Chapter 0489

After everything he had been through, Li Huowang had never seen a method quite like this before. He had no idea what she planned to do to sever Bai Lingmiao’s connection with the Immortals.

Bai Lingmiao seemed especially shy about what she was wearing, so much so that even the tips of her ears were flushed red. Her hands fluttered, covering the front but leaving the back exposed, and for a moment she looked utterly mortified.

“Girl, why are you curling up? Stand up straight.”

After urging her a few times, once Bai Lingmiao was finally standing properly, Lian Zhibei took out three sticks of incense and inserted them directly into the crack of the door frame. Then she knelt on both knees and kowtowed hard toward the entrance.

Next, she pulled out a bundle of incense sticks, lit them quickly, bowed three times toward the door, then raised the glowing, smoking tip toward her own cheek.

A sizzling sound rang out as the dark red tip pierced through her left cheek and came out the other side through her right. Lian Zhibei’s voice changed, growing deep and rough. “Lord Tiger takes the possessed!”

Lian Zhibei raised the gleaming hooked chains in her hands and stabbed them through her own upper and lower lips, making them look like two pairs of sharp fangs.

Drops of fresh blood fell, dotting the talisman-paper bib she wore over her chest.

Li Huowang frowned at the sight. A woman who would mutilate herself like this—it looked an awful lot like the Ao-Jing Sect. Could this be some offshoot branch of theirs?

Just as he was thinking this, Lian Zhibei reached into her large bundle and pulled out a long string of red firecrackers.

She drew one of the incense sticks out of her cheek and quickly lit the fuse. The crackling pop-pop-pop sound began.

The white smoke rising from the incense tips and the murky gunpowder smoke from the firecrackers intertwined, filling the entire room with a thick, hazy fog.

Amidst the exploding firecrackers, Lian Zhibei pulled a wooden gavel of the crouching tiger from her bosom, raised it high with both hands, and slammed it hard onto the ground.

“The staff’s roar fills rivers and seas! Divine light flashes, splitting the heavens open!! Lord Tiger eats the firecrackers!!”

A thunderous, low tiger’s growl answered her. In the next instant, the churning smoke around them reversed direction and poured straight into Lian Zhibei’s wide-open mouth.

When the firecrackers stopped, Lian Zhibei’s eyes had gone completely white. She dropped to all fours, her plump body twisting into contortions no normal person could achieve.

Seeing this, Li Huowang had already drawn his Purple-Tasseled Sword without thinking.

His expression was grim. As sloppy as this fat woman usually seemed, the fact that she had gone after a Spirit-Blight alone meant her real strength was not to be underestimated.

Lian Zhibei’s bleeding mouth slowly opened, revealing the hooked barbs she had just shoved through her lips. She let out a low, animal growl from deep in her throat—a tiger’s growl—aimed at Li Huowang.

“Brother Li? Why is there a tiger in our house?” Bai Lingmiao asked, terrified, as she stared at Lian Zhibei crouching on the ground.

As soon as she said this, Lian Zhibei whipped her head around, glaring at the patterns on Bai Lingmiao’s body with her nearly all-white eyes. Then her legs bent, and she sprang forward, lunging straight at Bai Lingmiao.

“Wait!!”

Just as Li Huowang’s bronze coin sword and Li Sui’s tentacles were halfway through their arc, they saw that Lian Zhibei had not pounced on Bai Lingmiao at all. She had leaped clean over her head instead.

With a crack, Lian Zhibei seemed to bite down on something in midair. Then she opened her jaw wide enough to tear the corners of her mouth and began savagely ripping at something on the ground.

At the same time, Bai Lingmiao started clutching her head and crying out in pain. The vermilion patterns on her body writhed violently like snakes, and a small section of them actually shrank.

When Li Huowang’s keen ears caught a distant scream of agony, his heart jumped with joy instead. That was the scream of an Immortal!

“Miaomiao, hold on!!”

Whoosh. Lian Zhibei leaped over Bai Lingmiao’s head again, biting fiercely into the air. The screams coming from nowhere grew louder and louder.

Just as Lian Zhibei was about to vault over Bai Lingmiao’s head for the fifth time, the woman still wrapped in the bedding suddenly sensed something wrong with her newly acquired ability.

The Second Spirit in the courtyard—she was growing lighter!

When that strange perception pierced through the red bridal veil and sensed everything inside, Bai Lingmiao’s heart shuddered.

The flesh belonging to the Immortal’s beastly direction had already been gnawed down to almost nothing. With every frenzied bite Lian Zhibei took, the remaining snake scales, fox fur, and porcupine quills were vanishing at a terrifying speed. The Second Spirit’s entire face was now teetering on the edge of collapse.

“This woman is trying to remove the Immortals from me! Without the Immortals, the Second Spirit will cease to exist!”

“Stop! Brother Li, make her stop! The Second Spirit is going to disappear!!”

Bai Lingmiao crouched on the ground, shouting at the top of her lungs. Tears streamed endlessly from her eyes.

“Miaomiao, don’t worry. Just hold on a little longer!”

Li Huowang hardened his heart and turned to walk out into the courtyard. As soon as he stepped outside, he saw the Second Spirit silently staring at a short tree.

When he looked at her red veil, stained with blood, his heart lurched. He caught the corner of the veil and gently pulled it aside.

The Second Spirit appeared before him—with only half a face left.

“You…” Li Huowang first glanced back at Bai Lingmiao inside the room, then turned to look at the bloodied, mangled Second Spirit before him.

Just then, her broken body staggered as Lian Zhibei yanked at something nearby.

The Second Spirit looked at him. In her single remaining eye was a look of fierce reluctance to let go.

“Live well. Don’t let her down. And… stop acting like some weepy little bitch every time something happens.”

At that moment, something within the Second Spirit seemed to dissolve. Her aura shifted, growing closer to Bai Lingmiao’s.

“Brother Li! She hasn’t come back! Without the Immortals, the Second Spirit is really dead!”

As Bai Lingmiao said this, the Second Spirit’s body went limp and collapsed toward the ground.

“Lian Zhibei, wait! Something’s wrong!”

Li Huowang looked at Lian Zhibei, but she seemed to have lost consciousness entirely. She gave no response at all.

When he saw her preparing to leap over Bai Lingmiao’s head again, Li Huowang’s expression twisted. He kicked off the ground and charged forward.

He slammed his foot into her side, sending Lian Zhibei crashing into the wall.

A roar of pure fury rang out. Lian Zhibei, her eyes completely white, glared at Li Huowang with venomous hatred. A suffocating pressure bore down on him, so heavy it made it hard to breathe.

“Sorry, but there’s a new complication here! Wake up!”

But his shouts had no effect. Lian Zhibei kicked off the wall and lunged straight at him.

Li Huowang shoved his sword into his own mouth and gave it a hard twist.

He yanked the blade out and swung it in an arc. His bloody teeth flew through the air toward Lian Zhibei, while Li Huowang himself followed close behind, gripping the Purple-Tasseled Sword tight.

In an instant, the room descended into chaos—especially once Li Sui joined the fray.

Once the fight started, it was hard to contain.

By the time Li Huowang’s sword was forced deep into Lian Zhibei’s chest, her sharp fangs had already torn one of his arms clean off.

It was at that very moment that the incense sticks stuck through Lian Zhibei’s cheeks finally burned out. Her white eyes slowly cleared.

“What happened? What the hell happened?”

Staring at the sword buried in her chest, her face was a mask of utter bewilderment against the searing pain.