Why does Li Huowang feel a sense of familiarity with Ba Shengqing and his sister?

The text doesn’t explain, but this is a classic *Dao Gui Yi Xian* cognitive lure: the protagonist’s identity is fractured across realities, and certain strangers may be echoes or projections of faces he hasn’t met yet. The “familiarity” is a signal of a corrupted ontological map.

Is the forked tongue a real thing?

Yes, tongue bifurcation is a real body modification. In the novel, it serves as a visual marker of a character who speaks in forked truths—a literal embodiment of the *Zuowandao* aesthetic.

Should Li Huowang trust the sister’s warning about Qing Wang Lai?

The chapter deliberately leaves this open. The sister is a new character framed as a narrative rival to Qing Wang Lai, and her warning is a plausible weapon in an ideological cold war. Li Huowang wisely does not commit either way.

Woman

1,415 words

Chapter 767: Woman

A heavy motorcycle rumbled to a stop beside Li Huowang.

Li Huowang looked at the tattooed man—this man called Ba Shengqing. The tattoos on the other man’s face didn’t leave Li Huowang with a very good impression.

That was what he thought, but Li Huowang still extended his hand toward the other man. After all, it was hard to say right now whether they would have any dealings with each other in the future. “Pleasure to meet you.”

But facing Li Huowang’s extended hand, Ba Shengqing didn’t reach out to take it. Instead, his gaze drifted toward Yang Na.

Li Huowang’s brow furrowed. He pushed off the ground with his right foot, shifting his body just enough to block the other man’s line of sight. “Did you have something you needed from Qing Wang Lai just now?”

Ba Shengqing didn’t take the bait. Instead, he switched topics directly. “The recent stuff—you’ve been mixed up in it?”

The other man wouldn’t answer his question, so Li Huowang naturally didn’t feel like answering his either. He just stared at him with an unfriendly look in his eyes.

“You shouldn’t be involved in this,” Ba Shengqing said, clearly in the know about something.

“Heh. You say that like I could just stay out of it if I didn’t go sticking my nose in.”

“It’s not that I’m forcing my way in. They came at me first. If you don’t know what I’ve been through, you might want to hold off on offering me advice.”

With a light twist of his wrist, the motorcycle beneath Ba Shengqing let out a roar. “Come on. My sister wants to see you.”

“Your sister?” Li Huowang didn’t react for a moment. Where did this sister come from? He was meeting this guy for the first time, and he was acting like they were old acquaintances.

Ba Shengqing didn’t answer. He just drove his motorcycle forward.

While Li Huowang was hesitating, Yang Na beside him said, “Huowang, don’t go. This guy doesn’t look like good news.”

“I know. But…” Li Huowang couldn’t voice what was on his mind. There was a faint trace of familiarity in his gaze—a feeling he had never had before.

“Let’s go. We’ll check it out first. I handled a truck; I’m not afraid of his little motorcycle.” Li Huowang got on his shared bike.

He didn’t fully trust the guy either. If the motorcycle headed toward a secluded area, he would turn right around.

But to Li Huowang’s surprise, Ba Shengqing didn’t go anywhere remote. Instead, he drove the motorcycle straight into a bustling pedestrian street.

On the second floor of the pedestrian street shops, Li Huowang saw Ba Shengqing’s tattoo parlor: Blood Social Fire.

Weird name for the guy, weird name for the shop, too.

Just as Li Huowang was hesitating about whether to bring Yang Na into this dangerous place, she pulled out her phone from her bag.

“Huowang, if you want to go, I won’t stop you. I’ll be across the street on the second floor, recording video and keeping watch. If things go wrong, I’ll call the police immediately. And I’ll notify Qing Wang Lai and the others.”

“Good.” Feeling the security of the military saber on his back, Li Huowang let go of some of his worry and walked toward the stairs beside him.

Ba Shengqing’s shop looked no different from an ordinary tattoo parlor. It was filled with photos of all sizes from after tattoos, like a collection of human-skin art, covering the entire shop.

At the back of the shop, there was a partitioned area covered by a black cloth curtain, from which a sizzling sound came, as if someone was getting a tattoo inside.

Ba Shengqing tossed his motorcycle keys onto the counter and, without even glancing at Li Huowang, walked straight toward the partitioned area.

