The Matuo

Zhuge Yuan’s successful Cultivation of the True gave Li Huowang a sliver of insight. If Zhuge Yuan could do it, then perhaps others could try as well.

In his experience, there weren’t many beings who were weaker than Zhuge Yuan yet still close enough in strength to matter.

He had no idea if it would work, but at this point, he had to try anything. Even if it only bought a little time, that was better than nothing. There had to be backup coming soon.

Li Huowang took a deep breath. His eyes trembled shut. He forced himself to remember—to pry open the memory of that moment when Danyangzi had seized his body.

It was a past he had always tried to bury. But now, Li Huowang clawed that sensation back out.

His head began to shake, the motion leaving trails in the air. His charred skin began to regrow, but not into his original flesh. Instead, a wrinkled, loose hide spread across his skull.

The next moment, feathers that looked like they had been dipped in tar punched through his skin, writhing out from beneath it. His head split apart—instantly cracking into three different faces of Danyangzi: old, middle-aged, and young. A streak of white immortal floss shot from left to right, spreading fast.

Three layered mouths opened at the same time.

“Hahaha! Old Daoist me didn’t die! This Daoist lives as long as heaven itself! What did I tell you! There never was any Li Huowang! Li Huowang was just one of my Three Corpses!!”

With that roar, Danyangzi’s body—his organs turned outward—shot upward, ignoring everything around him as he rushed toward the Heavens Beyond Heaven.

But the moment Danyangzi appeared, the thing’s attention snapped toward him. A half-immortal’s aura was simply too unique.

Carrying the Military Path on its body, it charged at Danyangzi. The air screamed. The invisible mouth slammed into him with crushing force.

“What the hell is this piece of trash?! How dare you disturb this Daoist’s ascension?!” Danyangzi shoved his hand into his own everted gut and pulled out a copper coin sword—its blade studded with eyeballs.

Danyangzi raised the sword to block. The weight hit him like a mountain. He was sent flying, but he wasn’t hurt.

Stopping midair, he bit down hard on three fingers of his right hand. Raising the hand that now bled black blood, he began drawing a talisman on the blade at furious speed.

“Grand Supreme Star Lord, ceaseless in transformation! Drive out evil, bind perversity, calm the spirit and mind! May the soul be eternal, never shall the spirit fall! By imperial decree, haste, haste—as the law commands!”

The moment the talisman was complete, every eyeball on the copper coin sword burst, shrouding the blade in a mist of blood. Dragging the sword behind him, Danyangzi hurled himself at the thing.

His momentum was unyielding. But he still couldn’t win. No matter what technique or divine power he unleashed, it did nothing against the enemy.

Danyangzi gave everything he had. It wasn’t enough. An invisible tail lashed out, smashing across Danyangzi’s body. His twisted form was torn apart. A weak, exhausted Li Huowang tumbled out from Danyangzi’s abdomen and fell.

“Right… it still wasn’t enough…”

With a heavy thud, Li Huowang crashed among the bodies strewn across the battlefield, barely clinging to life.

The thing seemed intent on finishing him off—eliminating the threat once and for all. But at that moment, the hundreds of thousands of soldiers under the Military Path simultaneously closed their eyes and rooted themselves in horse stance, each raising three long incense sticks high above their heads.

The strange behavior made the thing abandon Li Huowang and turn its attention to the army.

Just as the Matuo prepared to charge the soldiers, they opened their eyes. Together, they thrust the three incense sticks downward—inverted—and slammed them hard into the ground.

“A soldier is a tool! The ground of life and death! The path of survival and ruin! The general’s head above! The general’s head in the heart! The general’s head below! Annihilate the gods! Annihilate the immortals! Annihilate the buddhas! Annihilate the Dao!”

A pillar of killing intent erupted, flooding into every soldier’s body. Their eyes blazed with slaughter. Veins bulged across their skin. Blood dripped from every orifice.

The two sides crashed together, locked in a brutal stalemate.

“ROOOOAR—”

A deep, shuddering tremor rang out. That sensation spread again, flooding into Li Huowang. He felt it this time—a sky full of bestial savagery, and a thirst that could never be quenched.

Whatever this thing was, it seemed to govern two Heavenly Laws.

Thirst? Li Huowang shuddered as realization dawned. He staggered to his feet and looked again at the thing locked in battle with the Military Path. The soldiers were clearly being affected by this aura—their strength was flagging.

Taking a few slow steps closer, the feeling grew stronger. It was familiar. He had felt it in someone before. Very familiar. Very warm.

Thirst could also be called something else. Greed.

“Answer me! Answer me! Are you the one controlling the Heavenly Law of Greed now?!” Li Huowang roared at the thing.

But the Matuo paid him no mind. It remained tangled up with the Military Path.

It didn’t answer. But Li Huowang already knew the answer in his heart. Greed and Decay had once been together. That was obvious. But the situation had changed. Now Greed was paired with Savagery. Some Siming’s Heavenly Law had been stolen.

And recently, the only Heavenly Calamity connected to Decay was the massacre at Anci Nunnery.

“So… it was you who killed Abbess Jingxin? So… it was you who killed all of them?!”

Li Huowang’s eyes burned red as he glared into the distance, at the thing he couldn’t even see. The rage inside him grew hotter and hotter, nearly swallowing him whole.

Slowly, he drew the spine-sword and stabbed it back into the ground. With a howl of fury, the spine began to sprout stark-white ribs.

Li Huowang’s head began to swell. Veins spread across his entire scalp.

But just as Zhuge Yuan’s body was half-restored, Li Huowang—blood streaming from every orifice—collapsed in agony.

Even with access to the Cultivation of the True, forcing the Heart-Pan of the Three Corpses to re-form twice in a row was too much.

The spine-sword had just started reverting back into itself when Li Sui dove into Li Huowang’s body.

“Dad! Let me help! Let me help! Zhuge Yuan exists!”

With their hearts and minds aligned, Li Sui’s long years of digesting Heart-Element flesh finally paid off. Zhuge Yuan’s body rapidly took shape.

But even with Li Sui’s help, Zhuge Yuan was still missing that last piece.

“A little more… just a little more…!” Li Huowang lay on the ground, his face twisted in agony. “TAKE FORM!”

BOOM.

Li Huowang’s entire head exploded.

Only his neck remained, standing there bare and alone.

But at the same moment, Zhuge Yuan finally solidified into a complete form.

He stared at the distant thing locked in battle with the Military Path. His face was dark. Quietly, he asked himself:

“The ritual has already been terminated. Why does the Matuo still have an incarnation here?!”