Why does Li Huowang stab himself in the stomach?

After realizing he must carry the burden Xuanpin left behind, he uses extreme physical pain as a brutal form of discipline to re-ground his will and force himself back to his feet.

Who are "the others" who died besides Xuanpin?

The Grand State Preceptors of Liang and Shu, and the Sitian Jian directors of both Qingqiu and Liang. The entire upper command of the allied forces was wiped out.

The common soldiers think so, celebrating the Fa Sect's retreat. But the leadership is dead, making this a hollow victory. The reader, like Li Huowang, knows the real fight is far from over.

Exhaustion

1,248 words

Chapter 763: Exhaustion

“Weren’t you supposed to be the strong one? Weren’t you supposed to be the master schemer? Weren’t you the one treating me like a chess piece? Couldn’t you even summon a dead Siming, the Mountain Ghost himself? And this is what you amount to? This? Just like that, you’re dead? You’re messing with me!”

Hysterical, Li Huowang raged wildly at the air around him. He didn’t care whether Xuanpin could hear him or not. He just needed to purge the emotion building inside him, or it would drive him mad.

“What are you preening for, huh?! What right did you have to throw yourself into a fight between Simings? You speak all that cryptic bullshit, I thought you had some great trick up your sleeve! And this is what you amount to? A disgrace, Xuanpin! A disgrace! You’re a goddamn embarrassment!”

The furious expression on Li Huowang’s face abruptly shifted into a grin. “Hehehe. You’re tricking me again, aren’t you? You’re faking your death, right? Don’t give me that! I don’t believe it!! Get the hell out here! You can’t fool me!”

“Xuanpin! Xuanpin, get out here! The Zuowandao pulled this same trick a hundred times!”

“Senior Li!” Gao Zhijian’s face was full of grief as he stepped in front of Li Huowang, grabbing the man’s shoulders as he ranted at the empty space beside him.

“Senior Li, please, calm down. I know you’re in agony, but—”

“Hah, agony? What is he to me that I should feel agony? He tricked me again! It’s not even the first time! I was going to settle the whole score with him this time! And then he just dies?”

Li Huowang stood there, choking on a laugh that was more rage than anything else. “Is that fair, Zhijian? I’m asking you, is that fair?!”

“Why! Why do they get to just lie down and kick their feet in the air, leaving everything to me! I just want to ask, why!”

His words included Xuanpin, but they also reached far beyond him.

Faced with Li Huowang’s demand, Gao Zhijian had no answer. He just stood there, watching the man’s strange tirade.

After another half-incense-stick’s worth of time, seeing that Li Huowang was slowly starting to accept the terrible news, Gao Zhijian spoke, his voice thick with grief. “Senior Li, I know you had your issues with him. But Master Xuanpin never once stopped working! In the places you couldn’t see, he did more work and risked his life just as much, if not more.”

“You didn’t know, but I did. He was actually carrying a very serious injury. He’d never fully recovered. But he never showed it. He was afraid you’d start overthinking things if you knew, so he didn’t dare let on even a little.”

Gao Zhijian began to explain the entire chain of events to Li Huowang. “Everything the Fa Sect has been doing recently, it was all secretly a scheme to ambush Master Xuanpin. Attacking you? That was just a diversion.”

“Because they knew you were a tough nut to crack, sure, but you weren’t the key. Xuanpin was the one who could unite the Sitian Jian of all the nations, coordinate with the Military Path, and push the Fa Sect back step by step. He was the most critical link in defeating them.”

“So they went for the head. No matter the cost, they had to take Xuanpin and the others out.”

“The others?” Li Huowang slowly raised his head. “Aside from Xuanpin, who else died?”

Gao Zhijian’s lips trembled. He seemed afraid to say it, but finally, he forced the words out. “The Grand State Preceptor of Liang, the Grand State Preceptor of Shu, the Sitian Jian of Qingqiu, and the Sitian Jian of Liang… they’re all gone.”

Li Huowang thought he’d misheard. He stared at Gao Zhijian in shock. “All dead?”

