The Change

Zhuge Yuan’s question was destined to go unanswered by anyone else. Apart from him, no one present knew what this thing was called—Matuo.

And at this moment, Li Huowang was even less likely to answer the question. He no longer even had a head.

But in the instant his head had been blown apart, Li Huowang finally saw the true form of the invisible thing.

Compared to the statue from before, it too wore a bamboo hat—so that previous statue had indeed been its likeness.

But the statue had only been one part of this Matuo. The other part could not be shown through stone.

The bamboo hat was not its head—it was its heart! And the red strands that spread out from that heart—those were the blood vessels extending through every part of its body.

Above the statue, there existed an even more peculiar part—a part that could not be touched.

Its head was a churning mass of beasts, constantly dying and constantly being reborn. The parts that sloughed off flowed down the red cloth strips toward the bamboo hat, forming an ominous and horrifying silhouette.

If Li Huowang had still possessed a head, he doubted he could have endured even a breath of this sight. But since he didn’t, he caught details—things barely perceptible.

“Zhuge… Brother Zhuge!!”

Hearing the voice, Zhuge Yuan, who had just pulled the old almanac from his bosom, turned to look. On the ground beside him, lying in a pool of blood, was Li Huowang’s lone half-mouth.

“This thing! Its left leg is injured! Its left leg was hurt recently! That’s its weakness! That’s where we can break through!!”

At these words, Zhuge Yuan moved. He lightly pressed off the ground and flew toward the Matuo, a brush loaded with cinnabar ink in his hand, his target the thing’s left leg.

And Li Huowang’s words were heard not only by Zhuge Yuan but by Peng Longteng as well, and by the remaining military path cultivators. They moved in silent coordination.

“Brother Li! Hold on! Give me the time it takes to finish a cup of tea!”

With that, Zhuge Yuan leaped behind Peng Longteng and began painting rapidly on her back. “General Peng, dare you gamble on one move?”

Staring at the thing before her, Peng Longteng’s grin widened until it split her face, and then she burst into a frenzied laugh. “What do you mean, dare? Kill gods, kill immortals, kill buddhas, kill the Dao! Kill! Kill! KILL!”

As the final “kill” rang out, Zhuge Yuan finished his painting. It was a ferocious ghost—blue-faced, fanged, feasting on hearts and entrails, its waist ringed with severed heads and filled with murderous intent.

With a quick smear of his brush across the ghost’s face, a pair of eyes appeared—eyes gleaming with the ecstasy of slaughter.

Then the painting came alive. It opened its mouth and laughed, crawling from Peng Longteng’s back around to her front. The ghost’s head settled perfectly over the tattoo on Peng Longteng’s face—the four characters for loyalty to the state. The ghost head and the tattoo overlapped, becoming even more terrifying and menacing.

Zhuge Yuan did not stop. He continued painting on Peng Longteng’s back, and with each stroke, the ink sank quickly into her body.

As the brush strokes vanished one after another, Peng Longteng’s body began to change. Her already imposing figure grew thinner and flatter, she and her horse becoming progressively more two-dimensional until finally—she had completely turned into a painting.

The Matuo tried to defend its injured leg, but the military cultivators moved with silent coordination, sending two cavalry units charging in headfirst, using their lives to buy Zhuge Yuan cover.

“Open!” With a swift slash of his brush across the Matuo’s wound, Zhuge Yuan sent Peng Longteng—now fully a painting—riding her horse directly into the fissure.

The Matuo clearly felt the pain. Its attacks grew less frequent.

When a red liquid began seeping from the wound, it cleared the path for the other military cultivators. A cavalry unit charged forward, driving into the thing’s body like a spear.

Just as the Matuo prepared to strike back, Zhuge Yuan pulled out the old almanac from his bosom and scattered it into the air. “Forbidden—Siming reveals itself!”

Some pages of the almanac burned; others did not. With Li Huowang’s ability, he could not cultivate this into truth.

But it had some effect nonetheless. Zhuge Yuan watched as the Matuo’s body flickered between light and shadow, then transformed back into his spine-sword with satisfaction. He had done everything he could.

As the military cultivators kept tearing, the Matuo’s wound grew larger and larger, until its entire left leg could no longer support it, and it crashed to the ground.

Li Huowang struggled to his feet, gripping his steel-reinforced spear, and looked breathlessly at the overturned truck in the distance, its front crumpled against a wall, smoke and flames rising.

The others stared at him in stunned silence. Wu Qi slowly raised his right hand and gave a thumbs-up. “Holy shit!”

“What did I tell you? Better safe than sorry! That medicine of yours was useless!”

Li Huowang reached up to rub his head—but his hand grasped nothing. The next second, his body went limp and he collapsed to the ground.

A moment later, a palm-sized patch of human skin crawled out from the wound on his abdomen. It grew with the wind, quickly expanding to the size of Li Huowang.

But his current form looked like a paper-thin playing card—light and airy, as if a single puff of wind could blow him over.

When Li Huowang crawled over and devoured the shadow of his headless corpse, his body rapidly swelled back to normal.

Once everything was restored, Li Huowang finally let out a long breath.

Then he smiled. He looked at the motionless Matuo in the distance and laughed—a real laugh.

Whatever schemes the Fa Sect had prepared with this thing, it was all useless now. It was dead. This time, they had won.

The Matuo’s body collapsed, fading away rapidly. Nothing was left behind except a painted scroll of Peng Longteng, lying on the ground.

Li Huowang felt exhausted. Even with a new body, the exhaustion remained. It wasn’t physical fatigue—it was something deeper.

He wanted to sleep. A long, deep sleep. Preferably the kind he’d never have to wake up from.

“Dad, are you okay?” Li Sui carefully helped him up.

“No… I’m fine.” Li Huowang’s pupils were unfocused as he answered automatically.

“Dad, look—people are coming! Our reinforcements are here!”

“Reinforcements? Now? They’re so late they couldn’t even catch a warm shit!” Mustering some unknown reserve of strength, Li Huowang staggered toward the sound of hoofbeats.

His head was foggy. Everything he looked at seemed distorted. He recognized horses, but stared at one for a long moment before his brain registered what it was.

Gritting his teeth, Li Huowang drew his Purple-Tasseled Sword and stabbed himself in the leg. The pain cleared his head somewhat.

“Xuanpin! Have Xuanpin come out and see me!” Li Huowang roared furiously at the approaching reinforcements. “Xuanpin! Get the hell out here!!”

He had completely lost trust in that old man who had been using him all along.

“Senior Brother Li.” A familiar voice called out.

Li Huowang looked up and saw Gao Zhijian. He looked grim, carrying something on a wooden tray.

“Why are you here? Where’s Xuanpin? Tell him to roll the fuck out here!”

With a pained expression, Gao Zhijian held out the tray to Li Huowang. “Senior Brother Li… Master Xuanpin has passed away.”

Staring at the red Daoist robe on the wooden tray, Li Huowang stood frozen for a long moment before he could process what this meant.

“Senior Brother Li, Xuanpin really is gone. When trouble came to you, trouble also came to him…”

Li Huowang took a deep breath. Dragging his injured leg, he paced back and forth, the fury in his heart burning hotter and hotter.

“You… all of you…” He spun around and strode up to Gao Zhijian. With a violent sweep of his hand, he knocked the tray and Xuanpin’s remains to the ground.

“WHY THE HELL DOES EVERYONE KEEP DOING THIS TO ME!!!”