The Irrigation Outlet

Chapter 541: The Irrigation Outlet

Qiu Chibao held the child in her arms, swallowing again and again, her eyes fixed with desperate hunger on the red-robed Daoist as he chewed his dry rations. Her voice was almost a plea. “Have a heart, great immortal, could you give me just a little? I haven’t eaten in three days. I’m so hungry.”

Looking at the pitiful woman beside him, Li Huowang reached into his robe and pulled out another steamed bun. When he saw that it was completely soaked through with blood—a blood-soaked bun—he tossed it aside.

Qiu Chibao’s eyes lit up. She lunged like a starving beast, trying to snatch the blood-soaked bun from the ground and stuff it into her mouth.

But it was futile. The bun that had fallen to the ground passed through her palm again and again. She could never pick it up.

Qiu Chibao lifted her head, a look of utter despair on her face as she stared at Li Huowang. Her voice was a wretched wail. “What are you doing! You didn’t want that bun anyway, so why won’t you let me have it! A bun that big could save someone’s life!”

“Wah! I’m used to being hungry! I’m not afraid of it! But if I go hungry, my milk will dry up, and my son will starve! Have you got no conscience at all?!” As she shouted, she bit her own finger and put it into the swaddling clothes.

Listening to Qiu Chibao’s desperate crying beside him, Li Huowang sighed irritably, stood up, and headed east.

It had been a long time since he’d had a new hallucination. He had almost forgotten that troublesome special ability of being a Heart-Element.

“What the hell is going on? Why did she become my hallucination?”

“Plenty of people have died in front of me. Why did it have to be this crazy woman?”

It was a question Li Huowang would never get an answer to—not even Zhuge Yuan knew.

“Why won’t you let me eat! You monster!” Qiu Chibao, gripping her rusty knife, charged furiously at Li Huowang and stabbed it right into his left eye socket.

But Li Huowang kept walking. His body passed straight through hers, emerging from her back.

He had tried talking to her a few times at first, but he quickly gave up.

No matter what he said—that she was dead, that her child was dead, that she had become a hallucination—she would not listen.

This woman called Qiu Chibao had gone completely mad. Even as a hallucination, she was still a lunatic.

Li Huowang, who shared a similar affliction, could understand her. But that didn’t change the fact that she was trapped in her own world.

Fortunately, it wasn’t hard to make the woman quiet down.

Li Huowang pulled the last piece of his rations from his robe and tossed it into Qiu Chibao’s arms. The excited woman immediately settled down, wolfing down the bun.

As she ate, she glared viciously at the other hallucinations around her, as if terrified they might steal her food.

“Peng Longteng, Jin Shan Zhao, Zhuge Yuan, the Monk, Qiu Chibao. Zuowandao. Jiang Yingzi.” Li Huowang mentally calculated the pattern of who became his hallucinations.

It seemed that when people died near him, if his emotions were in violent turmoil, they became his hallucinations.

To prevent this from happening again, he would have to avoid such situations in the future.

But after a moment’s thought, Li Huowang realized that while some of these rules fit certain hallucinations, they didn’t apply to others.

For instance, he still hadn’t figured out whether the Monk’s true body was really dead or not.

And not all of these people were close to him. This woman who had just appeared had barely exchanged a single word with him when she was alive, yet she had become his hallucination.

“Could there be... several different ways to become my hallucination?” Li Huowang muttered to himself.

“Brother Li, it’s best not to focus on these non-urgent matters right now. Let’s find the Supreme Irrigation Outlet first. Once we do, we should head back immediately. The situation in Great Qi is unstable, and it’s dangerous for you to stay here.”

Hearing Zhuge Yuan say this, Li Huowang nodded and pulled himself together.

He was right. The trouble with the Dice was the most pressing concern. And anyway, what difference did one more or one less hallucination make? He was already up to his neck in problems.

Maybe once he perfected his cultivation of the True, he could turn all these people real and let them leave his side.

“No... no... no...” Jin Shan Zhao’s voice made Li Huowang look at him.

Jin Shan Zhao was there, propping himself up on his hands as if standing on the ground, smiling cheerfully at Li Huowang.

“Good... good... good!” Jin Shan Zhao said a few times, then dragged his half-body over to Qiu Chibao, gently patting her calf in a wordless gesture of comfort.

Li Huowang said nothing. He quickened his pace and ran in the direction Zhuge Yuan had indicated.

The sun in the sky began to shift. As Li Huowang got closer and closer to the so-called Supreme Irrigation Outlet, his expression grew more and more grim.

The peeled tree trunks around him grew sparser. Li Huowang followed a dry riverbed. As the sky grew dark, a sinkhole finally appeared at the riverbed’s end.

Standing at the edge and looking down, it seemed that because of the drought, a deep, bottomless pool had hidden itself at the lowest point.

Glancing at Zhuge Yuan beside him, Li Huowang frowned and asked, “This is the Supreme Irrigation Outlet?”

“No. Because it is now the Hour of the Rat, the Supreme Irrigation Outlet has concealed itself within this water. After the Hour of the Rat, it will be somewhere else.”

“So there’s a time requirement, just like alchemy.” Li Huowang didn’t dare waste another moment. He grabbed a large rock from beside him and, with a fierce charge, leaped toward the pool in the sinkhole.

With two splashes, Li Huowang and Li Sui hit the water. Before he could even take a deep breath, the rock in his arms dragged him downward.

The water in the deep pool was freezing cold—so cold it numbed Li Huowang’s limbs. All around was pitch black. Li Huowang suddenly felt something slimy slide across the back of his neck, but he had no idea what it was.

Gritting his teeth, Li Huowang freed one hand and pulled a fluorescent stone from his robe.

As the sickly green light illuminated his surroundings, the darkness—and some things within it—retreated quickly.

Li Huowang, still clutching the rock, continued to sink. This pool was deeper than he had imagined.

He gestured a question to Zhuge Yuan. Zhuge Yuan, speaking in the freezing, bone-chilling water, said, “Don’t worry, Brother Li. Just relax. The place where the Supreme Irrigation Outlet hides is extremely well-concealed. Even demons and spirits can’t find it, so there’s no danger here.”

Hearing this, Li Huowang finally calmed down and continued his descent.

In the pitch-black, freezing water, there was no other sound—only Qiu Chibao’s screams echoing endlessly.

“Ahhh! I’m drowning! I’m going to drown!” She struggled desperately toward the shrinking patch of light above, holding the swaddling cloth high, trying to keep it as close to the surface as possible.