“Yes.”

At this, Li Huowang felt a sudden buzz in his skull. He didn’t want to admit it—they were always watching their backs around him, scheming against him, tricking him—but even so, they had still acknowledged each other as allies.

And now they were dead. Just… dead, dismissed with a single sentence. The strongest combat powers of the Sitian Jian, wiped out in a single stroke.

For a moment, Li Huowang felt a hollow ache in his chest. He’d always felt that if the sky fell, there were taller people to hold it up. But now, he was the tallest one left.

It felt like, from now on, he would have to face the behemoth that was the Fa Sect entirely alone.

A wave of profound exhaustion washed over him. Li Huowang collapsed into the pool of blood on the battlefield. He stared up at the parting clouds above and let out a long, slow breath.

He suddenly wanted to do nothing. Just go back to Niuxin Village and live his simple life. Why should this hopeless fight fall on his shoulders? He felt wronged. He felt cheated.

He slowly closed his eyes, as if trying to shut out the entire world. But after a long, long moment, Li Huowang finally let out another slow breath.

“Now that Xuanpin is dead, who’s taking over the Sitian Jian?” Li Huowang asked, eyes still closed, lying in the bloody mire.

“For now, it’s been temporarily handled by the Sitian Jian of Shu. The upper ranks have been decapitated. I’m afraid of shaking morale, so the news hasn’t spread yet.”

Gathering every last shred of strength, Li Huowang forced his eyes open. With immense effort, he made his prone body sit up.

He picked up a broken blade from the ground. With a furious roar, he stabbed it deep into his own abdomen and twisted it violently.

When he had completely mangled his own guts, Li Huowang dragged his bleeding body upright. The look in his eyes was once again resolute.

Li Huowang bore the weight in silence. He had no choice. Everyone else was dead. He was the one still alive, so he had to carry on.

As thunder rumbled from the distant clouds, a signal soldier with four banners on his back galloped a fast horse up to Gao Zhijian’s imperial guard formation.

“REPORT~~~!! Victory at Xuzhong! Victory at Xianyang! Victory at Hulao Pass!”

An old eunuch swiftly took the message from the soldier’s hands. After scanning it quickly, he leaned close to Gao Zhijian’s ear, speaking with barely contained excitement.

The grave expression on Gao Zhijian’s face finally cracked, revealing a barely suppressed thrill. He turned to look at Li Huowang, drenched in blood. “Senior Li! Xuanpin and the others didn’t die in vain!! And combined with your victory here! The Fa Sect knows they’re beaten! They’re starting to retreat beyond the passes! We’ve retaken the Four Qi!”

Naturally, news that could shake morale was suppressed. News that could boost it was spread far and wide. Soon, the news reached everyone’s ears.

On the battlefield, the Military Path soldiers who had fought the Matuo, regardless of rank or status, let out ecstatic shouts. The cries rose and fell like waves crashing on the shore.

Every single one of them felt they were on the verge of victory. They would be going home soon. This great war was almost over.

They were brimming with confidence, completely unaware that their own side had just been decapitated.

And Li Huowang, drenched in blood, stood in the center of it all, utterly, terribly out of place.

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Reading Guide Decoding

The Sky Falls on the Last Man Standing

Cultural / Xianxia Notes

Decapitation Strike & "Chess Piece": This is a classic strategic trope in Chinese war epics: “擒贼先擒王” (catch the bandits by catching their king first). The Fa Sect’s entire campaign was a chess gambit where Li Huowang was the obvious, tough target—a lure to draw attention away from the real, fragile kingpin, Xuanpin. It’s a painful lesson in the asymmetry of power on a cosmic battlefield: you can be too dangerous to kill, but not too important to bypass. The revelation that Li Huowang was a “decoy” more than an asset hits him like a steel beam.

