Chapter 126: Who Is It?

Chapter 126: Who Is It?

"Was it me? Was it me who slaughtered the entire town? Was it me who killed Yingzi's whole family?"

Trembling, Li Huowang turned his head to gaze into the eyes of the lifeless girl before him.

Her completely lifeless pupils had dilated to their utmost, that mocking smile still lingering on her face.

"I killed her, killed a girl who only wanted to avenge her parents? I'm the one who deserves to die the most?"

At this moment, Li Huowang began to feel fear, an overwhelming terror, as he violently shoved Yingzi's corpse away and hastily stumbled back a full step.

Li Huowang raised his trembling hands, watching as they were thoroughly dyed crimson by Yingzi's blood.

"No, that's wrong! It's not like that! I didn't transmigrate here four years ago! Even if I had transmigrated four years ago, I could never have killed the entire town! Nor would I have the power to wreak havoc inside the Zoroastrian Sect! I'm just an ordinary man!"

"You are far from ordinary; an ordinary man could never possess such prowess," someone interjected.

Looking at the increasingly terrified red-robed Daoist, Shou San beside him continued to explain, "Logically speaking, I had no intention of involving myself too deeply with you, for who knows if you might go mad halfway through, but since Abbess Jingxin spoke up, we decided to grant her a favor."

"Shut your mouth!!"

"Don't try to fool me! Aren't you greedy for the Heart of Purity? Why put on an act! I'm right here! Go ahead and strike!"

Seeing Li Huowang glaring at him in fury, Shou San took a slight step back. "Young friend Xuanyang, calm down a bit; we are here to help you, and you must not bite the hand that feeds you."

The other's words offered no comfort whatsoever; instead, they deepened the fear in Li Huowang's heart, sounding all too plausible.

With a gentle wave of his hand, Shou San signaled the other Zoroastrian cultists preparing to strike to step back.

"Young friend Xuanyang, though our Zoroastrian Sect has a poor reputation out there, we are not like you; we do not kill indiscriminately, for everything must be done with just cause," and glancing down once more at Yingzi's corpse, Li Huowang, his eyes bloodshot, gritted his teeth and charged toward the cave exit.

Seeing Li Huowang charge forward with such ferocious momentum, any Zoroastrian cultists in his path pressed their backs against the walls to clear a way for him.

Outside the cave, it was night; a full moon hung in the sky, and the cold wind blowing against his face brought Li Huowang a slight measure of clarity.

He stumbled to the side of a tree, leaned his back against the trunk, squatted down covering his face with his hands, and his body began to tremble involuntarily.

"Am I a bloodthirsty maniac? Am I a more despicable beast than Danyangzi? Did I really kill Yingzi's entire family? And then I killed Yingzi, who came for revenge?"

Intense oppression and agony pressed down upon Li Huowang's mind like a mountain, stretching the string in his heart to its absolute limit.

Li Huowang's keen hearing picked up the sound of approaching footsteps, but all he wanted now was to hide, to ignore everything.

Suddenly, he felt a gentle pat on his shoulder, and a voice asked with a hint of concern, "Young friend Xuanyang, are you leaving? Does our previous agreement still stand?"

The other's words easily shattered Li Huowang's fragile withdrawal into himself.

"Impossible! Absolutely impossible!! I'm going to find proof right now! There's no way I destroyed that town!"

Li Huowang stood up again, shoved Shou San aside, and charged straight down the mountain toward the town.

Watching Li Huowang disappear down the mountain path, Shou San turned respectfully to a square-faced Zoroastrian believer and asked, "Elder Shenbenyou, what do you think of this..."

The square-faced man frowned slightly in thought for a moment before saying, "Follow him and take a look, but stay steady; don't get yourself killed in the process."

Accompanied by the moonlight, Li Huowang returned to the dead town.

In the darkness, the desolate, sparsely wooded, and utterly lifeless dead town, all combined together, was profoundly eerie.

Yet Li Huowang cared nothing for all this; in his panic, he rushed in and began to search frantically, not stopping even as he was cut until he bled profusely.

When he found a skeleton lying on the ground, his eyes immediately lit up; he pulled a fluorescent stone from his bosom and leaned in to examine it closely.

"The left side of the skull is completely shattered! This person was killed by a blunt instrument; this doesn't match my style, and besides, I never liked using blunt weapons."

Li Huowang's mood gradually stabilized as he methodically continued to search through the other skeletons.

"The bones of this corpse are charred black and crumble at the slightest touch; this person was burned to death by a fierce fire, which is also impossible for me to have done."

"And this one is even more absurd, half the body is exposed outside while the other half is embedded in the wall; how could I possibly have done that?"

The more gruesome deaths he saw, the more relieved Li Huowang felt inside.

Seeing a skeleton before him blooming like a flower upon the ground, the heavy stone in Li Huowang's heart was finally lifted.

"I didn't kill anyone, I'm not a maniac, Yingzi simply remembered it all wrong!" Li Huowang repeatedly confirmed his identity to himself.

Yet immediately after, another question popped into Li Huowang's mind. "Why would Yingzi misremember? Could it be that there was a villain back then who looked exactly like me?"

"Hmm... this is a troublesome matter; it might well cause a lot of trouble in the future."

"But let's leave that for later; for now, I need to figure out how to deal with Danyangzi first."

Just as Li Huowang was about to step out of the utterly dilapidated wooden hut, some papers nearby caught his attention.

Having calmed down, he walked over and picked up those papers.

They were stained with a great deal of blood, looking as though they had been written shortly before death.

Li Huowang could no longer make out the contents written on them; he no longer recognized many of the characters.

"Wait, these three characters look so familiar."

Frowning slightly, Li Huowang traced the last three brush-written characters with his finger, his mind filled with deep confusion.

He lingered there for a long, long time, and just as his frown deepened, a sudden explosion rang out in his mind.

"Li Huowang! These three characters are Li Huowang!"

The instant he excitedly shouted out the meaning of these three characters, Li Huowang suddenly felt as though his throat were being choked.

He scrutinized the skeletons around him, his pupils dilating and contracting in turns, as fear began to gradually erode his mind.

"No... impossible! Yingzi must have been mistaken! I didn't kill their parents! I didn't kill these people either!"

The neurotic Li Huowang kept muttering denials to himself, yet his emotions grew increasingly agitated.

He could find all sorts of reasons to deceive himself, but the three characters on the paper in his hand forced him to face reality.

As if with a resounding snap, the string in Li Huowang's mind broke instantly.

"Li Huowang!! You killed them!! You madman!!"

"No! I didn't!! I didn't! I didn't!! I'm not like Danyangzi and the rest!"

Veins bulging on his forehead, Li Huowang knelt in the midst of the various gruesomely dead skeletons, screaming hysterically at the empty air.

"Whoosh~" a pill covered in fine hair rolled and flew into Li Huowang's mouth.

In an instant, the oppression, guilt, and agony in his heart were magnified many times over, nearly threatening to devour his mind entirely.

Just then, a figure slowly walked in; it was Shou San.

His body completely charred black, he lightly snapped his fingers, and thick flames instantly engulfed him, burning with a crackling sound.

With a gentle wave of his hand, the scorching flames on his body rapidly spread along the ground, entirely enveloping Li Huowang's body.