The sizzling sound stopped for a few seconds, then started again. A person came out of the partitioned area. It wasn’t Ba Shengqing. It was a woman with a cigarette dangling from the corner of her mouth.

A thin woman, just like Ba Shengqing, with thorny vines tattooed on her neck and face. The two were mirror opposites—one on the left, one on the right.

But unlike Ba Shengqing, who was bald, the tattoo on this woman’s face extended all the way up to the left half of her scalp, while the rest was covered by long hair dyed a dusty gray.

Her left eyebrow was pierced with an eyebrow ring. Both ears were covered with various different earrings—clearly, she had a lot of piercings up and down. Her eyeshadow and lipstick were both dark colors, and she was dressed all in black.

If it weren’t for all that, just going by her features alone, she would have been considered good-looking.

Seeing a hint of resemblance to Ba Shengqing in her brow, Li Huowang guessed this was the sister the other man had mentioned.

As Li Huowang sized her up, she was sizing him up, too. For a moment, neither of them spoke.

Li Huowang was very sure he was meeting her for the first time, but just like Ba Shengqing, there was a faint, inexplicable sense of familiarity.

“Are you Ba Shengqing’s sister? I heard you wanted to see me? Do you know me? Have we met before?”

She raised two fingers painted with black nail polish to take the cigarette out of her mouth, then blew a mouthful of white smoke right into Li Huowang’s face. “Fuck. The way you talk, makes it sound like you’re trying to pick me up.”

The fleeting sense of familiarity vanished instantly. Both her actions and her tone irritated Li Huowang immensely.

“Is there something you need? If there’s nothing else, I’ll be going now.” Li Huowang turned to leave, but she blocked his path.

Before she could speak, Li Huowang’s military saber was already against her neck.

Feeling the cold metal, her attitude finally became serious. She put the cigarette back in her mouth, then raised two fingers to gently push the blade away from her neck. “Don’t trust Qing Wang Lai too much. He’s not a good bird.”

Li Huowang felt no ripples in his heart. He wasn’t stupid. He wouldn’t believe whatever someone he just met told him. As far as he could tell, Qing Wang Lai hadn’t done anything harmful to him so far.

Besides, when she spoke just now, Li Huowang noticed that her tongue was split down the middle, like a snake’s forked tongue.

You shouldn’t judge people by their looks, but this woman’s first impression on him was just too terrible.

“Thanks for the warning. Your brother called me over just for this? I’ve heard it. Thanks.” Li Huowang sheathed his saber and prepared to leave.

“Let me give you a tip. Qian Fu and Qing Wang Lai piss out of the same hole. If Qian Fu did anything before, you can bet Qing Wang Lai gave the order.”

Li Huowang stopped in his tracks as he looked at Yang Na across the street. “You called me here for this? Sowing discord?”

“Sit down.” The woman tapped her hand on the table covered with various tattoo patterns, stubbed out her finished cigarette in the ashtray, and lit another one.

“I’m sure Qing Wang Lai has told you some stuff—projections, parallel worlds, all that. Don’t believe it. He’s crazy, you know. He’s sick in the head.” The woman tapped her temple with her finger.

“I don’t care if he’s crazy or not. Whether he’s crazy or not doesn’t stop us from joining forces to deal with the enemy. But the two of you…”

Li Huowang looked toward the sizzling sound coming from the partitioned area. “But the two of you? You don’t do anything. Just sit here and reap the benefits.”

“Fuck. How do you know I haven’t done anything? You’ve known me for all of one day, right? Do you know me that well?”

Seeing Li Huowang look away, the woman propped her feet up on the table. “Don’t follow Qing Wang Lai’s path. Watch out, or he’ll lead you into a ditch.”

“Since everyone’s thoughts are different, everyone should walk their own path. Forcing everything together will only backfire. As long as you walk your own path, all difficulties can be solved.”

Li Huowang didn’t quite understand what she was saying. He felt like she was about to start explaining her own worldview to him.

