True or False

“Come, come! Careful now, watch your step. Take it slow with the intestines, don’t let them knot.” The Dice carefully helped Li Huowang into the carriage and sat him down. Then, he stuck his big, fat head into the compartment and started rummaging around. “Hey, Red Center, where’d you put that～wound medicine? I can’t find it.”

Li Huowang stared silently at the Dice’s back, his mind racing to process the current situation.

“Ah～found it!” The Dice pulled out a packet of wound medicine, squeezed some out with his finger, took a tiny pinch, and sprinkled it lightly over Li Huowang’s wounds.

After dressing the wounds, the Dice clapped his hands together and asked again, “So, with injuries this bad, you want to rest a bit? I could cook you some bird’s nest and donkey-hide gelatin congee to replenish your blood and energy.”

“Why are you putting Ji Lin on the throne? Is he from the Zuowandao?” Li Huowang began actively gathering intelligence, searching for a way to break free from his current predicament.

“You’re overthinking it, aren’t you? How could someone from the imperial family be Zuowandao? Those are all Sons of Heaven with a divine mandate.” “Forget about that for now. First, help him get enthroned. After that, if you still want to have some fun, come find me and we’ll team up.” “Compared to his brothers, Ji Lin’s side is way too weak. I’m having some trouble getting him on the throne by myself.” “Oh, don’t worry, there are nobles in the court to help.” The Dice chuckled, patting Li Huowang on the shoulder. “Are you sure you don’t need me to look after you? I’ll be off, then.” “Once your injuries are better, you’d better get moving. Heading to the capital to seize that old rickety chair, there are a lot of people in the running.”

With that, the Dice pulled a thin blanket from the carriage, gently draped it over Li Huowang, and strode off.

After the Dice left, Li Huowang, slumped against the side of the carriage, silently watched him go. His right fist clenched and slammed hard into the wooden panel.

He knew his own situation. Li Huowang understood that even if he really did help Ji Lin ascend the throne, the Dice probably wouldn’t send Miao Miao back willingly. Keeping one’s word was practically an insult to a liar!

He would absolutely use Miao Miao to threaten and manipulate him, milking him for every last bit of value!

He was already trapped in the game. To break free, he first had to follow the Dice’s move, figure out what kind of game the Dice was setting up, and then find a way to counter.

There was no way he could snatch Bai Lingmiao back from him alone. He had to find a way to cut corners.

Maybe he could try to work through Ji Lin of the imperial family, or the Supervisory Heavenly Office, which was in the middle of a full-scale hunt for the Zuowandao. But that hope was still slim. Not only did the Dice have leverage over him, but more importantly, he was the Dice!

The hopeless situation pressed down on Li Huowang’s heart like a mountain, making it hard to breathe. But Li Huowang didn’t lose heart. Instead, his hatred filled him with fighting spirit. He had to save Miao Miao!

“Hey, Red Center, what do you think? Is it possible the Dice Boss was telling the truth? Maybe you really did owe him a favor before. And Bai Lingmiao did just vanish all of a sudden. That doesn’t feel like our Zuowandao’s style.” The faceless, eyeless hallucination leaned in again to speak.

“Trying to gang up with the Dice to fool me? You’re not good enough!”

Li Huowang refuted without hesitation, staggered to his feet, and began gathering the things in the cave dwelling.

“I’m not good enough, sure, but you saw it too. That Living Sword is still lying on the ground. There can’t be two Zhuge Yuans, can there?”

Hearing this, Li Huowang looked at the ground at the Spine Sword of Zhuge, now overgrown with flesh and blood. At that moment, Zhuge Yuan’s head on the sword also looked back at Li Huowang.

“Brother Li, it’s good to see you well. Rest assured, though I am but half a body remaining, I will help you deal with the Dice’s troubles!”

“No, you’re not. You’ve been fooled by the Dice. You think you’re Zhuge Yuan, but you’re not. Zhuge Yuan has always been by my side.” “The Zuowandao are also good at fooling themselves. I’ve seen this trick a lot. Before, I met a man who deceived himself into thinking he was Li Huowang, and it turned out he was a fake.”

Li Huowang, clutching his bleeding stomach, bent down to pick up a purple talisman from the ground.

When he saw Li Huowang walking toward him with the talisman, Zhuge Yuan’s face changed immediately.

“Brother Li! What is wrong with you! There is no Zhuge Yuan by your side! That is all your own delusion! I am different from that Zuowandao on Apricot Island!”

“You want to fool me together with the Dice? Don’t even think about it!! These hallucinations are clearly not my own delusions, because they know things I don’t. Because of my identity as a Heart-Element, after these people died, their souls were absorbed and came to my side.” “So I didn’t kill the Second Spirit! The Second Spirit didn’t become my hallucination! And I didn’t owe the Dice a favor because of it! Miao Miao was taken by them too! It’s all lies! It’s all the Dice’s trap!!” “And more importantly! Your personality doesn’t match the original Zhuge Yuan’s at all!!”

As Li Huowang shouted this, all the hallucinations around him flickered slightly.

Under Zhuge Yuan’s stunned gaze, Li Huowang pressed the talisman in his hand onto the hallucination’s forehead. The next moment, the hallucination’s head rapidly shrank and shrank, finally compacting into a fist-sized lump. Though the head had shrunk back, the tangled flesh and organs on the body did not follow, hanging there like clusters of grapes.

The faceless Zuowandao seemed to want to say something more, but the other Zhuge Yuan stopped him. “Don’t panic. Even if it’s stuck on, it can be peeled off. No rush. Let me think this over carefully.”

“Hah! What can you think about at a time like this?”

“Snap!” The folding fan in Zhuge Yuan’s hand suddenly opened. “Think about it… whether I am the fake, or that sword is the fake, or perhaps… both of us are fakes, and the real Zhuge Yuan has long since gone to that place beyond the Three Corpse’s Self.”

Li Huowang let out a long breath, looking at the spine sword that no longer moved. He picked up the cloth strips and began slowly wrapping the entire blade.

The cloth strips were gradually soaked through with blood. Because so many things had been added, the items on the sword weren’t completely covered. Peach-wood talismans, human bones, hearts and livers, even black hair, poked out from the gaps in the cloth.

Li Huowang didn’t care. He didn’t plan to wrap it in another layer. Using cloth strips was just to hide it from prying eyes. Now that the spine sword had become like this, even if it were put in front of that purple-lipped woman from before, she probably wouldn’t recognize it.

“Dad, I’ll help you.” Li Sui walked over, picked up the now bloated spine sword, and loaded it onto the carriage. Then she came back, lifted the severely wounded Li Huowang, and placed him inside.

“Dad, where are we going?” “To the capital!”

With Li Huowang’s command, the carriage wheels began to roll, slowly leaving the now unrecognizable foot of the mountain.

Not long after the carriage departed, a large foot stepped onto the wheel track. Its owner was the Dice, with his square-shaped head.

“Hehehe～Heart-Elements are so much fun～”