Chapter 14: Helper

Chapter 14: An Accomplice

The moment the pill slipped down his throat, Li Huowang felt a warm, blazing fire ignite in his dantian, and this fire showed every sign of burning fiercer by the second.

It scorched him so thoroughly that he had no mind to spare for the nausea and revulsion welling up inside him.

"Xuan'yang, go back and rest. The effects of this pill are potent, and it will take a good while to fully absorb it."

"Yes, Master."

Stumbling back to his quarters, Li Huowang leaned against the doorframe and retched violently, yet all he could bring up was a trickle of clear water. The pill had already been completely absorbed.

Crack, crack. The joints all over Li Huowang's body popped and creaked as his flesh twitched and spasmed beyond his control.

By now, the fire in his dantian had surged through his meridians and spread to his limbs. He felt as though he were swathed in a heavy padded coat in the dead of summer, his entire body practically boiled alive.

The searing heat clouded his mind. Lying on his bed, Li Huowang stared up at the ceiling spinning above him, his thoughts drifting back to everything that had just transpired, to the terrified, despairing eyes of everyone in the ingredient room.

He had become Danyangzi's sickening accomplice, forcing upon others the very horrors that had been inflicted upon him.

The others might be illiterate, but they were far from stupid. In the face of absolute power, anything he did was utterly futile.

"I have to kill him. I must find a way to kill him!!" Li Huowang roared madly in the depths of his heart.

His right hand unconsciously clutched the edge of the stone bed, and as the final words echoed in his mind, the veins on the back of his hand bulged fiercely.

With a sharp crack, he wrenched a solid chunk right off the unyielding stone bed.

This sudden change caught Li Huowang completely off guard. He looked at his hand, then at the chunk of stone gripped in his palm, and immediately realized it was the doing of the pill.

It wasn't just his strength; everything else had changed too. Li Huowang even felt his eyes could see further into the distance. That single pill had given him the sensation of being reborn, shed of his mortal shell.

Yet the moment he remembered the price at which this power was bought, a fresh wave of nausea churned in his gut.

"Senior Brother Li? Are you alright?" Bai Lingmiao peeked her head cautiously around the doorframe.

Li Huowang raised his head and looked at her with a complicated expression, at a loss for words for a moment.

Bai Lingmiao stepped forward and said, "Senior Brother Li, you really shouldn't blame yourself. We all know you had no choice. If... I mean, if Master makes me go again, don't swap me out for someone else. Anyway... we all share the same fate in the end."

Not wanting to dwell on the subject, Li Huowang looked at her bleeding forehead, pulled out a pill he had refined earlier, and handed it to her. "Eat this. It will stop the bleeding."

Seeing the pill in Li Huowang's hand, Bai Lingmiao shook her head violently in sheer terror. "I won't eat pills. I will absolutely never eat pills."

Li Huowang gave a dry chuckle and casually tossed the pill onto the floor. "You're right. Every medicine carries a measure of poison; it truly isn't good to take them."

Bai Lingmiao bit her lip, pondered for a moment, and then asked, "Senior Brother Li, are you planning to go against Master?"

Li Huowang's expression shifted. He glanced nervously toward the doorway before rushing over to shut the door tight.

"It's fine. Master can't hear us right now. He relies on the Wandering Lord to keep watch. Every time there's a grand market day, the Wandering Lord has to go back to attend the market."

"What is the Wandering Lord?" Li Huowang asked in confusion, hearing the term for the very first time.

"The Wandering Lord is just the Wandering Lord. You can't see it or touch it. I heard my grandpa say that only cultivators with profound attainments can command them."

"Oh?" Li Huowang's mind stirred. He committed this detail to memory, for the information was absolutely crucial to him.

"When is the grand market held?"

Hearing this, Bai Lingmiao looked at him in puzzlement. "The grand market is on the first and fifteenth of the month. Senior Brother Li, how can you not even know that? Didn't your parents ever take you to the market?"

Li Huowang shook his head. The memories in his mind, whether real or illusory, proved he had only ever lived in the city and had never taken part in such rural trade fairs.

"Senior Brother Li, let's get back to the matter at hand. Do you truly intend to go against Master?"

Li Huowang's expression hardened. "Of course. I wish I could eat his flesh and drink his blood!"

Bai Lingmiao took a deep breath and nodded firmly. "Then count me in, Senior Brother. I want to help with this too!"

Li Huowang looked at the young girl before him and the resolute gleam in her eyes. Perhaps Bai Lingmiao was not as fragile as he had imagined.

"Alright, you're in," Li Huowang agreed. He truly did need allies right now.

After thinking it over carefully, Li Huowang said to her with a grave expression, "The two of us aren't enough. Go keep an eye on the ingredient room first and see if anyone else harbors resentment."

Others might not dare to defy Danyangzi, but the human ingredients in the room were doomed to die anyway; there were bound to be those who refused to accept their fate. This was a fundamental conflict, and among them, he would surely find recruits.

"Mhm." Bai Lingmiao nodded and turned to leave.

After sitting for a while, Li Huowang picked up the round jade pendant tied at his waist, his thoughts drifting to the senior brother who had failed to escape.

"Xuan'yang, oh Xuan'yang, did your group gather together just like this back then? I only hope I don't end up meeting the same fate as you."

Over the following period, Li Huowang threw himself wholeheartedly into the life of the Qingfeng Temple, organizing the ingredient room with meticulous order, managing both its people and its supplies.

Faced with such an obliging disciple, Danyangzi naturally bestowed rewards, imparting the formulas for various basic pills as if he were truly grooming him as a successor.

These ordinary pills were of little use, at most allowing Li Huowang to treat minor chills and superficial wounds.

Moreover, Li Huowang didn't know if it was just Danyangzi's pills or all pills in this world, but there was always a limit to such things; take too many, and the cure becomes a curse.

There were also strict taboos against mixing them, for combining different pills could easily lead to disastrous consequences.

Rather than saying Li Huowang could now pass as a mediocre physician, it was more accurate to call him a competent poisoner.

The pills weren't the key; the crucial part was that through these interactions, Li Huowang's relationship with Danyangzi grew steadily warmer.

Sometimes, when Danyangzi was refining pills, he would even have Li Huowang assist him at his side.

When Danyangzi took another Daoist boy as his disciple and Li Huowang was no longer the youngest, he had thoroughly embedded himself within the Qingfeng Temple.

Through such close contact, Li Huowang confirmed his suspicion: Danyangzi was indeed illiterate, and he harbored an intense, visceral aversion to anyone else being literate.

He would not allow his disciples to surpass him in anything, which was why the disciples he chose were almost entirely illiterate.

This struck Li Huowang as deeply amiss, and he recalled the words Danyangzi had once spoken to him.

"Because the method of achieving immortality is written in the Heavenly Book of Lord Laojun, and the Heavenly Book was delivered to me by Lord Laojun himself. Tell me, who else in the world could achieve immortality? He said I could. I most certainly will!"

Since the Lord Laojun he spoke of had given him a Heavenly Book, and neither his disciples nor he himself could read, who on earth had been reading it to him?

(End of Chapter)