Chapter 1036: Extra: Dice Extra

Chapter 1036: Extra: The Dice Extra

"Drip... drip..."

A copper censer the size of a giant cauldron hung within the opulent palace. As the palace maids outside pulled on the ropes, it swung back and forth like a pendulum, emitting a thick, cloying fragrance accompanied by a low, humming vibration.

The heavy scent shrouded the entire hall in a misty haze, creating an atmosphere akin to a celestial realm. A young Daoist, clad in red robes with a jagged scar across his face, emerged slowly from the perfumed fog.

"Master Li, please follow me. His Majesty has been waiting for quite some time." A plump eunuch, hunched over and clutching a horsetail whisk, followed closely behind Li Huowang with a fawning smile, his steps alternating between hurried and hesitant.

"The fragrance is too thick!" Li Huowang sniffed, a trace of dissatisfaction crossing his face.

"Hehehe, Master Li, you have been wronged. But we servants have grown accustomed to it here and don't feel anything amiss."

"Does your Eastern Xia insist on placing so many censers in every room? I saw them in the homes of commoners when I entered the capital."

"Hehehe, it wasn't so in the past, but the current Sage loves it. Since the Emperor loves it, it is naturally good; as the superiors act, the inferiors follow, and the commoners have learned to do the same."

"Master Li, you are simply not used to it. Fragrance is always better than stench. Give it a few more months, and you will learn to appreciate the nuances. These scents, you see, are all quite different."

Li Huowang said nothing, continuing in silence toward the rear hall. Once he passed through and reached the bedchamber where the Emperor resided, the odor grew even more suffocating.

As the maids pulled the ropes, layers of gauze curtains were drawn aside one by one. After a long moment, Li Huowang finally beheld the master of the house: the Emperor of Eastern Xia.

The Emperor’s hair and beard were entirely white, his face mottled with age spots and darkened in hue. His hands, visible beneath the dragon robes, trembled uncontrollably. He appeared to be on the verge of death.

Yet, the man’s condition did not surprise Li Huowang; rather, a subtle shift in the heavy scent made him frown.

It was a stench—specifically, the rot of a decaying corpse.

Under the heavy cover of the incense, the smell was suppressed to the point of near-invisibility. Had it not been for Li Huowang’s keen sense of smell, he likely would not have detected the anomaly.

"You..." The old Emperor of Eastern Xia spoke, his voice aged and weary, as if his windpipe were clogged with thick phlegm. "You are Li Yunxin?"

Li Huowang performed a Daoist salute once more. "In reply to Your Majesty, I am indeed Li Yunxin."

The old Emperor seemed to have exhausted all his strength with that single sentence. After a long pause, he continued slowly: "Do you truly have a way... to find that elixir of immortality?"

"In reply to Your Majesty! As long as Your Majesty grants me three thousand Golden Melon Guards and six hundred boys and girls, I shall certainly retrieve the elixir of immortality from the Penglai Immortal Island for you!"

"Listen well: I want the elixir of immortality, not some pill for mere longevity!"

"That goes without saying! Your Majesty is a person of ten thousand gold; surely, common trifles like longevity pills are as abundant as you desire."

"I do not wish to become an immortal; I only want the medicine that prevents aging!"

"I understand!"

"Go, then." The old Emperor was weary. With a flick of his hand, the layers of gauze curtains fell, once again separating the two.

Just as the curtains closed, his final, ghostly words drifted out: "If you fail, you lose your head."

With a faint smile on his lips, Li Huowang bowed again and slowly retreated.

Once the old Emperor had spoken, the Eastern Xia court dared not delay. Within half a day, the boys, the girls, and the three thousand Golden Melon Guards were all assembled.

Li Huowang stood on the drill ground, watching the scene in silence. An old eunuch in python robes stood nearby, attending to him carefully. "Master Li, are these to your satisfaction?"

"Hmm. Let's go! As long as the count is correct." Li Huowang vaulted onto his horse and shouted to the general in the distance: "Get the children into the carriages! We are off to find the immortality medicine for the Emperor!"

Three thousand six hundred people and a long train of carriages departed the capital in a grand procession, causing a stir among the commoners.

Rumors spread that this Master Li possessed the power to bring the dead back to life and knit flesh to bone. With him at the helm, the chances of finding the elixir were surely higher than anyone else's.

