The Wooden Ship

1,224 words

Chapter 604: The Wooden Ship

The New Year had barely passed, and the weather was still cold. The seawater was biting, bone-chillingly cold.

But to Li Huowang, who had endured countless battles, a little cold was nothing.

Beneath a bustling wooden pier, Li Huowang—his body misaligned—submerged his colored, intangible form beneath the water, careful to keep only his transparent, solid head above the surface as he peered toward his distant target.

There lay a wooden ship. The word "ship" felt inadequate; it was enormous—far larger than any warship he had seen on Xing Island.

Its bow, massive as a bloated fish head, sat on the water’s surface. The vessel was a uniform, pale wood-yellow, pressing down on the surroundings like a mountain, oppressive and immovable.

"I pushed myself hard all the way here. Hah, thought you could run, did you? Seeing how things were turning sour, you decided to skip out on Daliang? It won't be that easy."

"We still have an account to settle—you and Huangfu Tiangang ambushing me together! Li Sui, let's go!"

Tentacles emerged from Li Huowang's wounds to cut through the seawater, propelling him rapidly toward the bizarre, flat-bottomed giant vessel.

He had lost three of his own limbs, but Li Sui's skinned dog-paws and dog-legs, covered in wriggling black tentacles, had taken their place. Even his left hand, which had only one finger left now, had been replaced by a writhing mass of appendages.

Li Huowang was utterly convinced that if it was attached to him, it was his. He could use her limbs with the same freedom and skill as his own.

He had hesitated earlier about whether to rush here so fast, but now he was glad he'd pushed on immediately after extracting the location from Huangfu Tiangang's mouth.

If he had waited until all his limbs had regrown, this enormous ship would probably have sailed off to somewhere unknown by now.

Li Sui's tentacles were superb swimmers. In the water, she was like a fish.

Soon, Li Huowang's hand touched the vessel's wooden hull. He didn't attack immediately. He waited quietly for nightfall. Night was better for a sneak attack.

Now that he had found the ship, he wasn't worried about it escaping halfway anymore.

Time crept by. As the sun dipped westward, the sky gradually darkened.

When the lights on the distant pier finally winked out, the pitch-black tentacles extending from Li Huowang's limbs used their suckers to grip the hull, hauling him upward at speed.

He hooked the last remaining finger of his hand over the gunwale and cautiously raised his head—the head that was invisible due to his body's dislocation—to peer over the edge.

The bow was vast. The foredeck alone must have been as large as a sports field. Yet so much open space was utterly deserted. The only thing present was a massive cauldron at the bow, holding three human-high incense sticks that burned slowly.

Three streams of white smoke rose, merging into the darkness.

In front of the cauldron were arranged offerings: the usual hog's head, ox head, and sheep's head, along with incense, yellow paper, and paper ingots.

"Dad, what are they worshipping?"

"Never mind what they're worshipping. Our goal is to find the Heart-Pan of Doumu and kill him. Nothing else matters."

Dragging his mutilated body, Li Huowang moved toward the wooden cabin door.

He stretched all five of his senses to their absolute limit, tracking every movement around him. If he was discovered, he would force his way in by sheer violence.

But when Li Huowang carefully opened the door, to his surprise, nothing happened.

"What kind of trick is this? Can that Heart-Pan really not detect me while I'm invisible?" Li Huowang wondered, pressing his back against the wall as he slipped into the cabin.

The cabin was larger than he'd expected—and more cluttered, too. It was crammed with junk. Both walls were covered in a dense, intricate wooden carving of a city, like a three-dimensional version of "Along the River During the Qingming Festival" mounted on the walls.

Tile roofs, pine trees, sleeves of robes, donkeys, horses, cow dung—everything in the carving was so lifelike.

Every shred of Li Huowang's attention was on high alert. Slowly, he reached behind his back and gripped the handle of the spine-sword.

The moment his fingers touched the hilt, everything on the walls came alive. The countless tiny figures crowded to their windows, pointing at Li Huowang, peering at him with curiosity.

"They can see me!" A flicker of movement, and Li Huowang was a full zhang away. He had no time to waste with these things. He bolted forward.

"Bang!" Peng Longteng's large figure crashed down beside him. She raised her armored fist and smashed it into the wooden carvings on the wall.

But after just a few hits, she froze in place, her entire body turning to wood grain.

"What the hell are these things?!" Li Huowang gripped his spine-sword and swung it hard at the wall. A rift flew from the blade, tearing a large section of the tiny carvings away, sending them tumbling into the Great Qi.

But the moment the wooden wall was cut open, a single eye socket—crammed with a dense cluster of eyeballs of all sizes—flickered past in the gap. The sight made a chill crawl all over Li Huowang's skin.

Seeing the path ahead narrowing rapidly, Li Huowang raised his Purple-Tasseled Sword and drove it into the floor.

After quickly tracing a circle with the blade, he jumped straight down.

The space below was far darker than he had imagined—pitch black, so dark he couldn't see his hand in front of his face.

He had just pulled out a ghastly green luminescent stone when a laughing, collapsing face appeared right in front of him.

The sword he'd been about to swing stopped mid-air. Li Huowang backed up a step. Finally, he could see the whole thing, standing over three meters tall.

If he remembered correctly, this was one of the Eight Immortals: Li Tieguai—or rather, a root carving of Li Tieguai.

