Five

Story context

This chapter is equal parts stomach-turning horror and a brilliant detective breakthrough. As the crowd of Cangshui roars in approval at a public execution by a thousand cuts, Li Huowang makes a chilling connection—not only are the stolen babies and defiled women connected, but all of it points to a hidden *alchemical recipe*. The small, grisly details of a dying man’s curse, a hexagram carved in flesh, and a list of stolen herbs suddenly snap together into a much larger, more horrific picture. Your boy is no longer just hunting a pervert; he’s stumbled onto someone using the entire county as a cauldron.

Why it matters

Get ready for a chapter that shoves both horror and “aha!” moments right in your face. The public execution scene is deliberately hard to stomach—it’s supposed to feel grotesque and carnival-like, because that’s exactly how the Dao-Twisted World normalizes atrocity. But don’t let the blood distract you. The real treat here is watching Li Huowang’s brain make the jump from “this guy’s a disgusting liar” to “wait, *his body matches the divination hexagram.*” That moment of deduction is pure gold: he uses folk-belief logic (a dying man’s curse carving a prophecy into his own flesh) as a genuine investigative tool. And the final realization that all these thefts form a *pill formula*? That shifts the villain from a random degenerate to a careful alchemist who has been harvesting the entire county like a field. This chapter doesn’t advance the plot through combat; it advances it through cold, brilliant deduction.

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Source novel

Dao Gui Yi Xian