But no matter how far the gossip traveled, it remained mere gossip. Within a few days, it was buried by other news, and in less than half a year, the people had long forgotten the matter.

Yet, seven years later, at high noon, when Li Huowang returned to the imperial city alone, the people of Eastern Xia remembered it once again.

Battered and bruised, Li Huowang clutched a lacquer box to his chest, gasping for air as he made his way toward the palace. He had endured so much over these seven years; this object had not been easily won.

Suddenly, with a sharp *hiss*, a steel wire as thin as a hair sliced across his neck from left to right. As blood sprayed, his head tilted slowly and began to fall toward the ground.

But just as a masked woman rushed forward, ready to snatch the lacquer box, Li Huowang pressed a single hand against his neck, steadying his nearly severed head.

With a swing of his sword, and to the woman’s utter disbelief, her head fell in place of his own.

Though the crisis was temporarily averted, he did not let his guard down, looking around at the commoners with a grim expression. "Damn it! What is going on? Everything was cleared—who leaked the news?"

Without time to dwell on it, Li Huowang stomped his feet, vaulted onto a nearby rooftop, and sprinted across the tiles toward the imperial city.

This move did not free him; instead, his troubles only multiplied. People emerged from nowhere, all intent on seizing the lacquer box.

Fortunately, this was the imperial city; once the imperial guards arrived to support him, he finally broke free.

"Your Majesty! I have brought back the immortality medicine from Penglai for you!!" Beneath the swinging copper censer, Li Huowang held the lacquer box high toward the old Emperor of Eastern Xia.

"Quick... bring it here!" The trembling of those age-spotted hands could not express the intensity of his excitement.

"Your Majesty, no rush. There is one thing I must make clear: after consuming this immortality medicine, one not only gains eternal life but becomes impervious to blades, immune to fire, and capable of traversing the heavens and earth with the wind and rain."

"I tested one pill on myself, which is why I am still alive even after my head was severed." As Li Huowang spoke, he lifted his slightly crooked head, straightened it, and reattached it to his body. The sight stunned everyone in the hall.

"Cough, cough... isn't that even better? Bring it here..."

"Your Majesty, there is one more thing I must make clear: there are only three pills in total." As Li Huowang said this, the room fell deathly silent; even the massive copper censer ceased its swinging. As Li Huowang took in the shifting expressions of the maids, guards, and eunuchs, the corners of his mouth curled upward.

"The Crown Prince arrives—" The announcement shattered the stillness.

As the maids and eunuchs knelt, a man with a black beard strode in. "Great joy! Great joy! Let the Prince feed the medicine to the Father Emperor!"

He reached for the lacquer box in Li Huowang’s hands. He reached, and Li Huowang did not refuse, simply letting go. But while Li Huowang was willing, others were not. A horsetail whisk lashed out, binding the box.

"Your Highness, such a task as feeding the medicine should be left to us servants. Your golden body should not be bothered with such things." The speaker was an old eunuch, looking so agitated that his face had turned a deep red.

"Get lost, you dog!"

As the two argued, a burly Golden Melon Guard stepped forward, seemingly to break up the fight, and pulled them apart.

As they separated, the lacquer box naturally fell into his hands. With a *click*, the box was opened, and three shimmering, iridescent red pills reflected in the pupils of everyone present.

If there had been only one, it might not have mattered, but there were three. Everyone thought the same: if the Emperor ate one, there were still two left. If they couldn't get the second, surely they could get the third? If they ate it and couldn't die, even the Emperor couldn't kill them.

In an instant, the rules of the palace vanished. All eyes were fixed solely on the three immortal pills.

Just as an ecstatic eunuch popped a pill into his mouth, before he could even swallow, his stomach was ripped open, and blood-stained hands reached out from below, clawing in desperate hunger.

Everyone wanted immortality. In that moment, the solemn and magnificent imperial bedchamber transformed into a bloody meat grinder. Humanity vanished, leaving only naked, raw desire.

"Enough!" With a roar, everyone in the hall collapsed to the ground, blood streaming from their seven orifices.

A tall, dark figure was cast against the layered gauze curtains. "Red-in-the-middle, you played that well." As the layers of curtains thinned, the figure became clearer: it was the old Emperor of Eastern Xia.

