The Stomach

“Don’t think about it! You’re not dying!” Li Huowang barked, cutting off his daughter’s pessimistic spiral. “Come on! Think it with me! There are no bugs inside me! There are no bugs inside me!”

As he activated his Innate Pneuma, the insects wriggling within him gradually melted back into his own flesh and blood.

The immediate crisis was over, but the external one remained. On his own, Li Huowang wasn’t afraid of any individual evil spirit. But an endless tide of them was an entirely different problem.

Accompanied by the wailing of ghosts, a wave of malevolent entities surged toward him. Shiiing! The copper coin sword, a weapon for severing the unclean, arced through the air in a long, bright line. In an instant, the nearby spirits were slashed into black vapor.

Before the dissipated energy could settle, more spirits of every shape and form rushed in to fill the void.

“Miaomiao!” Li Huowang raised the fluorite stone high, searching for his people within the belly of the Earth Dragon.

“Senior Brother Li, over here!”

Li Huowang immediately sprinted toward the voice. He soon found the White Lotus followers, sitting cross-legged in a lotus formation. Their bodies were bare, revealing the white donkey tattoos on their backs as they chanted in unison.

“There was something formed out of chaos, that was born before Heaven and Earth. Silent and void, it stands alone and does not change. It moves in a cycle and is never exhausted. It can be considered the mother of all under Heaven…”

To Li Huowang’s surprise, neither the White Lotus followers nor Bai Lingmiao—seated in their center—had a single bug on them. Furthermore, the surrounding evil spirits dared not approach them by so much as an inch.

Bai Lingmiao, now possessing two upper bodies, sat cross-legged, her two mouths reciting the same scripture as the others. The twin lotus on her brow glowed faintly.

Li Huowang’s tentacles slammed into the ground, vaulting him directly in front of her. “What’s the plan? Does the White Lotus have a way out of this?”

Bai Lingmiao, her two faces covered by a red bridal veil, shook her head gently. “No… this place is very strange.”

Hearing this, Li Huowang understood that if they couldn’t escape this damned place quickly, things would only get worse.

“How do we get out?” he pondered, surveying the chaos around him.

His eyes landed on the others, each fighting their own desperate battle. An idea struck him. This broken place wasn’t completely devoid of hope.

“Everyone! Rally toward me!” Li Huowang’s shout echoed through the stomach. “We can’t fight this alone! We have to work together to get out of here! The area near the White Lotus followers keeps the bugs away!”

Those who were still alive were all experienced fighters. As soon as they saw that the people near the White Lotus believers weren’t changing, they understood immediately. Answering Li Huowang’s call, every survivor scrambled toward him.

Li Huowang hadn’t forgotten the two dragon veins either. Amidst the chaos, he rescued the other one. Even if the dragon vein was a trap, he had to swallow the bait now that things had come to this.

As they drew closer, the White Lotus followers’ chanting became strained and hesitant. Bugs began appearing on their own bodies. The addition of the others seemed to be making it harder for them to maintain the protective zone.

Time was running out. Li Huowang immediately turned to Bai Lingmiao. “Can you get your people to move? Have them shift closer!”

Bai Lingmiao nodded with difficulty. “…Alright.”

As soon as he saw all the White Lotus followers start moving south, Li Huowang extended over a dozen tentacles, lifted the still-seated Bai Lingmiao above his head, and quickly followed.

Moving while chanting made the White Lotus followers slow. But they reached the edge without incident.

The situation was critical. Li Huowang gave everyone a brief explanation. “You can all see it. We’ve been ambushed. If we want to live, we have to get out of here. And to get out, we need to dig a hole through this Earth Dragon!”

With that, he raised his Purple-Tasseled Sword and carved a large circle into the stomach wall beside him. “Don’t think it’s impossible. I dug through it before; the wall isn’t that hard. Everyone who’s made it this far is a pro. Let’s all work together! We’ll make it out of this alive!”

Driven by the instinct to survive, no one argued with Li Huowang. They pulled out various tools and activated their abilities, unleashing a concentrated assault on the circle he had drawn.

Zheng Boqiao, the Sitian Jian, held nothing back either. He opened his mouth wide and spat out a stream of various pills, distributing them to the others.

Under their combined assault, the circle Li Huowang had drawn disappeared quickly, leaving behind an expanding pit.

“It’s working!” Hope surged in Li Huowang’s chest. He barked the command, “Let’s go! Deeper!”

Everyone pressed into the expanding pit as it grew deeper and deeper.

“Senior Brother Li! Hurry! We can’t hold out much longer!” The White Lotus followers’ faces were deathly pale, their bodies swaying.

Seeing Bai Lingmiao’s red veil soaked through with sweat, Li Huowang gritted his teeth and fixed his gaze on the pit before him.

Under his focus, the hole began to warp like rubber clay, rapidly stretching and widening at an even faster pace.

Seeing Li Huowang’s bizarre ability, Zheng Boqiao stopped holding back. He rolled up his sleeve, revealing an arm that was lumpy and swollen like a tumor. He scratched one of the bulges with his nail and dug two fingers inside.

“Here!” He ripped out a pulsating, blood-red tumor and shoved it toward Li Huowang. “Eat this immortal pill I’ve been saving for years! It’ll let you stand shoulder-to-shoulder with a celestial for a short time!”

Li Huowang opened his mouth. Two tentacles reached out from his throat, coiled around the tumor, and dragged it down into his gullet.

The moment he swallowed the thing, his stomach began to churn violently like a storm. Before he could even clutch his belly, the force surged upward into his skull. Splat! Flesh and viscera flew as his entire head split open down the middle, revealing another head the size of a fist.

This smaller head grew rapidly as it was exposed to the air, soon reaching full size. Meanwhile, the two halves of his original head knitted themselves back together. In moments, Li Huowang was carrying three heads on his shoulders.

Squelch… squelch. Two pairs of bloody arms sprouted from his back. Zheng Boqiao’s pill had actually turned Li Huowang into a literal three-headed, six-armed being.

With three heads, the sensation was strange. He felt as if his Innate Pneuma had been split into three separate streams.

When Li Huowang raised his right hand this time, the stone-like stomach wall no longer simply warped—it began to crack open rapidly.

“Go!” Li Huowang’s three voices spoke in unison as they quickened their pace and squeezed deeper in.

Under his lead, the group’s progress was noticeably faster. But the Earth Dragon’s stomach wall seemed to have no end; it was extraordinarily thick.

“Faster! We have to go faster!” Li Huowang pushed forward with anxious desperation. But as the pressure mounted, all three of his heads began to ache and swell.

And then, he heard movement behind him. One of his three heads turned to look. A wall was blocking the path they had already traveled, pressing toward them. It was a wall made of evil spirits—evil spirits piled into a solid mass!

Ptoo! A White Lotus follower coughed up blood and collapsed. The stable environment around them began to crumble. Li Huowang felt things start writhing in his stomach once more.

There was no turning back now. He could only lead the others forward, pushing with all his might.

After the first fell, a second and third soon followed. As more and more White Lotus followers collapsed, bugs began to reappear on everyone’s bodies. The wall of spirits behind them pressed ever closer.

“Faster! Faster!” Just as the wall of malevolent entities was about to swallow them all, Li Huowang’s mind went blank. The pressure in front of him was gone.

They were out.