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Reading Guide Decoding

Thorns & Forked Tongues: The Tattoo Parlor Trap

Cultural / Xianxia Notes

Blood Social Fire (血社火): The tattoo parlor’s name is a gem of cultural texture. Shehuo (社火) is a traditional Chinese folk festival performance, a raucous outdoor spectacle of masked dances, stilt-walking, and communal catharsis—often involving simulated violence and blood. By prefixing it with “Blood,” the shop name becomes a macabre inversion: a ritual of public purification twisted into a private, permanent marking of the flesh. It’s the same folk-horror architecture that the novel uses for the Nuo opera and the Great Nuo: take a community-bonding, exorcistic tradition and let it fester into something that marks you for life. Also, a “split tongue” is a real body modification, but in this novel’s context, it’s impossible not to read it as a sign pointing toward the snake-like or serpentine—a subtle homage to the forked-tongue, half-truth-speaking trickster that is the Zuowandao aesthetic. The sister’s entire vibe screams “I am a rival faction’s narrative agent,” but she’s wrapped it in grunge-chic streetwear.

Chapter Overview

Oh, hello there, fellow Daoist. Just when you thought the modern-world interludes were going to be a breather—a little side trip to the pedestrian street for some retail therapy—Dao Gui Yi Xian yanks the rug out from under you again. This chapter is a claustrophobic, tense parlor game set in a tattoo parlor called “Blood Social Fire,” where Li Huowang meets the unsettling sister of a tattooed stranger. It’s a masterclass in the novel’s core anxiety: that strange, nauseating flicker of wrong familiarity—like meeting someone you’ve never seen before and yet your gut screams that you have. And the worst part? She doesn’t come bearing swords or spells. She comes bearing the most dangerous weapon in the Dao-Twisted World: a perfectly reasonable-sounding piece of advice. Buckle up; the gaslighting is exquisite.

Key Plot Points

Ba Shengqing, a heavily tattooed man on a black motorcycle, intercepts Li Huowang and Yang Na on the street. Li Huowang’s guard is up; the guy has a face covered in ink and a gaze that drifts toward Yang Na, which is already a hard no in the Huowang household. Ba Shengqing’s sister requests a meeting, and despite Yang Na’s explicit warning, Li Huowang agrees—drawn by a faint, inexplicable sense of familiarity he can’t place. The tattoo parlor is a grotesque gallery of “human-skin art,” all photos of inked flesh, with a curtained back room buzzing with tattoo needles. The sister emerges, and she is Ba Shengqing’s dark mirror: a thin woman with thorns tattooed from neck to scalp, gray-ash hair, and a snake-split tongue. Li Huowang’s military saber meets her throat almost immediately; she doesn’t flinch. Her message is surgical: “Don’t trust Qing Wang Lai.” She paints Qian Fu as Qing Wang Lai’s puppet and warns Li Huowang off a “parallel world” worldview, dismissing Qing Wang Lai as a madman. The chapter ends with Li Huowang recognizing he’s being offered an alternative framework, but not taking the bait—yet.

Reading Guide

This chapter is a textbook demonstration of how the real world bleeds. On the surface, nothing supernatural happens. No monsters crawl out of the tattoo needles. No reality-warping siming shows up to drop a lore dump. But the familiarity is the tell. That faint spark of recognition that Li Huowang can’t explain? That’s the signal that this stranger has a vector into his corrupted identity graph. Pay close attention to the cadence of the sister’s argument: she doesn’t fear the saber, she isn’t angry at being accused of freeloading, and she delivers her warning about Qing Wang Lai with the practiced ease of someone who has played this move before. She is a narrative opponent, not a physical one. The real question—and the one Li Huowang wisely avoids answering—is: which parallel narrative is she selling? Qing Wang Lai sells “projections and parallel worlds” as a shield of hope; this woman sells “Qing Wang Lai is crazy” as a dagger of doubt. Both can be true. Both can be lies. That’s the exquisite horror of the modern-world chapters: the battlefield is purely epistemological.

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 feel a sense of familiarity with Ba Shengqing and his sister?: The text doesn’t explain, but this is a classic *Dao Gui Yi Xian* cognitive lure: the protagonist’s identity is fractured across realities, and certain strangers may be echoes or projections of faces he hasn’t met yet. The “familiarity” is a signal of a corrupted ontological map.
Is the forked tongue a real thing?: Yes, tongue bifurcation is a real body modification. In the novel, it serves as a visual marker of a character who speaks in forked truths—a literal embodiment of the *Zuowandao* aesthetic.
Should Li Huowang trust the sister’s warning about Qing Wang Lai?: The chapter deliberately leaves this open. The sister is a new character framed as a narrative rival to Qing Wang Lai, and her warning is a plausible weapon in an ideological cold war. Li Huowang wisely does not commit either way.