As he moved, the stench of rot grew even more pungent; wherever the old Emperor walked, he left a trail of green, corpse-like fluid. Separated by only a single veil, Li Huowang finally realized that the old Emperor of Eastern Xia had long since rotted through, his face pitted and scarred like a putrid corpse. "Pity, you chose the wrong place to lie. This is my domain!"

Hearing this, Li Huowang showed little reaction. He reached into the pool of blood on the floor, retrieved the three pills, and held them high toward the Dice. "I have come to deliver the immortality medicine to Your Majesty!"

"Red-in-the-middle, is there any point in saying such things now? Do you and I not both know this stuff is fake?" The old Emperor of Eastern Xia looked down at Li Huowang.

"Fake? Hehehe, who told you this medicine was fake?" Li Huowang looked up, meeting his gaze.

"Hmm?"

"I have always spoken only the truth. I said I would bring you the elixir of immortality, so I had to bring you the real one. Do you know how much effort I spent finding this?"

The Dice felt a bell of alarm ring in his heart, sensing something terribly wrong.

With a violent wave of his hands, the gauze curtains and the doors and windows were blasted away. The Dice then realized that the palace was engulfed in smoke and fire—someone was attacking the imperial city!

"The matter of the real medicine is not something only you know. I told many people. Ah, the divine medicine stirs the hearts of men; Eastern Xia is about to fall. Boss, your game is ruined."

A rotting hand lifted Li Huowang into the air. "Red-in-the-middle, you underestimate me. You cannot ruin my game, and you cannot defeat me."

Li Huowang still wore a smile. "I know I cannot defeat you, which is why I brought some help."

In the next instant, as Li Huowang gave a violent tug at the old emperor’s dragon robes, a die embedded deep within the rotting flesh was laid bare to the air.

"It truly is a Zuowangdao!" a roar erupted from the palace roof in the distance.

A one-eyed Taoist clad in yellow robes stood there; he raised a gourd in his right hand and swept his whisk with his left, and with that single motion, the entire sky was swallowed into the vessel.

"As a member of the Zuowangdao, you dare to conspire with the Eastern Xia Directorate of Astronomy against your own kind!" the voice of the Die thundered with fury.

"Hahaha! Boss Die, you must be senile. We are Zuowangdao—what use have we for codes of honor? Naturally, one uses whatever means are most effective."

"Besides, it is not only the Eastern Xia Directorate I have joined forces with."

The ground heaved upward, and an inverted pagoda burst from the earth, sealing both figures within its shadow.

As a rhythmic chant began to resonate, the pitch-black night descended like a colossal net, shrouding the entire palace and ensuring that no soul could escape.

Factions emerged one after another, locked in a struggle that raged for three days and three nights; by the time the Directorates of other nations arrived to intervene, the imperial capital of Eastern Xia had been reduced to a desolate ruin.

Spring faded into autumn, winter gave way to summer, and two full years later, a rotting hand reached out from the weed-choked rubble.

The old emperor, his body reduced to a mangled half, crawled from the debris, but before he could catch his breath, he saw Hongzhong squatting nearby, watching him with a beaming smile. "Boss Die, you certainly know how to hide."

"Heh... heh-heh," the Die chuckled, head bowed. "Hongzhong, you played well, but you were one move short." "Oh? And which move was that?"

"The fact that you are a Xinsu! I had guarded against you all along!" The old emperor’s decaying hand split open, and a swirling, ethereal mass of the Heavenly Dao was flung violently onto Li Huowang.

Li Huowang stood frozen for a moment, then reached out to brush his red Taoist robes, dusting off non-existent grime. "It seems my calculations were not off by a single move."

The old emperor stared at the man before him in disbelief, unable to fathom why his contingency had failed, until realization dawned. "No, you are not a Xinsu, you are not Hongzhong—who on earth are you!"

He reached up to his own jaw, gave a gentle tug, and peeled off the face of Li Huowang, tossing it carelessly to the ground. He stepped forward, kicked the old emperor onto his back, and grabbed the die embedded in his chest, pulling with all his might.

"Who are you!" Amidst the old emperor’s desperate, defiant roar, the die was ripped free.

He extended a finger to scoop out the brains from within the die, then cupped them in his hands, pressing them onto his own head with the utmost solemnity. "Who I was in the past is of no consequence; from now on, I am the Die."