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Story context

If you thought body horror was just about tentacles and gore, welcome to Pi County. This chapter peels back the lid on the town’s central terror, and it’s not a monster lurking in the shadows. It’s an epidemic of existential dread that crawls under the skin—literally. Li Huowang, invisible and shivering, witnesses two starkly different but horribly mirrored scenes: a wealthy family torturing their own son to stop his manhood from vanishing, and a poor couple locked in a desperate, painful argument over the same terrifying process. What unites them is a shared, obsessive fear of their own bodies betraying them. Our boy Li Huowang is officially out of his depth. He doesn’t know what causes this *retraction*, and the locals, locked in a shroud of terrified silence, won’t tell him. Frustrated and running out of patience, he realizes the clock is ticking, and being polite isn’t an option anymore. Get ready for a cold, calculated shift in strategy.

Why it matters

Okay, fellow Daoists, switch your brains into puzzle-solving mode. This arc is a different beast. Forget going nova with the Thousand Greats Record. Li Huowang is dealing with a curse that has *no punchable face*. The genius here is how the horror is social and systemic. It’s not a ghost haunting a house; it’s a fear haunting an entire population. Their silence isn’t rudeness; it’s a survival mechanism. In a world where admitting truth might make it real, nobody wants to be the one to break the spell.

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Source novel

Dao Gui Yi Xian