Self-Mutilation as Discipline: Li Huowang’s act of stabbing himself in the stomach isn’t just despair or rage—it’s a perverse, visceral form of cultivation discipline. In xianxia, extreme physical pain is often used as a method of recalibrating one’s will, breaking through a bottleneck, or simply reminding the body it still has work to do. He’s not killing himself; he’s re-grounding himself, using his own bloody, mangled guts as the anchor for his sanity. It’s the horrifying, practical side of “courting death to find life” (向死而生).

The Dead Siming Mountain Ghost: The chapter’s earlier reference to Xuanpin’s previous achievement of summoning the Mountain Ghost (山鬼), a dead Siming, is a huge lore signal. Shan Gui is a figure from the Chu Ci (Songs of Chu) and is often interpreted as a nature spirit, but in Dao Gui Yi Xian, it’s a dead god. Xuanpin’s ability to weaponize even a deceased Arbiter of Fate shows just how high his ceiling was, making his death feel even more tragic and wasteful.

Decapitation strike (擒贼先擒王)

A classic Chinese military strategy meaning "catch the bandits by catching their king first." The Fa Sect killed the Sitian Jian high command to cripple their organization.

Chapter Overview

Buckle up, fellow Daoists. The battlefield is still smoldering, and the body count is rising. This chapter delivers a gut-punch of a different kind—not a flashy fight sequence, but the aftermath. Li Huowang is reeling from Xuanpin's death, and the wave of grief and rage is so overwhelming it twists into manic denial, mockery, and a final, brutal reassertion of will. It’s the quietest kind of horror: the realization that everyone who was holding the sky up is gone, and now it’s your turn to carry the weight, whether you want to or not. Get ready for raw emotion, bitter realpolitik, and a very tired protagonist.

Key Plot Points

Li Huowang initially refuses to accept Xuanpin's death, lashing out at the empty air with a torrent of mocking, angry denial, treating it as an elaborate con.
Gao Zhijian reveals the full scope of the disaster: Xuanpin, the Grand State Preceptors of Liang and Shu, and the Sitian Jian directors of both Qingqiu and Liang were all assassinated by the Fa Sect in a decapitation strike.
The Fa Sect’s true target was always Xuanpin, as he was the only one capable of uniting the Sitian Jian forces against them; Li Huowang was merely a decoy.
After a long silence of crushing exhaustion, Li Huowang forces himself to accept the burden, physically mutilating himself (stabbing his own abdomen) as a ghastly ritual to recenter his resolve.
News of multiple battlefield victories arrives, signaling the Fa Sect’s retreat beyond the passes and the recovery of the Four Qi territory.
A wave of morale sweeps through the troops, who celebrate their imminent victory, utterly unaware that their command structure has been beheaded.
Li Huowang, blood-soaked and hollow, stands alone and alien against the jubilant backdrop.

Reading Guide

This is a character-heavy chapter, so pay close attention to the emotional beats. The shift from hysterical denial, to cold realization, to exhausted acceptance, to a brutal act of self-correcting violence is the skeleton key to Li Huowang’s entire psychological arc at this point. He’s not a hero; he’s a man in a trap who has realized the walls are closing in. The core thematic conflict is the crushing weight of responsibility—the unfairness of being left holding the bag when everyone smarter and stronger has died. It’s a masterclass in showing the protagonist's endurance not as triumphant, but as a raw, ugly necessity. The final image of him standing alone while the army cheers is pure, distilled tragic irony.

Quick Q&A

Lore recap (TL;DR) drawn from this chapter's Cultural / Xianxia Notes — same text as the FAQ structured data on this page.

Why does Li Huowang stab himself in the stomach?: After realizing he must carry the burden Xuanpin left behind, he uses extreme physical pain as a brutal form of discipline to re-ground his will and force himself back to his feet.
Who are "the others" who died besides Xuanpin?: The Grand State Preceptors of Liang and Shu, and the Sitian Jian directors of both Qingqiu and Liang. The entire upper command of the allied forces was wiped out.
Is the war over?: The common soldiers think so, celebrating the Fa Sect's retreat. But the leadership is dead, making this a hollow victory. The reader, like Li Huowang, knows the real fight is far from over.