It seemed the carving hadn't been made to force the root into the shape of a man. Instead, it had followed the root's natural grain to carve the figure.

All the dense burls had been preserved, fully integrated into the texture of Li Tieguai's body.

He had no legs. Instead, thick, knotted tree roots coiled and twisted in their place, making the whole figure look bloated and grotesque.

After Li Huowang confirmed that this Li Tieguai really was just a root carving and wasn't going to move, he began to back away slowly. But after a few steps, he suddenly felt someone watching him from behind.

He spun around to see another of the Eight Immortals: Lü Dongbin. Another root carving, but this one seemed to have been carved from a tree root eaten hollow by insects.

Lü Dongbin's overall shape was the same as Li Tieguai's, but he was hollow. The inside of the carving was completely empty, its surface riddled with a dense network of worm-eaten holes, large and small.

Li Huowang stopped moving. He pulled out every luminescent stone he had brought from Qingfeng Temple and tossed them around him.

In an instant, the other Eight Immortals, each in a bizarre and twisted posture, appeared before him.

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Reading Guide Decoding

Aboard the Vessel of Wooden Gods

Cultural / Xianxia Notes

The "Eight Immortals" (八仙, Ba Xian) are a beloved pantheon in Chinese folklore and Daoist mythology: figures like Li Tieguai (Iron Crutch Li), Lü Dongbin, and He Xiangu who each achieved immortality through a unique path. They're usually portrayed as benevolent, eccentric, and wise—the kind of sages you'd want at your banquet. In Daoguixian, however, they've been twisted into something sui generis. These aren't graceful statues; they are root carvings—artifacts made by following the natural, gnarled growth of a tree root rather than imposing an idealized human form. Li Tieguai is swollen and lumpy with preserved burls; Lü Dongbin is a hollow, worm-eaten husk. This is a classic Daoguixian move: take a familiar, comforting cultural symbol, strip away its beauty, and leave behind something that feels less like art and more like a biological specimen preserved in wood. The "tree root carving aesthetic" here is especially important. In Chinese art, following the root's natural form (随形) is a sign of mastery—harmonizing the human design with nature's chaos. But in this chapter, the root's chaos consumes the human form. The Immortals aren't carved from wood; they are wood, in all its lumpy, worm-eaten, cancerous entropy. That's the horror: the divine, in this world, isn't transcendent. It's material, organic, and decaying.

Chapter Overview

Move over, boring naval battles. In this chapter, Li Huowang takes "boarding an enemy vessel" to a brilliantly grotesque new level. After a forced march across the desert, he finally catches up to the enormous ritual ship carrying the Heart-Pan of Doumu—the man who, along with Huangfu Tiangang, tried to ambush and kill him. With his body held together by Li Sui’s writhing black tentacles (which he now treats as his own limbs), he infiltrates the ship under cover of darkness. But the real threat isn’t the crew, who are mysteriously absent. It’s the ship itself: a monstrous gallery of animated woodcarvings, tree-root statues of the Eight Immortals, and one very disturbing wall of screaming, eyeball-packed faces. Daoguixian asks the question: what’s scarier, a ghost ship or a ship that carves its own gods?

Key Plot Points

Li Huowang arrives at an enormous wooden ship just before sunset, after a frantic journey to intercept the fleeing Heart-Pan. His body is severely damaged; three of his four limbs are gone and replaced by Li Sui's tentacles.
He waits for complete darkness before boarding, using his invisible, misaligned body to scout undetected.
The ship's foredeck is empty but covered with altar items: a massive cauldron, three human-high incense sticks, and offerings (pig, ox, sheep heads). The crew is nowhere to be seen.
Inside the cabin, Li Huowang finds the walls covered in a hyper-detailed, three-dimensional woodcarving of a bustling city street—a "Along the River During the Qingming Festival" display.
The wooden people come alive the moment Li Huowang draws his weapon, pointing and staring at him. He can't hide from them. Peng Longteng tries to smash them but is instantly turned into wood herself.
After cutting a rift in the wall, Li Huowang catches a nightmarish glimpse of a giant, wood-textured eye socket packed with dozens of eyeballs staring back at him.
He cuts a hole in the floor and drops down to the next level, which is pitch black. There he discovers: giant root carvings of the Eight Immortals. Li Tieguai is a bloated mass of preserved tree burls; Lü Dongbin is a hollowed-out, insect-eaten shell.
As Li Huowang lights the area, the remaining Six Immortals appear in their own grotesque wooden forms. The chapter ends on this chilling tableau.

Reading Guide

This chapter is a masterclass in building tension through locale alone. Notice how Li Huowang, even with his supernatural senses and Li Sui's terrifying assistance, is a stranger in this boat. The ship isn't just a vehicle; it's a reliquary. The total absence of a crew suggests that the boat itself is the defense system. The root-carved Eight Immortals aren't guardians waiting to ambush him—they're horrifying scenery, which might be worse. Pay close attention to the wall of tiny, animated city people. They point and stare but don't attack. Are they servants? Sensors? A warning? And the image of the massive, wood-grained eye socket packed with too many eyeballs—that's not a monster you fight; it's the ship's consciousness, maybe. The chapter ends on a classic Daoguixian freeze-frame: Li Huowang, surrounded by giant, grotesque gods made of tree tumors and insect holes, with no clear path forward. Brilliantly unsettling.