Chapter 462: The Lotus Seat

Li Huowang, seeing that the method from Hong Zhong’s memory worked, pulled the same trick again. He hung one of his own faces back onto the Second Spirit.

The two of them, who had just been madly laughing and devouring food, finally quieted down.

“What the hell is going on! Everything was fine just now—why did it turn into this?!”

Li Huowang’s three faces spoke to themselves in unison, all wearing expressions of difficulty.

Even though he had temporarily suppressed it with the Zuowandao’s power, the constant trembling of the two bodies was proof enough that they were still struggling. This couldn’t last.

He had to find the root cause and resolve it.

At that moment, Zhuge Yuan voiced his conjecture. “Brother Li, although these Immortals all look different, they are, when it comes down to it, still evil entities.”

“What can affect ordinary evil entities can affect them too.”

“The sudden surge of evil entities outside, combined with the change in the Immortals, is enough to prove that this Heavenly Calamity is heavily related to these entities. The Heavenly Calamity is the root of everything.”

But this information didn’t help Li Huowang. There was no way he could solve a Heavenly Calamity. He didn’t even know where to start.

He glanced again at the pitch-black sky outside and ground his teeth. “What the hell is the Supervisory Heavenly Office doing? Are they just going to let the world fall into chaos? At this rate, this godforsaken place isn’t going to last!”

“Kid! Bring me a carrier pigeon!” Li Huowang poked his head out the door, holding the token Liu Zongyuan had given him, and shouted to Yang Xiaohai in the courtyard.

“A carrier pigeon? I don’t have one. Will the sparrow I caught to roast work?”

“Fine!”

Carrying Li Huowang’s letter, with a sliver of bamboo inscribed with the Full-Moon charm tied to its leg, the sparrow vanished in a flash into the pitch-black sky.

But before Li Huowang could even take a full breath, startled cries rang out from the courtyard.

When he rushed into the yard, he saw things peering over the wall, their heads poking in and out.

They were barely human, but their bodies were filthy, caked with mud. Everyone’s body was folded and joined at the midpoint, as if made from bricks of rotten flesh.

The only thing they had in common was that, like the evil entities before, they all wore grinning faces.

“It’s over, it’s over! They’ve all turned into ghosts, coming to collect their lives from Miss Bai! I said we should bury them far away, but no one listened, they insisted on burying them on the back hill!”

“Shut up! These corpses are just possessed by something! There’s nothing scary about it! There are no such things as ghosts in this world!”

Wearing Li Huowang’s face, Bai Lingmiao and the Second Spirit, one on each side, drew the Purple-Tasseled Sword and the Bronze Coin Sword, charging toward the wall alongside Li Huowang.

With three sides of the large courtyard and one person per side, they chopped through the messy things like cutting melons and vegetables.

These ordinary evil entities were nothing in front of Li Huowang.

Just as it seemed the situation was about to stabilize again, Li Huowang suddenly heard a pop. One of the two threads in his heart had snapped.

When he turned to look at the Second Spirit, he saw that the face he had pasted onto her was somehow only half there.

“Hahahaha!” The Second Spirit’s manic laughter echoed throughout Niuxin Village. She moved on all fours like a wild beast, charging toward the Bai family ancestral hall. “Senior Brother Li! Hurry!”

Li Huowang’s heart burned with anxiety. The siege of evil entities wasn’t over yet, and now the Second Spirit had run off.

Just as he was torn between two priorities, the Bai family’s main gate was kicked open with a single, powerful blow. Gao Zhijian, carrying his massive halberd, cleaved through the remaining evil entities with a single sweeping strike.

Then he shouted to Li Huowang, who was on the wall. “Go!”

With no more worries behind him, Li Huowang immediately led Bai Lingmiao in pursuit of the Second Spirit.

Li Huowang, his knees plastered with talismans, was fast. In just a couple of steps, he caught up to the Second Spirit, who was sprinting wildly across the green tiles.

Just as he was about to grab her, the Second Spirit twisted her body and leaped into the Bai family ancestral hall.

Following a hidden door in the wall, Li Huowang charged straight into the White Lotus grand hall inside. Tracking the Second Spirit’s path, he eventually burst into that secret room.

The Second Spirit, standing among the scrolls, suddenly stopped. She stood there, laughing madly.

When she saw Li Huowang staring at her, endless, clear tears began to stream from the corners of her eyes.

She shouted to him with all her might. “Hahaha!! Senior Brother Li!!! We might really be done for! Hahaha! The Immortals think the mortal world has become their world! They want to descend to earth using our bodies!! Hahaha!”

“We have nothing else to leave for you. These are the divine powers of the White Lotus’s Possessed Mediums! After we’re dead, you might still find them useful! Hahaha!!”

On the Second Spirit’s beast-like face, extreme joy and deep sorrow intertwined, making her look especially terrifying. But in Li Huowang’s eyes, all he saw was her concern for him.

“Don’t talk like that. The Heavenly Calamity will pass eventually. You’re not going to die. Be good, just sleep peacefully.” Li Huowang raised his own face again, ready to press it onto the Second Spirit’s.

“Brother Li, that won’t work. Quickly place that twelve-grade Merit Jade Lotus above her head, and have her sit cross-legged with her hands forming the lotus seal!”

Following Zhuge Yuan’s pointing finger, Li Huowang saw the jade lotus, radiating a soft glow.

“Brother Li, hurry! If those evil entities truly take over your beloved’s body, she will be useless!”

Hearing this, Li Huowang immediately did as he was told. As soon as he placed the jade lotus on top of the Second Spirit’s head, the laughter in her mouth abruptly ceased. The sobbing that the laughter had been masking instantly erupted.

“Don’t cry yet! Form the lotus seal!”

When the Second Spirit’s sharp nails contorted into an exaggerated lotus shape, the white lotus radiance around them began to coalesce. Following the base of the lotus seat, it seeped down into the Second Spirit’s body.

As the soft light, like clear water, cleansed the Second Spirit’s body, the parts of her that belonged to the Immortals began to shrink and recede.

Before long, the Second Spirit started to look more and more like Bai Lingmiao. Just as Li Huowang’s heart leaped with joy, the Second Spirit’s body began to turn transparent. She was disappearing!

The sight startled Li Huowang so much that he hurriedly took the jade lotus away. Only when he saw her materialize again did he breathe a sigh of relief.

This thing seemed to be a very powerful magical artifact, but if used improperly, it was probably quite dangerous.

Seeing that the Second Spirit was normal again, Li Huowang repeated the process, placing the lotus base on Bai Lingmiao’s head.

As the soft light, like clear water, cleansed Bai Lingmiao’s body, the first thing to leave her was the human skin mask on her face.

Then came the strange, intertwined parts of the Immortals. The last thing to leave was a malevolent aura that had been coiled deep within her heart.