, a stark reminder of the stakes that are far bigger than one man’s hallucinations. And that final line from Zhuge Yuan? Pure cliffhanger gold.