Chapter 1021: Past

Chapter 1021: The Past

As he began to chew, the entire White Jade Capital began to collapse, the chaotic expanse tearing apart to reveal an endless darkness beyond the fissures.

Li Huowang chewed incessantly, then raised his spine-sword and spat upon it with force; death instantly saturated the entire length of the bone.

Li Huowang turned to look at the dense throng of Three Pure Ones, looking at the entities that were still relentlessly sowing terror.

"Qing Wanglai!" Li Huowang raised his blade and struck; death stripped away all he had, and death extinguished the very source of fear and despair.

Li Huowang tore away the fear and despair clinging to them, found the Heavenly Dao of Growth, ripped it out by force, and shoved it into his mouth, followed by the Heavenly Dao of Flesh and Blood, and finally, the Heavenly Dao of Secrets.

After devouring it all, Li Huowang found the bone engraved with the character "Wang." As he touched it lightly, the character returned to his name.

When that character returned, Li Huowang’s brain suddenly jolted; only then did he finally understand what Qing Wanglai had stolen from him.

It was the flip side of the Heavenly Dao of Bewilderment: Clarity. It turned out that all Heavenly Daos had two sides.

The opposite of bewilderment was clarity, but because the Three Pure Ones had taken his clarity before he became the Arbiter of Bewilderment, he had never been able to perceive it.

Having completely consumed every Heavenly Dao, Li Huowang was finally clear-headed; his way of thinking shifted instantly, becoming entirely different from before.

Seeming to sense something, Li Huowang looked up at the crumbling White Jade Capital above.

Li Huowang reached out and tore the White Jade Capital asunder, crawling out from within like a chick pecking through its shell.

As he balled up the shredded remains of the White Jade Capital and stuffed them into his mouth, he saw Fusheng Tian, seeing it clearly, with absolute precision.

It was truly massive, immense, suspended before him like a giant planet crashing toward him, heavy enough to induce a sense of suffocating dread.

It was attacking him—or more accurately, it had already struck. Fusheng Tian had raised a spiraling, double-headed spear wrapped in fear and despair, one end representing the Three Pure Ones and the other Qing Wanglai, and driven it into his chest.

Li Huowang gripped the shaft, teeth gritted, and trembling, pulled it out inch by inch. Finally, he wrested the double-headed spear from Fusheng Tian’s grasp.

With a violent swing, the fear and despair on the spear dissipated; Li Huowang pointed the now-cleansed weapon at Fusheng Tian. "Come!"

Fusheng Tian began to move. It looked over, and its gaze transformed into another double-headed spear—one end representing Wang Changxu, the other Tong Guchang—striking toward Li Huowang, the shaft still shrouded in boundless fear and despair.

With a metallic clang, Li Huowang parried, raising his death-laden spine to sever the spear in two, preventing it from piercing his body.

Yet, unexpectedly, more and more spears erupted from Fusheng Tian’s body, no longer limited to two heads, but becoming stranger and more numerous.

All the spearheads, wrapped in waves of fear and despair, lunged at Li Huowang. He blocked them all, but he could not hold them off forever.

Eventually, a spear formed from the spiraling heads of Shangguan Geden, Kouyin Liangong, and Zhu Cuifeng pierced through Li Huowang’s eye socket, pinning him to the ground.

In an instant, Li Huowang’s past gained a new nemesis, the Arbiter Kouyin Liangong, who possessed two heart-discs: Shangguan Geden and Zhu Cuifeng. Because of their appearance, Li Huowang’s past became filled with even more despair and self-destruction.

Taking advantage of this, more spears struck. With wet, tearing sounds, the parts of Li Huowang’s body that belonged to him were squeezed out, his form occupied by an increasing number of spears.

His past was being colonized by more and more entities, the portion that was truly his shrinking smaller and smaller. "Get out!" Li Huowang swung his spine-sword with all his might, severing every spear. Though the shafts broke, the heads remained embedded in his body, altering his past and his future.

Panting, Li Huowang summoned his remaining strength and looked up, only to see a dense rain of spears plummeting toward him. There were too many; Fusheng Tian was simply too powerful, and he was no match for it.

Despair began to surface in Li Huowang’s heart, and as it emerged, the emotion seemed to breed, sprouting spears from within his own body to strike at him.

As the spears inside him multiplied, the clear-headed Li Huowang understood everything: Fusheng Tian could not be defeated. Once you knew of its existence, you were destined to lose.

Because when you felt its fear, you became a part of it, a pawn, just like the Three Pure Ones had been!

As the entity governing the Heavenly Dao of Secrets, the Three Pure Ones had gone completely mad precisely because they knew too much.

"Is this it? Is this all there is? I am not reconciled! I am truly not reconciled! So many people have died! Why can I still not win?!"

Li Huowang knelt on the ground, screaming in agony, but his unwillingness began to be hallucinated by despair, and the intense self-destruction born from that despair began to shroud his heart.

Under the weight of this self-destructive impulse, Li Huowang raised death once more, aiming it at himself. "Taoist! Keep going!" A voice pierced the darkness.

Li Huowang turned his head and saw the hallucination of the monk who had once been by his side. "Taoist, you are a good Taoist; you cannot die like this."

"Little Daoist, you once made a promise, which is why I left." It was Jin Shanzhao.

"You want to commit suicide? How fucking shameful!"

One after another, the hallucinations appeared, even the most distant ones like Jiang Yingzi and Danyangzi.

Finally, Li Huowang saw Zhuge Yuan again. "Brother Li, hold on. Do not be defeated by yourself."

Li Huowang looked at all the hallucinations around him in despair. "Who are you people?!"

"Brother Li, who we are does not matter. What matters is, who are you?"

"Who am I? I am Li Huowang!"

When he said these words, he froze. He began to search through the fragmented memories of his past, recalling everything he had experienced.

"Yes, that’s right, I am Li Huowang! I am a lunatic!" Li Huowang stood up, looked around at the chaos, and shook his head repeatedly. "No! This is not me! This is not me!"

Li Huowang began to tear the Heavenly Daos from his body, ripping them off one by one, until he even tore away the final character "Wang."

He shoved all these Heavenly Daos into the arms of Yi Donglai, who was supporting him. "These are all yours. Take them, take them all! They are all yours!"

After handing them over, Li Huowang opened his mouth again and swallowed Yi Donglai whole, hiding him within his own belly.

Having resolved everything, Li Huowang closed his eyes and screamed hysterically: "None of this is real! None of this is real! It is all a hallucination! Wake up!"

Just as only the purest bewilderment remained within Li Huowang, faint, blurred voices began to echo in his ears.

Li Huowang, who had resisted for so long, began to believe those voices with his whole heart. As he acted, the voices grew clearer.

"Li Huowang, wake up! Li Huowang, wake up! Everything you have experienced is fake!"

This voice pierced the darkness, reaching into Li Huowang’s past and future.

Suddenly, Li Huowang’s eyes snapped open. Blinding sunlight streamed in from behind the billowing white curtains, and a piercing ringing sound filled the ears of Li Huowang, who was dressed in a hospital gown.

White sheets, air heavy with the scent of disinfectant, the banners on the wall, the electric fan overhead—everything was so familiar. Li Huowang remembered this place; this was his room, Ward 13, and he was still in the White Tower Hospital.