The Convergence

Upon hearing the Dice’s words, the Superintendent remained silent, but Li Huowang reacted immediately. Clutching his head in pain, Li Huowang raised his right hand and pointed fiercely at the Dice. “Gao Zhijian! What the hell do you think you’re doing!” Hearing this, Gao Zhijian’s expression wavered with hesitation again, but soon he was firm once more. “Useless. You, a Zuowandao—I am the true Son of Heaven. Your petty tricks won’t work on me.” With that, Gao Zhijian turned to the military generals beside him. “Ma, Yue, Xue, Yu—did I call you here to watch a show? Don’t forget what your ancestors swore to the founding Emperor.” The dragon sedan beneath Gao Zhijian expanded instantly. He dragged the bloodied, mangled emperor at the tail of the dragon vein past the generals’ eyes. In the next instant, a trembling giant mace and a thick modao blade wrapped in killing intent hurtled toward Li Huowang and the Superintendent. “GET AWAY FROM ME!” Li Huowang roared. Instantly, every soldier charging at him, and even their weapons, twisted into something else. Everything around him—except the Superintendent—began to warp to varying degrees. The more twisted his face became, the more pronounced the distortion in his surroundings. Seeing the Dice about to flee, the Superintendent immediately floated after him, trying to block his path. “Don’t get near him! Archers, ready!” “WIND! WIND! WIND!” Countless black specks flew from the distant hillside, covering Li Huowang like a storm. But they barely touched him. The poison-tipped arrows, upon reaching his skin, turned into nothing but raindrops. “I can’t hold out much longer! Too much Innate Pneuma—I can’t control this much! I have to use it all up at once!” Blood streaming from his seven orifices, Li Huowang clutched his skull and screamed inwardly. The distortion around him kept expanding, forcing the soldiers to retreat. “Heheh~ I keep telling you, this trick of yours doesn’t work on the true Son of Heaven!” The Dice leaped into the air, barely dodging the Superintendent’s approach. But a creature with three heads—child, adult, and elder—its body wrapped in black feathers, a mangy scalp showing through, wielded a bloody copper-coin sword and blocked his path. “Eh? What is this thing?” Before he finished speaking, Gao Zhijian’s elongated body twisted sharply to avoid a spine-sword thrust at him. Looking down, the Dice recognized a familiar face. Zhuge Yuan, gripping the spine-sword with one hand, gazed up at him. Zhuge Yuan flicked the sword, stepped his left foot over his right, and charged at the Dice with absolute resolve. “Brother Li, don’t worry! I’m here to help!” Li Huowang, his skull splitting apart, knelt in agony. But hearing that familiar voice, he laughed. Li Sui’s tentacles propped him up again. Gripping the purple-tasseled sword in one hand, he charged toward the Dice. Because of the unique nature of the dragon vein, Li Huowang could only fight Gao Zhijian hand-to-hand. For a moment, the battle was locked—but with the Superintendent, Danyangzi, Zhuge Yuan, and Li Huowang all attacking together, the Dice’s space to maneuver grew smaller and smaller. Just as Gao Zhijian was about to be subdued— Thump. A blade suddenly jutted out from Li Huowang’s chest. Shing. A spearhead made from a bloodied dragon horn slammed into Danyangzi and hooked upward. Danyangzi’s terrifying body instantly collapsed and vanished. Four of them were down to two. The Dice’s pressure immediately eased. “How?! Who could still get close to me at a time like this!” Coughing up a mouthful of blood, Li Huowang struggled to turn around. He saw a soldier clad in bloodstained dragon-scale armor. It wasn’t iron armor. To get close to Li Huowang, these were real dragon scales—scales torn from successive emperors’ bodies! The miaodao sword in his hand wasn’t ordinary either. It was made from a real dragon bone! “Hahaha! I knew you’d try to capture the chief to crush the rebellion. Don’t think just because you’re a crazy Heart-Element, I don’t have ways to deal with you. I have plenty!” One by one, soldiers in dragon-scale armor emerged from the ranks, surrounding Li Huowang. Twenty of them, completely immune to his power to Cultivate the False. The situation had reversed instantly. “You’re mad! Spreading the dragon vein’s mandate so crudely!” the Superintendent cried out in fury, as if witnessing something abominable. “So what? The sky’s going to fall sooner or later anyway. A little earlier, a little later—what’s the difference? I can’t wait for it to come sooner, rather than drag it out like this.” With that, he scraped his dragon claws across the emperor beneath him. Large patches of dragon scales peeled away, and the sky itself cracked like a shattered mirror. “Kill them! The imperial court and the military are one. If I get my share, so do you!” Surrounded by dragon-scale-armored generals, his mind nearly splitting apart, Li Huowang faced certain death. He glanced at the Superintendent, who had the Dice locked in combat and had no time for him. “I have to… think of something… think of something!” Li Huowang turned his gaze to Shangguan Yuting, with her head full of eyes. He grabbed her, tore open his mouth, and bit down on one of her eyeballs. “How do I deal with the Dice now?! I need to find a way!” But although a third eye appeared on his forehead, it didn’t react the same way it had when he’d hunted the Dice before. Back then, the Dice was just a Zuowandao. Now, the Dice was the dragon vein itself. Li Huowang refused to give up. Ignoring Shangguan Yuting’s screams, he quickly swallowed the eyeballs from her head, one after another. The third eye on his forehead grew brighter and brighter. He was still moving, but the soldiers didn’t care. At one of their commands—“Formation: Straight Wild Goose!”—the twenty of them closed in on him according to a prescribed pattern. A whistling sound rang out. A dragon-horn ge blade cut diagonally toward Li Huowang from below. But just as it was about to hit, a long white water-sleeve descended from the sky, wrapped around the weapon, and pulled it up, blocking the attack for him. All the soldiers looked up. Lotus-shaped Kongming lanterns hung in the air. Bai Lingmiao, leading a group of White Lotus disciples, descended from the sky and surrounded Li Huowang. These White Lotus disciples looked different from before. They all wore only loose trousers, their upper bodies either bare or covered in a single embroidered, sequined bellyband. Their eyes were half-open, their expressions solemn and cold. Sharp copper needles pierced through both cheeks, with talismans hanging from them. And, more importantly, each of them bore a tattoo of a white donkey in different postures on their backs.