The Portent

Inside the desolate cold palace, Li Huowang looked with some displeasure at the hallucination of the monk before him.

Li Huowang was not a hard-hearted man, but right now, he simply did not have the time to deal with a pregnant old eunuch of unknown origin.

This was the Great Qi, after all, not the Great Liang. Who knew if this character was a trap?

What he needed to do most now was to get back and report the matter of Prince Ren colluding with the Law Cult to the Supervisory Heavenly Office.

“Let’s go,” Li Huowang said, turning to leave. But he had only taken a few steps when a wretched, agonized scream came from behind him.

The eunuch, with one hand gripping a sharp knife, had driven it deep into his own swollen belly. Amniotic fluid mixed with blood into a liquid resembling pus, gushing from the wound.

Seeing that Li Huowang would not help, it seemed he was trying to perform his own caesarean section.

Witnessing this bloody scene, the monk could no longer sit still. Agitated, he once again blocked Li Huowang’s path. “Daoist, save him! As the saying goes, saving a life is more meritorious than building any number of pagodas. Even if you won’t save him, surely the child in his belly is innocent?”

“What fortune, life after life, just to be reborn as a human. This is a human life!”

Looking at the monk before him, Li Huowang let out a soft sigh. He pressed his hand firmly against his temple. “Fine! You’re a kind soul, a living bodhisattva. If you want to save him, then do it yourself.”

For a moment, the monk didn’t understand what was happening. But then he immediately noticed the change in his own body.

“I’m alive? I’m alive?” The monk patted his bald head, his face full of delight, jumping and hopping like a child.

“Aren’t you going to save him? What are you waiting for? I can’t keep this up for long.”

“Oh, right, right, right!!” The monk snapped back to reality and quickly walked towards the eunuch.

However, faced with the bloody sight before him, the monk seemed at a loss. Clearly, he wasn’t very skilled in midwifery either.

Seeing someone come to help, the eunuch, seemingly on his last breath, didn’t bother to wonder how this person had appeared. Struggling to prop himself up, his face drenched in sweat, he parted his cracked, peeling lips and spoke to the monk in a trembling voice: “Great Master! Don’t save me! Save the child! You must save the child!! It doesn’t matter if I, this lowly one, die. As long as the Wang family has an heir… even in death… this lowly one will face the ancestors in the underworld without shame!”

“Oh, yes, yes!” The monk nodded repeatedly, kneeling on the ground. He gripped the scissors still embedded in the eunuch’s belly and, steeling himself, pulled them downward with all his might.

“Aaaaahhh!!” Accompanied by the eunuch’s gut-wrenching scream, blood and amniotic fluid sprayed from the opening, drenching the monk from head to toe.

“Thank you, Great Master… May you… May you attain Buddhahood soon…” The eunuch used the last of his strength to shout these final words. Then his neck went slack, and he lost all life, a satisfied smile spreading across his sweat-soaked face.

Seeing the eunuch was already dead, the monk, covered in grime, was still fumbling around inside the wound. Displeased, Li Huowang walked over.

The monk felt as if he was looking into a cornucopia filled with crimson. His two hands were paddling inside it like a swimmer.

Suddenly, he felt something—a child’s ankle. A look of joy crossed his face as he pulled with all his might, but he only managed to drag out half of the old eunuch’s intestine.

With a look of annoyance, Li Huowang reached his hand inside. His keen perception quickly allowed him to find the only thing still moving inside this “cornucopia.”

As Li Huowang exerted his strength, with a “pop,” like pulling a carrot from mud, he yanked the thing out.

But when he saw what was in Li Huowang’s hand, the monk’s eyes widened in shock, and he staggered back several steps. “What in the world is that?!”

What Li Huowang was now holding upside down was a baby… or rather, a creature. Its body was that of a calf, covered in wet, short fur, and its four limbs were not hands or feet but hooves.

It wasn’t the fact that the eunuch had given birth to a cow that shocked the monk so much. What was most unsettling was that while it had the body of a bovine, its head was unmistakably human.

The eunuch’s belly hadn’t produced a male child to continue his family line; instead, it had produced a grotesque, malformed creature—a human-faced calf!

“What is this mess?!” Li Huowang said with disgust, flinging the human-faced calf violently against the wall.

“Smack!” The human-faced calf hit the wall and fell to the ground. But it hadn’t died. It used its hooves to push itself up, spitting out large mouthfuls of amniotic fluid.

Now Li Huowang could finally see its face clearly. The human-faced calf had the exact same face as the eunuch who had given birth to it—the same balding head, the same wrinkled skin, the same ugliness.

Just as Li Huowang, frowning deeply, grasped the hilt of his Purple-Tasseled Sword and began to draw it from its scabbard to slay this evil creature, the human-faced calf opened its malformed mouth and began to laugh. Its face was that of an old man, but its voice was a baby’s childish babbling—a bizarre combination.

“Hahahaha!! The moon shall rise, the sun shall sink, the well water overflows, flowing through the golden gate! Seek a rise in the morning, seek a share at dusk, the coiled serpent and the adder cannot survive. Kill the cattle, drink the wine, from great to small, all are joyous! Eat his mother’s, wear hers! Let everyone have a good time before it’s over! Hahaha!”

After singing these cryptic words, the human-faced calf’s body went limp, collapsing to the floor. Its eyes rolled back, and it died.

Li Huowang was momentarily at a loss to understand what had just happened. Why was everything in Great Qi so strange? “And what utter nonsense was that thing singing just now? Was it cursing me?”

Frowning, he sheathed his sword again. He turned to the monk, who had once more become a hallucination, and said, “What did I tell you? You wouldn’t listen, had to give it a try, eh? How does it feel, doing a good deed?”

Having said this, Li Huowang waited no longer for the guilt-ridden monk to speak, preparing to leave this Great Qi cold palace with Li Sui.

“Brother Li!” Zhuge Yuan’s voice made Li Huowang stop.

When he turned to look at Zhuge Yuan, he was shocked to find that Zhuge Yuan’s expression was extremely tense, even carrying a hint of regret within that tension.

“Brother Zhuge, what’s wrong?” Li Huowang asked. Zhuge Yuan’s mood clearly wasn’t right.

“I need your help. I need you to deliver some messages to a few old friends of mine here in Great Qi!”

“Of course, that’s no problem. But Brother Zhuge, can you tell me what has happened?”

Li Huowang didn’t think that Zhuge Yuan was simply feeling emotional at returning to Great Qi and wanted to catch up with some old friends. That wasn’t his style.

Besides, he had never seen Zhuge Yuan lose his composure before. Even back when he had stood alone against Doumu, even when he was facing soul annihilation, his expression had been one of calm acceptance.