The Fa Sect’s Cave

With a sharp shiiing, the man before Li Huowang was cleaved in two by the impossibly sharp Purple-Tasseled Sword.

But before Li Huowang could catch his breath, a steady stream of Fa Sect villagers came pouring out of the village entrance, charging at him without any fear.

They had been ordinary people of flesh and blood just moments ago, yet now they had all turned into monsters who did not fear death.

Beside him, the bearded man from the Supervisory Heavenly Office swung his crescent moon spade, roaring as he cut his way through the crowd.

As Li Sui’s control sent the copper coin sword spinning to flip open another Fa Sect believer’s skull, Li Huowang’s gaze swept toward the distance.

He had dealt with the Fa Sect before. He knew that wasting his strength on cannon fodder was pointless. If he did not take out their leader, these people would keep coming until the very last one of them was dead. There had to be someone leading them!

Six tentacles slammed into the ground, launching Li Huowang high into the air. The entire mountain village came into view. The twin pupils in his single eye shifted—one left, one right—scanning rapidly for something.

After a few such leaps, his split pupils merged back together. On the mountain behind the village, a faint wu character flickered in and out of his vision. “No wonder I couldn’t find them—they weren’t hiding in the village at all!”

Peng Longteng’s towering figure appeared beside Li Huowang in an instant. She grabbed him with both hands and hurled him with all her might.

His torture-kit bundle rattled against the wind as Li Huowang shot through the air like a stone toward the growing wu character.

Just as he was about to reach it, a cold gleam of light stabbed through the wu character and, with blinding speed, pierced straight into Li Huowang’s body.

By the time he hit the ground, the cold light had already exited through his back, leaving a blood-hole as wide as a wrist in his abdomen.

“Suisui! Are you okay?” Li Huowang asked urgently, scanning his surroundings while speaking to Li Sui inside his body.

“Dad, I’m fine. I dodged it just now.”

Standing halfway up the mountain, Li Huowang frowned at the bushes and trees around him. Apart from that one ambush, his attacker had gone completely silent—unexpected.

It seemed the Fa Sect wasn’t purely reckless. Now that they realized he was no easy prey, they had decided to hide.

“Think hiding will stop me from finding you?” Li Huowang immediately had Li Sui extract a section of bone from him, then pulled out a sheet of turmeric paper and began performing bone divination with practiced skill.

After carefully examining the cracks on the bone, he started searching the area.

Time passed, but he found nothing. Just as he was beginning to think his divination had failed, he stopped beside a cliff face.

Li Huowang studied the ivy trailing down the rock, then gripped the Purple-Tasseled Sword and slashed at the cliff with all his strength.

The impossibly sharp blade split the stone apart, revealing a pitch-black cave entrance.

“Inside the mountain? So these bastards were hiding in the mountain. Something to do with stone… Could this be the Great Qi Fa Sect’s technique?”

But before he could widen the opening, a flying stone shot out from within, aimed straight at his forehead.

By the time Li Sui’s tentacle caught the stone, Li Huowang was already charging—sword forward, body leaning into the cave mouth.

In the darkness, various hidden weapons flew toward him. Bang! Peng Longteng’s body slammed down in front of Li Huowang, serving as a massive shield as she pushed forward.

Using her as cover, Li Huowang followed the cave all the way to its end. It was too dark—he couldn’t tell where he was. All he could sense were vague figures shifting in the blackness.

“KILL!” Li Huowang roared, charging into the darkness without fear, cutting through the Fa Sect believers in a storm of blood.

He was no longer the Li Huowang of the past. Facing these Fa Sect spirit-doctors, he tore through them like Zhao Yun—seven charges in, seven charges out.

A towering murderous aura filled his single, twin-pupiled eye. These Fa Sect had to be eliminated, or they would spread like a plague.

Just as he was wrenching a dwarf’s head clean off, the surroundings suddenly blazed with light. His lone eye squinted, and for a moment all he saw was blinding white.

As he rubbed his eyes, ready to open them again, a massive force struck him from the left, sending him flying.

He hit the wall, then the ground. Li Huowang opened his mouth wide and spat out a mess of thin tentacles wrapped with organ fragments.

He shoved the tentacles back into his mouth and swallowed. Rising from one knee, he looked at what had struck him.

“That’s… a Void Nian?”

Li Huowang stared in shock at the enormous four-legged beast before him.

This was the same creature he had fought alongside to deal with the Dragon Vein back in the Great Qi. Some of its old scars were still visible.

The only difference was—it had no head. The woman’s head was gone. Only the beast’s body remained.

A woman with a wu character on her face sat astride the Void Nian’s back like a horse, staring straight at Li Huowang as if waiting for something. She did not press the attack.

“Dad, your hair is turning white,” Li Sui suddenly warned.

Li Huowang looked at the back of his own hand. Wrinkles were rapidly accumulating there.

“Shit! That Void Nian hit me with its age-steal just now!” He quickly pulled out his gourd and poured Yang Life Pills into his mouth.

After swallowing several dozen, he watched the wrinkles on his hand vanish and finally breathed a little easier.

Lucky for him that as a Heart-Element, he had no limit on consuming Yang Life Pills. If it weren’t for that, that ambush could have killed him.

But looking at the Void Nian not far away, Li Huowang knew this was not going to be simple.

He had fought a Void Nian once before. Even back then, when it was a setup by Zhuge Yuan, there was no denying its mysteriously terrifying ability to steal age.

Li Huowang never expected that one of Zhuge Yuan’s “friends” had been captured and controlled by the Fa Sect.

On high alert, he quickly surveyed his surroundings. This appeared to be a karst cave inside the mountain. Stalactites like jagged teeth covered the ceiling. The floor was uneven, sloping downward to the left.

What puzzled him was that he had clearly killed many people in the darkness just now, yet aside from sword scars on the ground, there was no blood at all.

But soon, from the distant darkness, he spotted those figures again—the things that had been hiding in the black.

The darkness in the distance was strange. Even with his sharp eyesight, he could not penetrate it or see what was inside.

The next moment, the cave that had just been lit began to sink back into darkness, inch by inch. The Void Nian and those things in the dark advanced on him together.

The cave, which had seemed empty moments ago, was suddenly packed with people, attacking him from every angle.